http://finkeegan.com Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:32:44 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Another interesting revelation from the UNICEF report on Child Well-Being in Rich Countries I wrote about previously is that books are not valued in many wealthy and successful countries. Below is a chart from that survey showing the Percentage of Children age 15 reporting less than 10 books in the ... http://finkeegan.com/2008/no-second-carnegie/ A recent report by UNICEF on child well-being in rich countries seems to vindicate our decision to raise the kids in Ireland. Across "six dimensions" averaging measures such as "Health and Safety" and "Subjective Well-Being", the United Nations agency arrives at the conclusion that kids are best off being brought ... http://finkeegan.com/2008/wonderlands/ An old friend of mine from New York, Aravind Adiga, has written a novel called The White Tiger which is stirring up some serious interest around the world (and has just been long-listed for the Booker Prize). That's one thing...the other thing is that the book is a cracking good ... http://finkeegan.com/2008/the-white-tiger/ My play Grace of the Median, a comedy of Hiberno-American errors, got a public reading, with actors, in the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, on July 19th: I am an Irish rock. Whoever treads on me--Norman or Gael, peasant or prince, child or crone--is all one to me. Civilization itself is but ... http://finkeegan.com/2008/grace-of-the-median/ My short story "Ursula's Ghost" is in Crannóg Magazine's summer issue (affording me the great pleasure of reading it at the launch event in Galway). The piece is a spooky little number about a returned emigrant with blood on her hands... Was she thinking of the man she had just killed? ... http://finkeegan.com/2008/ursulas-ghost/ I just got some nice reviews of my short play Sing, Hibernia, courtesy of the excellent Painted Filly, the theatre company which produced the piece at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, a little while back. All credit, while I'm on the subject, to Director Duncan Molloy and lead actors Sarah-Jayne Quigley ... http://finkeegan.com/2008/reviews/ Recent riots in the Dublin suburb of Finglas and a teenage double suicide in my own county underline the responsibility we all have to help our young people grow up to become responsible, productive, and happy citizens. (Meanwhile, in my old home of Las Vegas, the radio station where I ... http://finkeegan.com/2008/teen-alienation/ My political satire Utopia Closes is currently was recently a semi-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The winner will be decided by reader response. You can download a sample chapter at www.amazon.com/dp/B00121WDG0 The best reader review will be given a $2000 token by Amazon so, beside ... http://finkeegan.com/2008/click-to-vote/ Came across something today you don't often see: an obituary written by a dead man--or, more accurately, an obituary whose author (Douglas Johnson: 1925-2005) predeceased his subject (Julien Gracq: 1910-2007) by two years. Gracq was a contrarian French author who shunned the fame and honours garnered by his work. His ... http://finkeegan.com/2007/dead-man-writing/ Here’s what Google makes of “Fin likes to”: Fin likes to read coffee-table picture books about the railroad in the 19th century... Fin likes to sit in the space between the wall and the bed... Fin likes to stare longer ... http://finkeegan.com/2007/me-likey/ The "Classical Irish Island", according to archaeologist Paul Gosling, is "replete with... a megalithic tomb a hilltop cairn a medieval parish church the site of a watermill a smattering of ringforts or coastal promontory forts, and a number of miscellaneous hut and house sites" He is hardly exaggerating: the average Irish square mile, like the ... http://finkeegan.com/2007/islands/ Escapism is a vital aspect of all art, indeed of all entertainment from the Dukes of Hazzard to the Second Viennese School. But Art only endures insofar as the work in question (sometimes accidentally, as in Casablanca) stirs up fresh insights into who we are and what, as human ... http://finkeegan.com/2007/escape-into-life/ KNPR called me up for my first week impressions of Ireland, where I recently returned after 14 years away. You can hear or download the interview here. http://finkeegan.com/2007/impressions-of-ireland/ We are moving back to Ireland, after 14 years away. Perhaps I might be permitted some Torschlusspanik? In Edouard Roditi's Dialogues, painter Oskar Kokoschka talks about this curious German word, defined by him as the "panic that breaks out before the closing of a door" Given its usefully precise meaning, the ... http://finkeegan.com/2007/torschlusspanik/ One of the best dramas ever produced by television has just ended in a hail of ambiguities. The Sopranos' dialogue, acting, conceptual wit, and direction have all been praised to the skies elsewhere. Like HBO stablemate Big Love, it is at once both believable and unbelievable that such lives could be ... http://finkeegan.com/2007/sopranos/ It's hard to think of another nation as principled as the United States: the system of government and values, as set out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, is a richly conceived philosophy, many of whose propositions and imperatives are not only known by rote but also profoundly ... http://finkeegan.com/2007/critique-of-poor-reasons/ Britain is going through such tumult at the moment--between the Iran Hostages episode and its aftermath, the prospect of Scottish nationalists effectively destroying the Union, and, almost as a footnote, ex-terrorists joining sectarian bigots to take control of a 'home nation'--that it is beginning to seem as though a new ... http://finkeegan.com/2007/empire-falls/ Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sitting side by side is such an unprecedented image that it sets the mind flicking back through the mental archives for aparallel: Vaclav Havel as President of the State that had but months before assaulted and imprisoned him seems closest. The saddest aspect of this generally ... http://finkeegan.com/2007/the-new-dispensation/ Since 2002, the Six Counties has been mired in the excruciating stasis of Direct Rule from London--which well suits the obstructionist rump of Paisleyite Unionism. Dennis Bradley raises the prospect of a Plan B: Joint authority has much to recommend it. It incarnates the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement ... http://finkeegan.com/2006/plan-na-b/ Listening to Margaret Atwood recently, defining Canada's identity solely in terms of its heavyweight neighbour, made me fear for the future of smaller, peripheral nations such as Canada and my own native country, Ireland. With globalisation of culture and commerce rising around us as inexorably as the oceans, our Nation States ... http://finkeegan.com/2006/being-irish/