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To my astonishment, instead of accepting my offer with loud and sustained applause, the wretched intellectuals broke up into frightened groups and started whispering together in great agitation. From where I sat in my mood of Homeric detachment I could distinctly hear snatches of talk like 'never sober'; 'literary corner-boy', 'pay nobody', 'Stubbs every week', 'running round with a TD's wife', 'skip with the Association's assets', 'great man for going to Paris', 'sell his mother for sixpence', 'belly full of brandy and unfortunate children without a rag', 'summoned for putting in plate glass window in Santry', 'pity unfortunate wife', 'half the stuff cogged from other people’, 'sneer at us behind our backs', 'use Association's name', 'what would people think', 'only inviting attention of Guards', 'who asked him here', 'believe he was born in Manchester', 'probably fly-boy', 'cool calculated cheek': and so on, I regret to say. Subsequently a man with glasses got up and mumbled something about best thanks of all concerned, proposal somewhat premature, society not yet wholly formed, bring proposal forward at later date, certain that choice would be a popular one, with permission of company pass on to next business, disgraceful sweat rates paid by broadcasting station . . . I thought this was fair enough, but think of my feelings a few days afterwards on hearing that Mr Sean O Faoláin had been elevated to the same Presidency. One shrinks from gratuitous comparisons, but man for man, novels for novels, plays for plays, services to imperishable Irish nation for services to i. I.n., popularity as drawingroom raconteur for p. as d.r., which was the better choice ? I leave the answer not only to my readers but also to a betrayed posterity who may yet decide that Dermot MacMurrough was not the worst.


QUESTIONABLE AIMS

In any event, I was completely opposed to some of this organisation's aims. For instance, it is proposed to secure 'improved rates for all literary work'. This simply means an even heavier deluge of unpardonable 'poetry', more articles entitled 'Big John: A Sketch', and a premium on mediocrity generally. It is also sought to have 'concerted agreement on copyrights, contracts, etc.' What sort of an agreement is a 'concerted agreement', or is there such a thing as a unconcerted, disconcerted, or misconcerted agreement ? 'Special rates for radio scripts.' Why ? They all bore even my thick wife. Reduce the rates and you’ll get less of them making a clack in your ear. 'Free legal advice.' This will disemploy several worthy solicitors, a fiery celtic breed that I admire. 'Recovery of fees.' Yes, but minus ten per cent. Get your money in your hand before you put pen to paper, that's what I say.

Also, having regard to the categories mentioned, membership seems to be open to every man, woman and child in Ireland. Even my wife could claim to be a 'commentator' (whatever they mean by that word) and everybody knows that all these organisations are really formed in order to give people a pretext for getting away from their families. So what's the use?


FURTHERMORE

This is the land of Ireland and now that WAAMA is in existence and in active operation, it is time that a 'split' was organised and a rival body formed. Would any person who thinks that he or she has not had a fair deal from WAAMA please communicate with me at this office? We will form our own organisation, with better aims and heavier annual dinners. Pretty girls will be admitted free and nobody will be bored with guff about Sigrid Undset or James Joyce Cabell. How about it, lads? I am determined to be president of something before I die—of Ireland itself, if need be.

*         *          *

MY SUGGESTION the other day that the lines to be spoken in a new play at the Abbey should be displayed on banners suspended from the balcony and read off by the players as they go along, has won me golden opinions from the acting clique in WAAMA. They say that they are frequently asked to perform in very bad plays, and that no torment is so terrible as that of being compelled to commit muck to memory. An authoritative spokesman in official circles also stated last night that there appeared to be 'no objection' to my plan. That, of course, pleases me. Had his reaction been otherwise, I should have been compelled to 'view' his pronouncement 'with concern'.

Yes, the plan is a good one. There would be no necessity to tell the actors beforehand what play they are appearing in. They just come out on the stage, peer into the auditorium, and then come out with some dreadful remark about 'Old John', or 'Brigid, his wife'.

My plan has another great advantage in these nights of rushing for last 'buses. Supposing it is a case of missing the end of the play or missing your 'bus. Being possessed of reason, you are damned if you'll miss your 'bus. But neither is it necessary to go home wondering what happened. You simply turn round and peer up at the balcony. Admittedly, it would look queer near the end of the play to have half the audience sitting with their backs to the stage and spelling out in loud whispers what the actors are going to say when they get a chance. Anything, however, is better than walking home in the rain. In an extreme case the entire audience might agree to take the rest of the play 'as read', and clear out en masse in the middle of die last act, thus releasing the tired actors and giving them a chance of getting a lift home also. For the actors are human, too. Each had a mother.


BUCHHANDLUNG

A VISIT that I paid to the house of a newly-married friend the other day set me thinking. My friend is a man of great wealth and vulgarity. When he had set about buying bedsteads, tables, chairs and what-not, it occurred to him to buy also a library. Whether he can read or not, I do not know, but some savage faculty for observation told him that most respectable and estimable people usually had a lot of books in their houses. So he bought several book-cases and paid some rascally middleman to stuff them with all manner of new books, some of them very costly volumes on the subject of French landscape painting.

I noticed on my visit that not one of them had ever been opened or touched, and remarked the fact.

'When I get settled down properly,' said the fool, 'I’ll have to catch up on my reading.'

This is what set me thinking. Why should a wealthy person like this be put to the trouble of pretending to read at all ? Why not a professional book-handler to go in and suitably maul his library for so-much per shelf? Such a person, if properly qualified, could make a fortune.


DOG EARS FOUR-A-PENNY

Let me explain exactly what I mean. The wares in a bookshop look completely unread. On the other hand, a school-boy's Latin dictionary looks read to the point of tatters. You know that the dictionary has been opened and scanned perhaps a million times, and if you did not know that there was such a thing as a box on the ear, you would conclude that the boy is crazy about Latin and cannot bear to be away from his dictionary. Similarly with our non-brow who wants his friends to infer from a glancing around his house that he is a high-brow. He buys an enormous book on the Russian ballet, written possibly in the language of that distant but beautiful land. Our problem is to alter the book in a reasonably short time so that anybody looking at it will conclude that its owner has practically lived, supped and slept with it for many months. You can, if you like, talk about designing a machine driven by a small but efficient petrol motor that would 'read' any book in five minutes, the equivalent of five years or ten years' 'reading' being obtained by merely turning a knob. This, however, is the cheap soulless approach of the times we live in. No machine can do the same work as the soft human fingers. The trained and experienced book-handler is the only real solution of this contemporary social problem. What does he do? How does be work? What would he charge? How many types of handling would there be?

These questions and many more I will answer the day after tomorrow.