A few weeks back, writing about the Waterstone's Books To Be Out With campaign ("a celebration of cool, contemporary and classic Gay and Lesbian writing") I expressed bemusement at a promotion that seemed to have no particular point and a degree of amusement at Waterstone's coy division of its selected titles into "The Boy's Club" and "The Girlie Show".
Bruce Carolan, alas, confesses himself quite unamused by my comments, which he feels reflect a "particular bugaboo" of mine. Well, if I'm prone to such a bugaboo (good word, one for the repertory), I'm unaware of it, though that probably damns me even further in Bruce's mind.
But he's a generous soul, Bruce is, and so "I'm writing to give you another opportunity to slag the whole notion that literature can be grouped around a theme of homosexuality."
In other words, Bruce is looking for a free plug and though biting the hand you hope will feed you isn't necessarily the best way to ensure one, well, I'm a generous soul, too, and will happily convey the gist of Bruce's message, which is:
Open Book, a slot on Anna Livia's Tuesday Night Out in the Open show, is devoted to short works of fiction "by or about lesbians and gays", and if you want to submit a story of up to 1,500 words which meets these criteria, send it (with a stamped addressed envelope) to Out in the Open, c/o Anna Livia, 3 Grafton Street, Dublin 2.
That's about it, though Bruce, who is the producer of Open Slot, adds somewhat sardonically that the stories could be by or about "bisexuals, too, if they insist. Perhaps the odd transvestite. Get it? The odd transvestite? Maybe you can use that." I wouldn't think of it, Bruce.
Roy Clements, whose quirky (very quirky) Beckett-andcricket pamphlet I mentioned some months ago, has also cast a cold eye on W.B. Yeats in search of Yeatsian references to what Neville Cardus called the summer game. The result is Batsman Pass By, a twenty-page thesis that begins with a contemplation of the famous lines "Dropping from the veils of the morning/to where the cricket sings" and proceeds . . . well, I'm not exactly sure where it proceeds from there. You'll have to read it for yourself.
He was also thinking of writing a similar book on Wilde and cricket, but apart from deciding on a title ("A Game of Indecent Postures"), he can't summon up the energy to pursue the matter further. However, in the meantime he sends me his Spring 1998 book catalogue, which contains quite a number of intriguing, and intriguingly priced, first editions.
For instance, Elizabeth Bowen's 1943 memoir, Seven Winters (fairly hard to find), seems good value at £20, while the same author's 1955 novel, A World of Love, is a steal at only £8.
On the other hand, Seamus Heaney's North (1975) seems awfully dear at £130, as does the same poet's 1984 Station Island at £45 - or are old Heaneys going to provide us canny collectors with our pensions?
But Sean O'Faolain's excellent 1948 study, The Short Story, is well worth £16, as is Frank O'Connor's 1961 autobiography, An Only Child, at the same price, not to mention Austin Clarke's Old Fashioned Pilgrimage (1967), also £16.
The same can be said of Eugene McCabe's Heritage and Other Stories (1978) at £8, John McGahern's Nightlines (1975) at £25, Micheal MacLiammoir's Each Actor on his Ass (1961) at £18, Samuel Beckett's First Love (1973) at £20, and Richard Ellman's magisterial James Joyce (1959) at £25.
If you want the full catalogue, contact R.W. Clements, 114 High Street, Hampton, Middlesex, TW12 2ST.
In preparation for a chat about V.S. Pritchett on Andy O'Mahony's Radio 1 books programme, Off the Shelf, I took down from my own shelf Pritchett's Dublin: A Portrait, which, though one of the best books ever written about our capital city, has been out of print since its 1967 publication by The Bodley Head.
Essentially an extended essay in seven chapters, it's distinguished by Pritchett's wonderfully supple prose, his clear-eyed reminiscences (of Yeats, AE, Cosgrave and O'Higgins, among others) and his startling insights.
For instance, in an aside about Gogarty's personality, he remarks: "Joyce tried to catch it, not very successfully, in the portrait of Buck Mulligan: one cannot expect one talker to report another."
And here he is, two years before the North descended into murder and mayhem: "There is always a moment in contemporary Irish life when young men think nostalgically of the explosives that are tucked away in large quantities all over the island."
Or again, on French unreliability in the history of our nationalist aspirations: "It is an important part of the Irish dilemma that England, Ireland's great enemy, has been more reliable than her foreign friends."
Some enterprising publisher should reprint this magnificent book, which is further distinguished by Evelyn Hofer's black-and-white photographs, including arresting portraits of such elder literary statesmen as O'Connor, O'Faolain and Kavanagh and also of Eavan Boland and Brendan Kennelly when they mere chisellers on the literary scene.
Brendan, by the way, has a new book of poems, entitled The Man Made of Rain, due in the shops next week.