In 1939 Patrick Kavanagh came to Dublin to work full-time as a writer. A daunting task at any time, in 1940s Dublin this was almost impossible.
Kavanagh observed that âpoetry is a luxury trade⦠a man has no business adventuring into it unless he has buckets of moneyâ. Despite many war-time shortages, jealousy and petty snobbery were in plentiful supply. The big raw-boned Monaghan man striding Dublinâs streets drew sneers from city slickers. (On observing a man driving a manure cart, one wag said acidly: âI see Paddy Kavanagh is moving houseâ).
Nonetheless, by the early 1950s Kavanagh was a well-known literary figure, having produced critically-acclaimed â if controversial â work such as The Green Fool and Tarry Flynn, and a long poem, The Great Hunger, which depicted the loneliness, depression and sexual frustration of the small farmer.
I had my own encounter with the ghost in 1984. It was backstage at a massive open-air concert in Ireland, at a time when Dylan had emerged from his fierce Born Again Christian phase with the shiny and beguiling Infidels and was touring with a starry rock band featuring guitar supremos Mick Taylor and Carlos Santana with The Faces’ Ian Maclagan on keyboards. I had blagged my way backstage alongside my friend Bono.
The U2 star was escorted to a Winnebago, where Dylan was inside playing chess with Van Morrison, all of which completely boggled my young brain. It was Bono’s first meeting with the great man, and he later told me they had talked about Irish music, and Dylan recited Brendan Behan’s The Auld Triangle. Meanwhile, I had struck up a conversation with two American boys.
21 min read What did The Irish Times first say about some works of literature that turned into classics? We trawled the archive to find out
The Irish Times was founded in March 1859 and, more than 160 years later, is recognised for the quality and the quantity of the pages it devotes to Irish and international literature. Its deep engagement is reflected in the authors who have written columns for it over the years, among them Brian Friel, Kate OâBrien, John Montague, Maeve Binchy, Derek Mahon, Nuala OâFaolain, Stewart Parker and, most famously, Flann OâBrien.
Things got off to a rather sluggish start, however, as Terence Brown observed in his history of the newspaper: âUntil the 1880s and 1890s there was little sense that Ireland possessed a literature of its own. This began to change, however, as what became known as the Irish Literary Revival began to make its impact on cultural life.â
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Today Bob Dylan turns 70 years old, and we air a special program on his life and music. Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota. Raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, he moved to Greenwich Village in January of 1961. Within a couple of years, Dylan would be viewed by many as the voice of a generation as he wrote some of the decade’s most famous songs, including âBlowin’ in the Wind,â âThe Times They Are a-Changing,â âLike a Rolling Stone,â âMasters of War,â âDesolation Rowâ and âMr. Tambourine Man.â After emerging from the New York City folk scene, Dylan explored many other genres, from rock to country to the blues. He continues to tour to this day. In 2008, the Pulitzer Prize jury awarded him a special citation for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poeti
Bob Fass, Pioneer of Underground Radio, Dies at 87
His provocative “Radio Unnameable,” long a staple of the New York station WBAI, offered a home on the FM dial to everyone from Abbie Hoffman to Tiny Tim.
Bob Fass on the air at the New York FM station WBAI in 1972. “I’d put anyone on,” he once said, “because the idea was if you didn’t like what I was doing, three minutes later I’d be doing something else.”Credit.Donal F. Holway/The New York Times
April 25, 2021Updated 10:48 a.m. ET
Bob Fass, who for more than 50 years hosted an anarchic and influential radio show on New York’s countercultural FM station WBAI that mixed political conversation, avant-garde music, serendipitous encounters and outright agitation, died on Saturday in Monroe, N.C., where he lived in recent years. He was 87.