BOOKPATHS

Dublin, Ireland

Author John Banville (pen name Benjamin Black) describes Dublin noir.

Like his protagonist, Black's Dublin setting is flawed, but full of character. 'I suppose I love this place,' Black says. 'I feel very odd saying it. In a way, it's the cheapest thing you can do. It's like saying, 'I love my mother,' or 'Apple pie is nice.' But I suppose I love this place in a strange, embittered kind of way, which is the best way to love somewhere I think.'

Bloomsday 2010

Find out what’s happening this Bloomsday at Dublin’s James Joyce Centre, the rest of Ireland, and worldwide.

Ireland

Author Colm Toibin explains why we “must read” Amongst Women, by John McGahern.

At the heart of the book is a brilliant and subversive idea — that Ireland, rather than being a nation or a community, was a place of isolated families, bitter individuals and gnarled relationships. But McGahern is too subtle a novelist to ever mention this idea in the book. Instead he allows it to emerge subtly, slowly and organically, from the deadened rituals in which the characters indulge. – Colm Toibin, NPR Website

Dublin Literary Pub Crawl, Dublin, Ireland

Read about the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl on this St. Patrick’s Day.

In the style of Leopold Bloom, the Jameson Dublin Literary Pub Crawl meanders through the streets of Dublin, taking in the sights, the smells, the sounds and the scenes.  A team of rambling players and minstrels completes the ensemble, giving renditions of verse, prose, drama and song from the Dublin literary hall of fame. – from Dublin Literary Pub Crawl Website

Dublin, Ireland

James Joyce’s Odyssey: a Guide to the Dublin of Ulysses, by Frank Delaney; photographed by Jorge Lewinski (London:  Hodder and Stoughton, 1981)

Text and photographs take readers on a tour of “the Dublin of Ulysses.”  Out of print, James Joyce’s Odyssey is worth seeking out used or in a library.  Consider it an invitation to a “bookpath.”

'Ulysses' may, if you wish, become a guidebook, a literary 'Baedeker', by which a trip to Dublin becomes enlivened… And after all, Joyce designed the novel from his own knowledge of the city, from details supplied by friends, relatives, books, newspapers – and from the information contained in 'Thom’s Directory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland – Dublin Edition, 1904'.  Each year this tome gazetted, alongside government and commerce, the city of Dublin, street by house, house by occupant and Joyce, for the purposes of Ulysses, interrogated 'Thom’s'.  The characters and their bits and pieces were in his head already – he used 'Thom’s' to find them rooms to live in, places to go. – from James Joyce’s Odyssey: a Guide to the Dublin of Ulysses, by Frank Delaney

Related Website

Frank Delaney’s Website – Author’s Note on James Joyce’s Odyssey

County Derry, Ireland

Christopher Someville tours Seamus Heaney country.

Joining Eugene Kielt on one of the guided tours he conducts round Seamus Heaney country, we found the building blocks of Heaney's young life and his art coming at us round every corner, shining a light on poems that we seemed to have known for ever. – from “A Field Day for Seamus Heaney Fanatics,” by Christopher Somerville, The Guardian

Patrick Kavanagh Rural and Literary Resource Centre, Inniskeen, County Monaghan, Ireland

The Patrick Kavanagh Rural and Literary Resource Centre honors the life and work of Ireland's celebrated poet.  It’s open from early June to late September and for special events, or by arrangement, during the rest of the year.  See the Centre’s website for visitor information.

The Centre houses exhibitions on local history and on Kavanagh, a sixty-seat Audio- Visual Theatre, and a Research Library. Also on view are twelve specially commissioned   paintings illustrating Kavanagh's epic poem ‘The Great Hunger’, a miniature model depicting Kavanagh's classic, ‘A Christmas Childhood"’ Kavanagh's Death Mask and other memorabilia associated with the poet.

The special feature of the Patrick Kavanagh Centre is the unique performance tour of Kavanagh Country, which takes in many local sites immortalised by Inniskeen's most famous son, with anecdotes, historical facts, wild rumours and even the odd poem along the way. – from The Patrick Kavanagh Centre Website

(Photograph from Discover Ireland website.)

Ireland

Download The Yeats Trail brochure at www.discoverireland.ie.

The Sligo landscape in all its variety flooded their minds.  The Table-topped mountain Ben Bulben evoked grandeur of epic proportions; horse races on the beach at Rosses Point  were heart thumping moments; the legends were alive and the people they met contained a savage mix of utter self-containment and open heartedness. – from discoverireland website

Dalkey, Ireland

Liza Foreman visits novelist Maeve Binchy and her husband, children’s book writer Gordon Snell at their “brick cottage” in Dalkey.

Mrs. Binchy, 68, and her husband, the children’s book writer Gordon Snell, 76, live in a brick cottage built in 1847, on a winding road near the train station, several trendy restaurants and a traditional Irish pub that is often more convenient for meals than their diminutive kitchen. 'If we are in the hallway next to the front door, I will often say to Gordon, ‘Come on, let’s go to the pub. It’s closer,’ Mrs. Binchy said. – from “Iriah Cottage Becomes Authors’ Home,” by Liza Foreman, The New York Times

Ireland; France

R. L. Stine tells us why we “must read” A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry.

The story of the Irish during World War I was not a subject I had ever been interested in. But I was completely gripped by Willie's story, that of his fellow soldiers, his family and all the turmoil back home. I knew I was reading something exceptional. Every page of the book manages to portray savage ugliness next to shimmering beauty, in language that made me stop and blink again and again. – from “You Must Read This,” by R. L. Stine, NPR Website