Already they fall through letterboxes and pile up on desks; see them fill out brown paper bags and bulk out briefcases; here they are in the million hordes (thanks, David Bowie).

One of the most important meetings of my year took place earlier this week in the front seat of the car, writes Michael Moynihan.

In his debut novel ‘Fives And Twenty Fives’, former marine Michael Pitre joins a long line of US writers who fictionalised their war experience, reports Michael Clifford

The spotlight is now firmly fixed on Taoiseach Enda Kenny as he finalises the shake-up of his junior government ranks, writes Political Correspondent Shaun Connolly

OVER the years, there have been many odes to the city that never sleeps.

Brendan Behan died 50 years ago today. Alan O’Riordan remembers his flawed brilliance

William Burroughs’ centenary occurs this month. The West Cork-based photographer John Minihan recalls meeting the controversial author in London

FIFTY years ago Mary McCarthy’s novel shed light on http://exa.mn/mv. It shocked readers then, but today it seems almost tame.

Canada

Bob Woodward’s recent flap reveals a grotesquely swollen ego fed by 40 years of hero worship. Max Holland asks: why is this man an icon?

SHORTLY after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian President Boris Yeltsin allowed a small number of academics to poke around in the previously secret Communist Party and KGB archives.

Celebrated author, playwright and commentator Gore Vidal has died at the age of 86, his nephew said today.

It was the night Ireland’s Euro 2012 dream turned into a nightmare.

AMERICAN author David Guterson has joined John Updike, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer and other literary stars as the recipient of the dreaded Bad Sex in Fiction award.

AMERICAN author David Guterson has joined John Updike, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer and other literary stars as the recipient of the dreaded Bad Sex in Fiction award.

I SAW Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden but not, alas, in the Fight of the Century. It was just last January and Joe was courtside for Knicks-Spurs in the NBA.

KEVIN BARRY’S new novel about a futuristic west of Ireland ruled by violence and fear, ‘City of Bohane’, is drawing superlatives like a magnet attracts iron filings, and the genial Limerick native doesn’t hold back when it comes to his own interest in sport.

There was a time well within living memory that such a contest would have dominated discussions for weeks beforehand – and afterwards.

LEGENDARY author JD Salinger whose novel, The Catcher in the Rye, shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died at the age of 91.

John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the post-war prime of the American empire, died today. He was 76.

Sean Penn paid tribute to late writer Norman Mailer at a memorial service in New York on Wednesday night.

ANYONE who has read Alistair Campbell’s eponymous account of the Blair years knows Tony Blair is already in the running for sainthood, if only for his unremitting kindness to and patience with Campbell and the other infighting inadequates who surrounded him during his leadership of New Labour.

‘THERE is always the shock in seeing him again. Women draw an audible breath. Men look down. They are reminded again of their lack of worth.’

Norman Mailer, the macho prince of American letters who for decades reigned as the country’s literary conscience and provocateur, died of renal failure early today, his literary executor said. He was 84.

US author Kurt Vonnegut, best known for his novels Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle has died. He was 84.

Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, a master of comic melancholy who in Herzog, Humboldt’s Gift and other novels both championed and mourned the soul’s fate in the modern world, has died at 89.

THE origin of what historian Arthur Schlesinger called the Imperial Presidency now expanding the American empire under George W Bush can be traced back to the 1960s and Vietnam, but might never have emerged if JFK had survived Dallas.

Novelist Salman Rushdie was named the writer’s writer as he was honoured by fellow auths for his contribution to international literature.