We Irish have great notions of high literary achievement, but in terms of big bucks, worldwide fame, enormous mansions, private jets and unlimited designer drugs, the acquisition of which goodies is the only point in writing, we are nowhere at all.
We don't even look the part. In this country, typical literary types are reserved, conservatively dressed, modest and retiring individuals. They live exemplary (i.e. completely boring) lives. Many have not been married more than once or twice. A few even profess teetotalism. It is all very dull, and the dullness is reflected in the literature.
As usual, America is where it's at. The literary heavyweights there are just that - huge aggressive brawlers like Norman Mailer, the superficially more civilised but equally physical Gore Vidal, a marginally lighter but just as venomous John Updike, and the bloated ego of Saul Bellow. Their books burst with energy and vitality.
Basically, you cannot contemplate becoming a successful literary figure in the US unless you weigh about 300 pounds, stand six foot six in your socks and drink a bottle of whisky daily. This is only sensible in order to attract the necessary public attention. You should ideally be paying alimony to at least two former spouses, row publicly with everyone you can, and devote at least as much time to promoting your own talent as you do to your actual writing.
If you exhibit these basic requirements, plus an ability to string a few sentences together on paper with the minimum of error, you are well on your way.
In the US there is little room for the literary aesthete, and damn right too. Tom Wolfe in his white suits and spats merely puts on an act for the sole purpose of irritating his rivals, who delight in taking the bait, and playing the agreed publicity game.
As for lifestyles, American authors like to throw themselves fully into the mill, and I do not mean literary life as the poor craythur is lived here, a dull round of receptions, speeches and genteel lunches. Mailer, for example, has four failed marriages and nine offspring. To keep this motley gang in money, he estimates that he needs to earn $0.5 million annually. This need to make money keeps him on his literary toes. He has to write. And he has to talk about his need to write.
Look, never mind producing exciting fiction, we can't even think up interesting book titles. The idea of the perfect book title here is something wilfully obscure and mysterious. The whole irritating idea is to make you curious, when you just want to know. It's even worse when it comes to biographies. So you will for example hear of a biography of Tungram Kirstengreet (the 16th century Swedish anchorite) and it will be called Tungram: The Chaos Infinite. What does that tell you? Nothing. It could be the history of some obscure metal, a new Eastern philosophy or the story of a Kurdish boxer. You don't know what you are buying.
American readers haven't time to be curious. They won't wait about. So when Norman Mailer wrote a book in which he purported to speak in the voice of Jesus, it was simply called The Gospel According to the Son. As one critic drily noted at the time of publication, "The only surprise is that Mailer has chosen to write as the Son of God and not the Almighty himself."
Similarly, when Bill Bryson wrote his book on Australia, he did not entitle it Ayers and Graces or Alice Springs Eternal in the clever-clever way a European author might well have done. He called it Down Under, a cliche which is understood even in the dimmer reaches of the US.
The finest proponent of this sensible trend for truly explanatory book titles is surely Thomas Cahill, profiled in this newspaper the other day. His first bestseller, we were informed, was How the Irish Saved Civilisation: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe.
And "best-seller" does not mean what it means in Ireland (usually no more than a few hundred copies): Cahill has sold more than two million copies of this book. Naturally enthused by such success, he called his next book The Gifts of the Jews - How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels.
With Irish grandparents on both sides of the family, Cahill is an excellent model for Irish would-be writers who want to improve their skills, not necessarily at writing literature, but at writing titles. I myself have already chosen a provisional title for my first book: Getting On: The Untold Story of How an Ordinary Newspaper Hack Left Behind the Tawdry World of Journalism for a Career of Fame and Money in the Greater Western Literary World, Or Anywhere, Possibly.
When I work on it a bit - the title, I mean, not the story - it should stretch to at least the first chapter.