Madam, – I would like to tell your correspondents David Smith (August 22nd), Madeleine Keane and Tim Carey (August 25th), as well as Liam Carson and Gabriel Rosenstock (August 31st) that there already is a book festival in Dublin, which takes place every other month in the Tara Towers on Merrion Road.
About 30 or so booksellers from all over this island attend and display an impressive array of out-of-print and antiquarian books, thereby resurrecting and recreating an interest in the literary works and lives of writers, publishers, printers and booksellers from the 17th to the 21st centuries.
It includes writers in Irish, your previous correspondents might note. Whether it is called a fair or a festival doesn’t matter; it is a festival of literature and history. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Sean Hayes, who describes himself as a small bookshop owner in the midlands, claims that Irish-language books are “actually displayed disproportionately to the demand for them”. It’s writing fiction he should be, not selling it. I decided to test the matter for myself and visited one of the largest bookshops in Ireland, Hughes Hughes in Dún Laoghaire. When I inquired about books in Irish I was informed that there were a few dictionaries somewhere, but no literature. No novels, poetry, short stories, memoirs, travel writing, biographies? No. Nothing.
I will say this much for the polite young man who answered my query. He was apologetic about it. I’ll inquire again next year. And the year after. You never know, I might even create a demand. – Yours, etc,