"I'm Irish and Canadian," said Emma Donoghue.
"I'm Irish and German," said Hugo Hamilton.
"I'm Irish and bald," said Dermot Bolger.
I'm sitting in the Hospitality Suite as I write this (more on this to come), having just attended my first "It's Irish!" event at this year's IFOA. "It's Irish!" involves 16 authors from the Emerald Isle, and the events are curated by prize-winning novelist Colm Toibin.
This particular event, a conversation between Bolger, Hamilton, Donoghue and David Park (mediated by Bert Archer), was very informative. For instance, I learned that David Park accidentally plagiarized James Joyce in one of his novels, that Hugo Hamilton grew up wearing lederhosen and aran sweaters, and that Bolger's main problem when he was young was not procuring condoms (in a strictly Catholic atmosphere), but finding a way to use them. All in all, hilarious.
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David Park might have accidentally plagiarized, but Anne Pigone's "The Ugly", is a line-by-line non-accidental rip-off of "The Dead". The funny think is that you can read the whole story and not realize this to the very end.
She sat on the bed, plucking at a lone strand of hair on her thigh – an escapee from her last wax job. Garett stared at the ceiling. Tears now rounded his cheeks falling to his pillow. My poor darling, we are all circumstance – by birth, by fate. Of course it's not fair. Power's not fair. Wealth is not fair. Beauty? No way José. Only death is fair. Death trumps all and beauty, yes. But whats' the big deal, Garett? We're only snowflakes, butterflies with our little ephemeral moments of glory – our circumstantial, ephemeral moments. And then ...
She laid herself flat-out on the bed so close to her husband that she could feel his warmth but not touching, and closed her eyes. Slumberous flakes of snow, silver and dark, fell over her body, Garett's body, and all the sleeping and sleepless bodies of the Hotel Boulderado. It truly was snowing everywhere. Snowflakes from stars and moons everywhere falling like comets or dust or nothing. Falling on us all. Falling upon the beautiful and the ugly, the real and the counterfeit, the living and the dead.
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