GERMANS see the Irish as by far their most likeable European neighbours. So says Christian Ludwig, who has just concluded a week long trip to this country in the company of German journalists and adult educationalists. Their purpose? To acquaint themselves more fully with our people and ways prior to next autumn's Irish cultural blitz on Germany.
Christian, editor of the quarterly magazine irland journal (based in Essen), is among millions of Germans who are bracing themselves for Ireland and Its Diaspora, currently being organised by Lar Cassidy of the Arts Council, which will be the focal theme of the 1996 Frankfurt Book Fair.
They're also bracing themselves for sundry other Irish events - most notably A Day of Irish Life in Germany, which will take place in more than 500 German cities and towns on September 27th, but also a succession of poetry readings, theatre performances and what have you in the latter part of the year. All of this, Christian feels, "will offer the greatest opportunity ever to represent Ireland in Germany, its most important continental market".
But what will this literary orgy do to Ireland in the closing months of the year? By the looks of it, there won't be a solitary writer left at home. Can we bear the sense of quiet?
THAT Bible of the trade, The Bookseller, reports that Seamus Heaney returned from Stockholm "with his £720,000 Nobel prize burning a hole in his pocket". And, says the magazine, "he shouldn't think twice about blowing it all at once, since it looks like he will be receiving a big cheque from his publisher, Faber, in the near future."
How so? Well, sales of his books "have increased 18 fold since he won the prize. Figures from Faber show that unit sales increased from 6,173 in October and November 1994 to 110,401 in the same period in 1995".
The Bookseller piece also says that "the Irish are buying anything with his name on it". Not least, I might add, commercial companies offering Christmas presents to their clients - car firms, among many others, were giving gift wrapped Seamuses to motoring journalists and prestigious customers over the holiday period. Four Door Hatchback Into the Dark, no doubt, and Petrol Station Island.
LIKE policemen, writer seem to be getting younger every year, and at Thursday night's Orion reception in Dublin's Shelbourne hotel, I suddenly began to feel very old indeed. It was bad enough meeting Michael Collins, who is 31 but looks 20; it was worse meeting Lara Harte, who is 20 but looks 17.
Married to an American and living in Chicago, Michael casually informed me that when he's not writing fiction, he designs and installs computer systems. He started to explain the particular technology involved, but I had no idea what he was talking about - anyway, if he starts to make enough money from his books he's going to give all that up. His third book, a story collection called The Feminists Go Swimming, is due from Orion's Phoenix House imprint any day, and if you buy it you'll be helping him to achieve his goal.
Lara Harte is studying second year English and French in UCD and wrote her novel, First Time, when she was 18. She sent it to a prestigious London agent, but had no luck and posted it instead to Phoenix House, who accepted it immediately. Adolescence, she thought, was a neglected subject in literature, and her book, which will he published in March, explores what it feels like to be a teenager in Dublin. Her dad, writer Jack Harte, was more than happy to be overshadowed by her at the launch, though he has a hook of stories due from Dedalus Press in the summer.
This leaves me no space to do more than mention that among the other Orion authors at the launch were David Park, James Ryan and (last but very definitely not least) Maeve Binchy, besieged as ever by fans and giving them all her irrepressibly cheerful attention.