FRANK RONAN? Let me think. Oh yes, he write's novels or stories or something, doesn't he? Irish, I suppose, with a name like that? No, I haven't read him.
Born and reared in New Ross, Frank Ronan is indeed Irish, but not so you'd notice. When I meet the gangly 32 year old in the Shelbourne Hotel, I deduce from his Anglicised drawl that he's spent many years across the water, but he drily remarks that he has always had this accent.
Not being identifiably Irish may make him a marketing nightmare for those who wish to cash in on the current popularity of Irish writing, but it suits him just fine, thank you. He has always recoiled from the notion that one should be "proud to be Irish, the implication being that, behind it all, one is really ashamed of being Irish". He finds such navel gazing tedious and irrelevant, and sees himself simply as a writer who was born and grew up in Ireland and now divides his time between Dublin, Wexford, London, France and further afield (he has just come back from three weeks in India).
Since he won the Aer Lingus/Irish Times prize for The Men
. Who Loved Evelyn Cotton in 1985, he has managed to get by as a full time writer, which wouldn't have been possible if he was married or had a mortgage. But neither money nor fame matters to him, he insists, as long as he has enough of the firmer to live comfortably.
The reason for our meet ing is that his first book of short stories, Handsome Men Are Slightly Sunburnt, has just been published (Sceptre, £8.99 in UK). Like the person outlined in the first paragraph of this piece, I had never read Frank Ronan (that lack of categorisable image, I suppose) and wasn't encouraged by a title that seemed a bit twee. But this is the finest book of stories to come from an Irish writer in years elegant and funny and touching, and with real things to say about various kinds of lives and relationships, both here and in other countries.
In our conversation Martin Amis's name crops up. He describes Amis, not approvingly, as a "stylist", and sees himself as a "substantialist someone who is primarily interested in the ideas and content of fiction. Actually, he's both, as you'll find out if you read this terrific collection.
WRITERS can be a hoot sometimes. A few months back in this column, I included a piece about the excellent American thriller writer Lawrence Block, whom I met briefly in the Murder Ink book shop on Chatham Street and who told me that he had visited the Listowel Writers Week on a few occasions during the Seventies.
Now he tells me that he intends to return to Listowel this summer, encouraged by his memories of "a great gallimaufry of book launchings and music and theatre and good fellowship, with enough of a liquid base that the memories themselves are less clear than they might be."
When I say that he tells me this, I mean that I learn it from a newsletter sent "once or twice a year" to his fans. I learn much more, too. I learn that I can buy a first edition of one of his books for $22 and a bibliography for $35, and that if I'm interested in his original manuscripts, I should contact a guy called Otto Penzler at (212) 765 0900.
Most intriguingly, though, I learn that Mr Block has bought and installed in Manhattan's Bryant Park (for $5,000) a bench dedicated to his alcoholic private eye Matt Scudder, and that he wants to do the same for his other main fictional character, Bernie Rhodenbarr.
You may be thinking that this memorialising of his fictional heroes denotes an unseemly degree of self love, but you haven't heard the half of it the highly successful Mr Block wants me and his other fans to pay for it "If enough of you out there send in enough modest contributions, Bernie will have a bench of his own, and every time you sit on his bench ... you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you helped make New York a little bit nicer."
Being asked to cough up cash for a bench honouring someone who doesn't exist is worthy of a Borges story. Being asked by the author himself shows that enterprise and chutzpah are alive and well in America. Fair dues to you, Lawrence.
THE Joan Collins versus Random House court case is a hoot, I too. The idea that she should return her $780,000 advance to the publishers because her manuscripts were "incomplete" and "drivel", is truly bizarre. What did they expect Tolstoy? And surely one of the reasons why they employ editors is so that the manuscripts of celebrities can be licked into some kind of coherence. Joan, however, must love all the publicity, which should make her next book (whoever publishes it) a sure fire bestseller.