John B. Keane was disappointed to have missed his first Listowel Writers festival opening, but he had made it clear he wanted "the show to go on", and it did, writes Eileen Battersby
Love, celebration, gratitude and an emerging dread of the inevitable shaped the opening proceedings at the famous Listowel Writers' Week. The rain became irrelevant as each new arrival asked, "how is he?" or simply, "any word?" Far more than a folk playwright who filled theatres around the world, more than a quick-witted, laconic original who perfected the art of the ordinary while also exposing the darker, tribal truths about Irish life, John B. Keane, a writer's writer, was and will remain a living presence.
Wednesday evening was dominated by various award presentations, yet most of the speakers referred primarily to the man who had, along with Bryan MacMahon, made the north Kerry market town on the River Feale as famous for literature as it is for horse racing.
In opening the festival, actress Anna Manahan, for whom Keane wrote Big Maggie, evoked a lively character who could be succinct as well as loquacious. John B. had a genius for words, especially for writing rich dialogue, for catching a vivid, colloquial phrase. He also had the gift of generosity. Best of all, the people of Ireland discovered their storyteller long before the begrudging critics did.
But there was never defiance. John B. was philosophical; he trusted his art and knew he had "captured a time, a language, a culture" but was never a tormented artist. Many stories are being exchanged in Listowel this week and most of them centre on his kindness and lack of pretence. Acknowledging loneliness as a tragic condition, Keane, publican and humanitarian, confronted this problem with practicality, not empty romance - he became a matchmaker.
The battle with the cancer which ended his life yesterday morning was a long one. Keane, whose work was rooted in social commentary and an awareness of the need to record a way of life that was passing, seemed to possess a touch of the immortal.
He had had bad spells before, he had told me in 1997, in the kitchen behind his legendary pub in William Street. He said he wanted to concentrate on writing poetry as he felt he was "running out of time". Yet he had always survived and everyone prayed and most of us believed, even as late as Wednesday night, that he could do it again.
During another interview, at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, he had referred to his cancer in passing, before pronouncing in his inimitable delivery, "isn't the human body wonderful, the way it fixes itself".
Until a fortnight ago he was out and about, walking the very Listowel streets that had inspired him, among the people whose voices are heard in his work. Here was an Irish writer who not only settled in Ireland, he lived his life in his beloved home town. His community became an artistic universe; he described his society without idealising it. Keane enjoyed talking and had the showman's love of an audience, but he also listened. People, not silence, stimulated his writing.
Before informing the five short-listed authors of the winner of the Kerry Ingredients Irish Fiction Award, conversation was dominated by mention of John B. As the evening went on, it became clear that friends who were closely in touch with the situation were losing hope. One thing was certain, although he knew he was too ill to attend and was disappointed to have missed his first festival opening, he had made it clear he wanted, as he wife Mary relayed to the organisers, "the show to go on".
During the last few months, Listowel Writers Week administrator, Maria O'Connor, had become accustomed to being asked about John B.'s condition. Despite the journalists converging on the town yesterday, Listowel had become empty, far emptier and sadder than it had seemed the night before when I walked about the town.
Stopping outside John B.'s pub and walking back towards the square, I remembered the large wall mural on Church Street, parallel to William Street. It celebrates Listowel's writers. The final lines from John B.'s poem The Street are quoted. He loved the "sweet, incomparable hometown that made me".
Listowel returns the feelings. If this Writers Week becomes a wake, it does no disservice to it or to the creator of plays such as Sive, The Field, Big Maggie, and The Matchmaker or novels such as his manic Kerry "western" Durango and The Bodhrán Maker.
"It is fitting that John B. died during the festival," says Maria O'Connor, "it's as if he waited for the opening night to happen and then went peacefully. The ordinary people of Listowel who had loved him and who inspired his work are obviously here but so also are the many friends who came to know him through the festival and, of course, through his work."
Some events have been cancelled to facilitate his funeral, but the festival continues - as he wished.