Fact File
Name: John B. Keane
Born: 1928, Co Kerry
Occupation: playwright, novelist, essayist, poet
In the news because: last night he received a lifetime achievement award from the President, Mrs McAleese
Monday was traditionally a half-day in Listowel. The quiet Co Kerry market town was still waking as two English men strolled into Keane's pub. They sipped their pints slowly and watched with interest as a dishevelled woman, obviously drunk and carrying a child in her arms, was kindly but firmly refused service by the playwright proprietor.
Later that evening he received a phone call from the editor of an English newspaper. The man with the accent said: "Hello, Mr Keane, is it true you no longer serve tinkers in your bar?" There was a half-pause. "Not at all," said John B. "Sure didn't I serve two of your staff in here today?"
Last night John B. Keane was honoured for his quick wit, his intuitive dialogue, his talent for spotting the wood for the willows so neatly summed up in this informative anecdote.
At the ceremony in the National Yacht Club, Dun Laoghaire, Irish PEN, the society for Irish writers, honoured him for 40 years of literary endeavour. It all began with a rebuff from the Abbey, and it seems quite fitting that last night it was marked by a lifetime achievement award presented to him by the President, Mrs McAleese.
The National Theatre famously did not recognise the raw power of Sive, initially rejecting the play he wrote in 1959 about a young girl in a "made marriage". The Listowel drama group subsequently performed it on what one observer said was "a magic night" in Walsh's Ballroom, and it went on to win the All-Ireland Amateur Drama Festival. In June the Abbey opened its doors to Keane, and the play packed out the theatre.
What has flowed from his pen in the intervening years is what RTE producer Seamus Hosey recently called a gift for "turning the parochial and the particular into the universal world of art". Plays such as Sharon's Grave in 1960, Many Young Men of Twenty in 1963, The Field in 1966 and Big Maggie and Moll and The Man From Clare.
Few homes in the State are without a book that features one of his plays, novels, essays or poems. While it took until the mid-1980s for his literary strength to be acknowledged in the capital, his work, with themes including sex and religion, spoke of a rural Ireland alive but not well, and certainly not openly spoken about.
John B. Keane was born in Kerry in 1928, the fourth child of his national school teacher father, William, and mother, Hannah. The 10 Keane children crowded into a house in Church Street in Listowel where their father's brother and sister also lived. These were days of card games played for ha'pennies and nights spent poring over a dining room full of books. William regularly exhorted his expanding brood to "read, read, read".
John B. (it stands for Bernard) went to school at St Michael's College where he received the beating of his life one day for reciting a poem he had written about the street where he lived. He was 18 but the 70-year-old still bears the physical scars.
A stint in a local pharmacy and a spell plucking chickens followed before he emigrated to England in 1950. He returned within a few years as he said he would to marry Mary O'Connor, his childhood sweetheart. They bought a pub in Listowel that at first doubled as a grocery shop.
When he began to write, his plays were championed by producer Phyllis Ryan and director Barry Cassin, who commentators say recognised his then raw writing talent. It wasn't until 1978 that his plays were regularly produced in Dublin, not so much a revival as an introduction for Dublin audiences to the body of Keane's work.
In 1985 Joe Dowling, artistic director of the Abbey, commissioned Ben Barnes to direct an Abbey production of Sive. "My choice of Ben Barnes as director was a fortuitous one," Dowling wrote in 1992. "The young director formed an immediate bond with the older writer which has continued since then with great success outside the National Theatre." His most acclaimed play, The Field, was turned into a successful film.
In 1990 there was talk of John B. Keane contesting the presidential election, eventually won by Mary Robinson, as a Fine Gael candidate. "I have too short a fuse," he said at the time. "I looked at myself in the mirror this morning when I was shaving and I didn't see a president."
Friends speak of his wife with admiration, saying the gentle woman can be spotted throughout her husband's work and brings him what one said was "a kind of peace". The couple have four children and prefer to holiday in south Kerry than in any of the far-flung destinations his considerable wealth could easily afford.
The county of Kerry and particularly Listowel is the other love in his life. Most of his writing is done late at night, breaking for walks beside the Feale river. He is currently working on a play and a novel. Friends say he will never stay away from the Kingdom too long, and one of his longest holidays was when he went to New York for 10 days in the early 1980s.
He is charming and loves the company of women. This affection is reciprocated, with many actresses expressing the belief over the years that their careers would have died a death had it not been for John B. Keane and the wealth of female characters in his plays. Today he counts several female journalists as friends and, in a throwback to the time he attempted marriage matches in the kitchen of his pub, has tried to fix them up with his nephews.
He got many of his tales, he has said, from talk in his pub. One has a local Listowel GAA man asking his advice. A member of the republican Fianna Fail splinter group, Aontach Eireann, he wanted to know if Keane fancied his chances in the general election. "Well, Joe," said John B. "If you can swing the Jewish vote in Knocknagoshel you have it made".
In recent years he has suffered from prostate cancer, and while he is said to be recovered, he still receives treatment for the illness. In the past he has admitted that he may be overly fond of drink, but he is now content supping shandy. He also enjoys watching all kinds of sport and taking long walks around Listowel.
"He can be quick-tempered," said one person close to him, "a bit intolerant sometimes, but he would always tell you he was sorry." An astonishing ability to suss people out straightaway means he has also been accused of being dismissive. More often it means him getting to the nub of a person's character, discerning qualities they never knew they had.
Some time ago, for example, he wrote the following in a letter to his sister, Peg, analysing the character of her son and his nephew. She reads it out with pride.
"He has something more than commitment, he could read your mind if he wanted. He also possesses that elusive constituent for which so many crave in vain, talent. But it is slow to surface like the first faint intimation of an orgasm."
Another talks about his late brother, Eamonn, an acclaimed actor and father of BBC journalist Fergal Keane: "Eamonn patrols the streets here everyday, clothed in his gown of deep thought," he wrote.
No doubt these letters will be published some day, further illuminating the character of the man honoured last night by his peers.
Because while Keane has said that "the whole truth cannot be told about any man and must not be told" there is nothing to stop us applauding the parts we know.