Madam, - I agree wholeheartedly with Desmond Fennell's remarks on the problems in Irish publishing (June 27th). There is a distinct lack of imagination, even creative energy in some areas of the industry here.
My experience reflects that. A couple of years ago I shared a speakers' table with your own Caroline Walsh at a publishing conference in Galway. The audience comprised in the main Irish publishers.
I suggested that Irish publishing houses might consider publishing young European authors in translation; I was told later that it was generally considered I had made a joke.
Having worked on translations of Breton short stories, both old and new, I have peddled them around every Irish publisher I could think of and found no takers. Penguin Ireland was simply the first of several Irish-based publishers to reject my proposal for a book on the Irish in Paris, citing a potential dearth of Irish readers for such a work. My recent novel found a home with a UK publisher, having been unable to find one in Ireland. Your reviewer last Saturday liked it well enough.
The Irish publishing world appears to be stuck in a parochial rut and perhaps this is due, at least in part, to its being subvented so graciously by the Arts Council. In the mid-1970s a few of us founded the Irish Writers' Co-op in order to widen the imaginative publishing scope available to innovative Irish writers. Must something similar be started up again? - Yours etc,
FRED JOHNSTON, Carn Ard, Circular Road, Galway.