Linen Hall Library

The Irish DiseaseAuthor(s): Robert JohnstoneSource: The Linen Hall Review, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Summer, 1986), p. 21Published by: Linen Hall LibraryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20533801 .

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and its unusually specific targeting, that is not enough. What is required is a

statement from either the Department of Education or the Northern Ireland Office coming clean on their motiv

ations. The initial reaction of northern arts administrators, that the

Department of Education would be far

better properly funding its legitimate activities here, would seem for the

moment to be entirely justified.

As a review publication which likes to

keep its finger on the pulse of the northern book trade in particular, we do

find the absence of hard fact as opposed to publishers' or booksellers' hype a

problem. In this context we welcome one side product of computerisation at

North West Books - regular lists of their

bestsellers. Not surprising to find Gerald Seymour's Field of Blood topping the list, or Maeve Binchy's

Echoes still doing well. Interesting to note how well North West Books does on sales of maps, including its own

North-West Street Finder, or on relig ious books. Evidence here of the

strength of the market for local public ations such as T.H. Mullin's Limavady and the Roe Valley. Surprises too in the appearance of Wallis et al Politics of Ethnic Identity in Northern Ire/and, from the Social Studies Department at

Queens, or The Female Line from the

Women's Rights Centre. More

surprising in the period March to May, the only book from our big two. Apple tree and Blackstaff, to make the top ten

was Gordon D'Arcy's Pocket guide to

the birds of Ire/and from Appletree.

Correspondence

Ar d?ni?e Avenue

Belfast Dear Sir, It is not long since a reviewer in the

Review listed the French Revolution among the 'peripheral phenomena'

-

Burke's Reflections being the subject under discussion - and deplored the attention lavished on Kierkegaard in a

book which nowhere mentioned or

even alluded to Kierkegaard. Now I find the same reviewer writing in your latest

issue:

Admittedly, Carleton could be wordy: he could digress infuriatingly for page after page: he even wrote some awful

trash but at his best nobody, from

Joyce to Chaucer, wrote better.

One reader at least of the Review

remains convinced that Chaucer

preceded Joyce, and that - in relation to

1973 -

'the unevenness of Carleton's

later writing' might be explained by reference to a similarly agreed

chronology. Perhaps in future you would have the

facts, or the reviewer, certified.

Joseph Holt

The

Irish

Disease

Robert

Johnstone

'My copy is literally falling apart as I

write: so common is this failing in

paperbacks published in Ireland that I fear it may become known as the "Irish disease".

'

Gerry Healey, The Linen Hall Review, vol.2 no.3.

be gentle, it's my Tirsi time, thinks his latest fancy,

cracking a catastrophic smile.

New acquaintance is always chancy.

'She went to pieces in my hands,

halfway through she fell apart/ the young critic complains. 'If she didn't mean it, why start?

One after one, promising much,

they open up like flowers.

But, however gentle my touch, petals drop in showers.'

An eager reader, soon ankle-deep among the fallen leaves, he rummages to pick them up and reconstruct his splintered loves.

He peruses the pages again,

searching the initial savour: 'A dirty word and three puns

(although he's from impeccable Faber)

suggest a consciousness like Muldoon. Is this the iconoclast, Foley,

with bodily functions and spoof jargon? And could this be Mathews, or is it

Sweeney?

This is in dialect: Marshall or Paulin? This must be Simmons, because it's

rude.

And this could only be Medbh McGuckian

I don't understand it, but I think it's

good.'

In libraries and bed-sitters

grow the snowy paper-drifts. Like old flames the Irish writers, Oliver Goldsmith, Gulliver Swift,

Patrick Kavanagh, Louis MacNeice, Oscar Wilde and J.M. Synge,

lie together, lie at peace,. To the memorials lovers bring

Mahon's shed, the bog of Heaney; Poems of the Dispossessed, every one a pleasant memory, in the bundle with all the rest.

So let philanderers learn philology: no sweetheart banned from the

anthology! big

(7 BOOKS & PRINTS Antiquarian and Out of Print Books

Engravings and Prints

(including old Belfast and Ulster) ***

Vanity Fair' Cartoons ***

Legal - The Turf - Political

* 73 Dublin Road, Belfast. Tel: 242777 * Monday

- Saturday. 1.1.00 am -

5.30 pm *

x page 21

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