Stephen > Recent Status Updates

I heard an interview with the author Tim Robinson on RTE radio at http://www.rte.ie/radio1/arts-tonight... Very interesting interview!

I needed an anti-Banville. This is it! First read her books because of her father (former prime minister) but came back again and again for the prose and the insights.

The story "Shovel Kings" is a heartwrenching portrayal of the Irish emigrants in England, working the building sites or the road works. Not all, not even a few, are destined for happiness.

I hadn't known that Edna O'Brien's novel The Lonely Girl was the basis for her screenplay of the film The Girl With Green Eyes, one of my favorites from the 60s with Rita Tushingham and Peter Finch. So I was an Edna O'Brien fan even then and didn't know it. Doing a bit of time travelling with the DVD of GWGE, back to the Band Box theatre in Germantown....

Lyrical, spare, monochromatic, sad, perfect reading for a snowed-in evening.

When I bought this volume I must admit I didn't know exactly what I was getting into. I had heard of Flann O'Brien but had never read any of his works. So I was unprepared for this collections of his columns from the Irish Times, each of which, no more than a page each or at most a bit longer, consists of a literary pun. Many based on a Latin phrase current when written from the 1940s until his death in 1966.

The new year benefits from a bit of the wisdom of Myles na gCopaleen.

Louisburgh, Co Mayo, features prominently in this work of fiction.