Or, touting your wares when nobody cares
The 1990s were a boom time for fiction. In those days — and this is not an exaggeration — a teenage girl could secure a half million pound advance for a one-page outline of her first novel. Those of us who had been in the business since of old viewed the transformed present with bemusement and bitter envy.
One day in 1990, I was flown first class from Dublin to Phoenix, Arizona, to read at the Irish Cultural Centre there. Five people turned up to listen to me. None of them had read my books, and it was clear that none of them had the slightest intention of doing so. They were the sons and daughter of Irish immigrants, and were there simply to see a real, live son the Oul Sod.
I was to read from my novel 'The Sea', so naturally there was a big display of Iris Murdoch’s 'The Sea, The Sea'
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