The Dubliner Magazine: Ireland's Best Literary Festival?

Trevor White thinks so. Max McGuinness isn't so sure.

On Saturday afternoon at the inaugural Flatlake literary festival in Monaghan, the same painting by Damien Hirst went under the hammer twice within a single hour. The first time, it was bought for €380. The second time, it made €95,000.

The reason for this Weimar-style inflation? We only learned the second time around that the colourful swirl was indeed the work of the genius who once inserted a chicken bone into his foreskin in front of a traumatised group of American tourists in the bar of the Clarence Hotel.

Whatever this episode might say about our skewed appreciation of the value of art, the sale will undoubtedly have one welcome consequence – Pat McCabe and Kevin Allen's eccentric attempt to bring culture to the Midlands will continue (and maybe next year the performers will get a free pint or something).

Damien Hirst himself was not around to see 400 people appraise one of his spin paintings as being worth less than a second-hand motorbike. It was included in an auction of 40 pieces of generally execrable art which were put on sale with the artists' names concealed.

Film producer Alan Moloney, who happens to know Hirst a bit and has three similar spin paintings hanging in his kitchen, managed to pick out the wheat from the chaff. He was promptly buttonholed by the organisers, who persuaded him to re-auction the painting, and to donate the proceeds from the sale to the festival – thus ensuring its solvency for the foreseeable future. This time, with a reserve of €20,000, a bidding war erupted which was won by a man from Co.Wicklow in a stripy shirt who claimed to be an art dealer.

My editor Trevor White and I were then given the thankless task of initiating a debate about the repercussions of all this for the value of art. It failed to advance beyond "What is the world coming to!" type platitudes before we were interrupted by a girl demanding to know when Dylan Moran would be taking the stage.

Moran then emerged, several hours after his original slot had passed, ever so slightly the worse for wear, and attempted to read a few pages from a novel which he might be writing before apologising that he couldn't make out his own handwriting.

This was a literary festival held in a barn with hay bales for seating. Pat McCabe directed proceedings from a strange little box on the right-hand side from where he mouthed various incomprehensible instructions and played the odd Dylan song through a loudspeaker which had been hyperbolically dubbed 'Radio Butty.'

The programme consisted largely of those of McCabe's writer friends who had been unable to invent a funeral at short notice, beginning on Saturday afternoon with an engaging interview with Death and Nightingales author Eugene McCabe by Colm Tóibín. The discussion revolved around money and a bit of literary score-settling.

"Friel's got a sharp edge alright," said Eugene.

The following day, McCabe took the stage (which managed to feature a sculpture of two dogs rogering in which the rogerer was painted with the Stars and Stripes) along with Neil Jordan and Stephen Rea. They talked about the past – the first film each had seen, the first books they had read etc. Jordan developed a formidable 'in my day' line that focused on two facts: 'we drank a lot more' and 'we were poor and had nothing else to do so we cracked out more good writing.'

Things heated up when Pat declared that "he didn't get all of Beckett".

Which parts didn't he get?
"The one with the jars - Endgame - people don't live in jars."
There are no jars in Endgame, Pat - only bins.
"What's the one with the jars then?"
Play.
"Well there we go, people jabbering on about buckin' nothin' in jars."

You've got to go to the Midlands to get these sorts of literary insights.

In between all this, there were bands with names like The Toblerones and The Brad Pitt Light Orchestra strumming away ironically. Meanwhile a '15 second film festival' – operating out of a two-person booth beside the front door – was a minor triumph in cinematic innovation.

Looking back, the whole was perhaps greater than the sum of its parts. But you're never going to get a bonfire or midnight swims at Hay on Wye and that 95 grand should stretch to purchasing some deluxe hay bales next year. So here's hoping the tautologous Flatlake will go on and on.

Editor's note:
As usual, Max McGuinness expresses his verdict in a way that is both amusing and stylish. However, I also spent the weekend in Clones – and the Flatlake was, quite simply, the best literary festival I have ever been to: remarkable line-up, lovely atmosphere, enormous goodwill, fine food, good value, friendly staff and beautiful surroundings. An old fart like me cannot talk about such events with authority, as I no longer traipse around the impossibly glamorous festival circuit. However, for what it's worth, I thought Flatlake was a blast. – Trevor White

Comments

A response to Mr. McGuinness's strangely stingy appraisal of the Flat Lake Festival.

Although I would have to own up to a lot of frayed edges contributing to a rather haphazard display of events at times, the overall goodwill and genuinely convivial atmosphere made up for the lack of VIP pints, ubiquitous backstage marching powder ... and all the other shite that generally goes with it. But the bottom line is that we somehow managed to mount over fifty diverse performance strands on a budget that was less than Bertie Ahern's after-shave bill. I am sorry that the performers hospitality element was not up to Mr. McGuinness's mark but at the end of the day, I feel that our humble Festival attempted to transcend the idea of pointless consumerist hedonism... it was at least attempting to be original and a thing of value in a world full of utter rubbish. Furthermore, our superbly cold draft lager was only four euros a pint … so, although we are probably not the best Literary Festival in the world, we are wholeheartedly trying to reach the parts that other festivals don't.

Yours

Kevin Allen

Latrine Officer
The Flat Lake Literary & Arts Festival

Posted by: kevin allen | September 02, 2007 at 12:14