John Montague - Memoir

Condition: New

Brand New First Edition Hardback, 240 impeccably clean pages.Over the course of a long and distinguished career, John Montague has established himself as one of a handful of important poets working in these islands. Now, with The Pear Is Ripe, he has confirmed his reputation as a dazzling prose writer and memoirist. In it, he recounts the time he spent on the West Coast of the United States, where he was present as the flower-power movement burgeoned; in France, where he witnessed the évènements of May '68 at first hand; and in Cork, where he continued to pursue his career as a poet and academic.

He recounts his personal and professional elationships with such luminaries as Patrick Kavanagh, Allen Ginsberg and Seán Ó Riada; observes with a wry, amused eye the various literary and artistic milieus in which he moved; and sheds light on his role in the creation of Claddagh Records and in the inception of the artist tax exempton, introduced by Taoiseach Charles Hhaughey, ble discusses how the American tradition both the 'savage redskins of the West Coast and educe palefaces of the East informed his own developmen as a poet, and poignantly reflects on the strain that living apart from his wife Madeleine placed on his marriage.

In a powerful and moving epilogue, he writes of visiting young men with AIDS in a New York hospital, and of a final meeting with an anling Samuel Beckett in Parts Perhaps most importantly, in an age when the work of too many prominent writers is inward-looking and thus of marginal public significano Montague powerfully makes the case for the centralny of the poet's role as both the unacknowledged loslator of the race and its social conscience. In shorte The Pear Is Ripe is a startling testimony from an engaging writer at the peak of his powers.