My life in books: ‘I’m confident that the books that need to be written will be written’
Dermot Bolger: 'Every night when I retire to bed with a book, I bring one glass of 12-year-old Irish whiskey for company. One glass only. I saw too many writer friends lose their middle years to alcohol.' File picture: Ann McNamee
Dermot Bolger is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and poet, and a member of Aosdána.
by Patrick Radden Keefe, by Caitríona Lally, the 30th anniversary edition of Nuala O’Faolain’s and poetry collections.
I drove to Kerry listening to Stephen Fry read PG Wodehouse and laughed so much I’m surprised the gardaí don’t have checkpoints to confiscate Wodehouse audio books in the interests of safer driving.
. Like many another intrepid mountaineer, the rope gave way every time I tried to scale those steep linguistic cliff faces.
Every book I read with the unjaundiced sense of wonder you have as a teenager, from Pasternak’s poems to by Jennifer Johnston which I read, never imagining I’d later be blessed with her friendship.
Discovering a tiny edition of Michael Hartnett’s poems as a teenager and being blown away.
(by Orlando Figes) heartbreakingly captured a world where one overheard whisper between a child and a parent could destroy lives. Also, by William Trevor because you see his mind start to lose control.
by Antony Beevor showed how the Spanish Civil War cannot easily fit inside a Christy Moore song.
by Barry McLoughlin revealed the fate of the brother of my friend, Sheila Fitzgerald, whose life I explored in two novels, and .
Every generation remakes literature anew. I’m confident that the books that need to be written will be written, even if they don’t necessary get the attention at the time.
. Don’t worry if you can’t finish it. Yeats and Shaw’s letters reveal how, recognising its brilliance, they couldn’t finish it either.
— Parts I and II — with both films better than Mario Puzo’s original novel which contains a lot of extraneous material. The Charles Sturridge-directed also.
I love the personal touch of Irish independent bookshops. Every time I published a novel, the late and great Des Kenny of Kenny’s Bookshop would phone me.
We’d slag each other for five minutes, then he’d give me his incredibly perceptive take on the book and ask for signed copies for customers whom he knew would like it.
Dealing with chains like Waterstones is never like that.
The shelves in my front room where I write are devoted to Irish and European history and the shelves in my back room hold my own books in various translations.
When Graham McLaren was artistic director at the Abbey Theatre, he stood in the doorway between the rooms and, pointing at the two sets of shelves, he said: “I get it. The In-box and Out-box.”
is dedicated to my young grandson to “read when he is considerably older”. Certain things are best left to be savoured when older.
Every night when I retire to bed with a book, I bring one glass of 12-year-old Irish whiskey for company. One glass only. I saw too many writer friends lose their middle years to alcohol.
The quiet, humane Leopold Bloom, sticking to his principles amid public ridicule, as, he slays his dragons in ways so subtle they barely notice his victories.
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