So...the BBC didn't want any negative information about the late Jimmy Savile coming out...
And...Pat Kenny of RTE doesn't want any negative information about the late Gerry Ryan coming out...
"That book should not have been written", he is reported of saying about the beautiful Melanie's book which, among other things, deals with her late lover the RTE presenter Gerry Ryan.
It's ludicrous, methinks. And Gerry Ryan wasn't even a paedophile, he was just a rather sad character who took too much cocaine and didn't have any friends.
Interesting now that he's safely dead he does have friends in the Irish media mafia.
Hanging together lest they hang seperately? No doubt. And to be expected. But nonetheless it's rather alarming to note that Ireland's major radio/tv presenter/commentator (€800,000 per year...yes that's five noughts) has come out strongly in favour of book burning.
Ah sure...moving on....
Mentioning books. My own new novel The Snake Dancer of Sati Choura has now been published in print format. And very good it is too. (Though I don't expect Pat Kenny to be interviewing me on any of his shows.)
As part of its publication I thought I'd take a wander round Dublin's remaining bookshops to see how it was looking. And in the course of this wander someone told me there was a new bookshop...well...a newish bookshop down in Temple Bar.
This, I thought, was good news. Bookshops are becoming increasingly few on the ground. Thank God for the world of E, etcetera.
I looked it up. The new bookshop presented itself as a happening sort of place at the cutting edge, reader and writer friendly, all that. I found that it was owned by a bloke who used work for Hughes and Hughes (which went bust) and also with Waterstones (which did likewise). So I reckoned he should know a thing or two about the book business.
I wandered down to The Gutter Bookshop to check it all out.
It was pretty much the same old same old, like a provincial Easons, but with fewer titles. The usual suspects really. Disappointing but, whatever. A bookshop is a bookshop.
Anyway, they'd never heard of my book. But I suppose they are at the far arse end of Temple Bar in a sort of cultural bubble and stuff doesn't really penetrate.
I arranged for a copy of the book to be sent to them.
Week or so later I wandered down again.
No, they hadn't ordered my book. And she, yes she, whoever she was, had no intention of so doing. And conveyed this info in terms which could not be described as warm and friendly.
Ah hah, I thought, this shop is aptly positioned, in Cow Lane.
"Why not?" I asked, my thoughts staying schtum.
"It's not in our demographic."
"Oh. What does that mean?" I asked, but reply there came none...'she' just left and walked away to sell a jumper to a customer.
Yes they sell jumpers.
And why not? I myself used sell horticultural products in Dublin's wholesale vegetable markets. And there's no difference. Some people you meet in the sales game are polite, and some are sheer damn ignorant and rude and offensive.
The product is meaningless.
Thank you for your comments on Melanie Verwoerd's book. I too am alarmed at the behaviour of the "same old guard" acting like boorish bullies because Irish people's fanatical devotion to the idea of marriage, its shell, form and status, while refusing to provide practical assistance to anyone who is actually in one.
ReplyDeleteI actually bought the book as an act of protest. I hope she makes a mint. There are too many of the same congealed, tax-supported, overpaid establishment media elite who are stamping down hard on anyone too bright, too different, too foreign and too female. (Not that men are off the hook either by any means)
Delenda est Carthago. Keep on keeping on.