The Dubliner Magazine

There Goes Norman

Down Blunders

Aussie fridge-freezer peddlers Harvey Norman are beginning to regret their invasion of the Irish market, almost as much as those of us who have to listen to their incessant radio ads.

"It's a depressing time for a lot of people, certainly for the executive directors here," says CEO Katie Page, "we are working so hard, we wish that Ireland wouldn't return to a potato famine."

Next week Katie will be comparing their regrettable African sales to the Rwandan genocide.

Go Harvey go. Please.

Art in Action

Edited by Declan Meade and Peter FitzGerald 
Marks ★★★★

This is the last such publication for a while – as editor Declan Meade informed us mournfully at the launch. The Arts Council funding – without which this handsome but entirely non-commercial collaboration between literary magazine the Stinging Fly and art magazine Circa could not have happened  – was cut to ribbons in Budget 2009. Unlike OAPs, artists don’t have the ear or the sympathy of the Irish people.

Already an artefact, this slim publication of stories/poems/photos/prints/collages thus becomes, by virtue of its date of delivery, a curio, last testament of the boom, and a reminder that – for all the carping – the boom wasn’t just bling, and lining the pockets of property developers. Some of the money trickled down. Some of the money went to earnest aestheticism.

Six writers were hooked up with six artists and given the brief to fill four pages in whatever way they liked. Two of the collaborations are artist-driven, with the writers responding to the works of art; one is writer-driven, with the non-intrusive artist trying to present the text in the best possible way; in two the writer and artist decided the theme together. And I’m not sure how the last came about, but, bizarrely and amusingly, it features a sketch of Tom Cruise, legs akimbo, straddling a space, with what looks like toilet roll coming out of his mouth.

I Trimble Before You, O Lord

"Talking about Jesus excites me more than rugby"

No wonder the All Blacks gobbled us up.

Fighting Celebrity

Cosmo Landesman
Star Struck – fame, failure, my family and me ★★★


When the osbournes hit MTV, Cosmo Landesman’s octogenarian father, Jay, phoned him in excitement – what about The Landesmans? The Pitch: “The Osbournes of the cult circuit. Each member of the family has made their mark on the literary and musical establishment – Jay ran the best bar in the States, Fran wrote the best songs and lyrics, Myles is a record producer and Cosmo married Julie Burchill.” The sad thing for fame-hungry Jay is that if he’d been born into the right era, he’d probably have got his TV show.

When Jay and Fran Landesman moved over from the States to London in the early-1960s – he a playwright, publisher and nightclub owner, she a songwriter who had written for Ella Fitzgerald and Chaka Khan, both swingers, bohemians, and free thinkers, with two cute kids in tow – they proved fascinating enough to be the subject of numerous Sunday paper articles.

Over the years, their partner-swapping, dope-smoking lifestyle kept getting them into the press. They were notable for their personalities, rather than their work, but that’s just what could get them on TV today. Unfortunately they’re now too old – although obviously energetic as ever. (I see Jay has a MySpace page).
Cosmo – the Sunday Times film critic, and (as noted approvingly by his dad) Julie Burchill’s ex-husband – grew up, predictably enough, to resemble Saffy in Ab Fab: disapproving, conservative, hard-working, rejecting all the free-living and dope smoking but not, as he comes to admit ruefully, immune from the fame virus. This book shows of course that he’s not immune because if he genuinely wanted to keep out of the limelight, why write it?

Cosmo joins the spate of writers – notably Oliver James in Affluenza – identifying fame as our modern addiction, potentially as dangerous as alcoholism or drugs, but he’s best and funniest when recounting the vagaries of his family, less interesting when he moves from the particular to the general. Are we more celebrity-obsessed than the 19th-century crowds trying to get a glimpse of Lillie Langtry? Don’t we just have more outlets?

That of course is Cosmo’s point – you used to have to elbow your way through crowds to see your idol, now you just buy Heat magazine to see their feet of clay. Opportunity breeds addiction, and opportunity is knocking all around us.

Murder in Suburbia

Kevin Power
Bad Day in Blackrock  ★★★★
The rugby boys make history

Five years ago, the trials of a group of young men from elite Dublin schools, accused of killing an acquaintance outside a nightclub in Donnybrook, disturbed the composure of the moneyed classes and attracted massive media attention.

To add to the commentary, or (some will say) to exploit it, comes this debut novel by Kevin Power – an extraordinary book for several reasons. It is the first attempt to make a serious portrait in writing of the only generation of Irish children to grow up without any experience of poverty. I stress serious: unlike the Ross O’Carroll- Kelly books, there is no way to take this as an affectionate parody.

The story is presented by a narrator who gradually reveals that he is a member of the same clique that produced the victim and his aggressors, and who builds up retrospective portraits of three central characters: the dead boy, his ex, and the alpha-male jock who led the assault. There is no linear sequence for the reader to follow.

Instead we have short, observational chapters that amount to a static panorama of a world of privilege and self-indulgence. The provocative central argument is gripping enough to keep the reader hooked: the entire social milieu of the participants is shown to be related “logically” (a favourite word of the narrator’s) to the crime, and culpability is attached to everyone.

Now THAT’S what I call defamation!

Paul Howard talks money, birds and Oedipal issues with Ross O’Carroll-Kelly. It’s about to get emotional.

Paul Howard First of all, the big question I’m sure everyone wants answered – how is the world financial crisis affecting you?
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly The what?
PH The near collapse of western capitalism that’s been gripping the world for the past few months. Does it worry you?
RO’CK Whoa – what kind of interview is this? I thought it was going to be, you know, the life and crimes of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly. The girls I’ve loved. The hearts I’ve broken. My most memorable tries...
PH I just thought...
RO’CK Amy Huberman or Caroline Morahan – if you had to choose. That’s the kind of shit the public wants to hear from me.
PH I was just trying to get your own personal take on the economic downturn. You’re around Dublin a lot – have you noticed the signs?
RO’CK I don’t know. Maybe small ones. Like, I was in BTs with Sorcha the other day and she was buying, like, a ravioli crimpers? Anyway, there was one there for 80 yoyos and one for, like, 110. In the end, she actually went for the cheaper one. I was like, “What are you doing?” and she was there, “We’re all going to have to tighten our belts, Ross, until this economic storm passes.”
PH I was thinking more in terms of how it’s affecting ordinary people...
RO’CK  I don’t know any ordinary people. Dude, my old man did a lot of shady things back in the 1980s to make sure that me and ordinary people led mutually exclusive lives.

A Crying Shane

Someone else lacks the liathróidí

Shock! Horror! Shane has jumped Apprenticeship, choosing to walk the plank himself, rather than get pushed off it by Captain Cullen (Apologies for all the nautical puns; those Somali pirates really get inside your head).

It's a damn shame, him and Orla had much more squabbling to do. Shane claims he was leaving to see his fiancée and return to normal life, but we suspect something else altogether. Was it fear of rejection? Or simply not being able to look at Jackie's piercing lopsided gaze anymore?

It's all been downhill since Joanna 'Wicked Witch of the West' Murphy left anyway. Now there's a boat race that could sink a few ships.

Greatest Dubliners Ever!

no.1 Ronnie Drew

The cantankerous king of Irish folk was born in Dun Laoghaire. Drew left for Spain to teach English and learn flamenco guitar in the 1950s. Returning, he founded the Ronnie Drew Group, later the Dubliners. Among their big hits were ‘Seven Drunken Nights’ and ‘The Irish Rover;’ Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Jimi Hendrix and many others were fans.

With his gravelly voice and bushy beard, Drew was the frontman of the band for more than three decades. In February 2008, more than 20 artists, including Sinead O’Connor, U2, Bob Geldof, Damien Dempsey and the Chieftains paid tribute to him – and collected funds for the Irish Cancer Society – with the single ‘The Ballad of Ronnie Drew,’ which reached number one in the Irish charts.

Upon Drew’s death in August, Bono said, “Ronnie has left his earthly tour for one of the heavens. They need him up there...it’s a little too quiet and pious.”

Canon Exhibition This Wednesday

Greatest Dubliners Ever!

no.2 Oscar Wilde
Proposed by singer Chris de Burgh

“I have chosen a man not only associated with Dublin but also world famous. There is scarcely a major city in the world that does not have a place named after him. I think he had immense talent. His voice still resonates, some 100 years after his death.

Wilde was an outstanding student at Trinity College,  winning the Berkeley Gold Medal, the highest honour awarded to classics students. He received a scholarship to Magdalen College in Oxford. There he won poetry and English prizes and graduated with a double-first.

Oscar was also a very talented boxer. It’s ironic that the man who would eventually bring him to his knees, the Marquess of Queensberry, wrote the rulebook for boxing.

His plays are remarkably witty and his children’s stories are brilliant. Look, for instance, at The Selfish
Giant. For me as a songwriter, I write in visual terms. The first time I read that, it just broke me up.
Wilde became the toast of London society, embarked on American lecture tours... But soon that would all change when he met Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas.

By now Oscar’s homosexuality was obvious and blatant. Lord Douglas goaded his father into reacting and the Marquess made libellous accusations. The case was soon withdrawn, but Wilde was brought back to court because, at that time under British law, homosexual acts in private were illegal. He was imprisoned in Reading Gaol a broken man. His ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ is a pointed epitaph:

‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!’

Shortly after his release, Oscar Wilde, exiled to Paris, died. He was only 46 years old. He had shone so brightly for a short time – with English society hanging on his every word – but in the end, his spirit was broken.”