Sir, - Congratulations to Kathryn Holmquist on her fine essay "Mammy, I'm poignant" (The Irish Times, February 20th). I have long been of the opinion that self-indulgent memoir writing is the end-product of years of emotional and mental constipation, angst, guilt and arrogance. There is, of course, the added attraction of the monetary gain.
Last Christmas I was given a present of a copy of Angela's Ashes. Sitting down to read it, I looked at the back cover and saw Frank McCourt's statement that "a happy childhood is not worth writing about". I did not read the book, but took it to the nearest book exchange. Such arrogance, such assumption, is intolerable.
I had a very happy childhood. I grew up in a remote rural community during the second World War, on a small holding, just big enough to graze one cow and an ass. In material things we were poor as the proverbial church mouse. I have published countless essays and broadcast, quite literally, hundreds of radio talks, and am currently writing a novel for children, to be published in October - all about that happy childhood. Yet I would not presume to tell Mr McCourt, or anyone else, that only a happy childhood is worth writing about.
Oh, I almost forgot! I did, once, when I was nine or ten, have the "traumatic" experience of hearing my grandfather, in a minor argument with my father, tell him to "f*** off". I have never mentioned that in writing about my childhood. Perhaps I should have. It was the only cloud in what Dylan Thomas called "the skyblue trades" of childhood; the only incident which might qualify me to join the ranks of my poignant-constipated contemporaries. - Yours, etc.,
Bill Long, Bellevue Avenue, Glenageary, Co Dublin.