James Schuyler, who died in April at the age of 67, will be remembered as a member of the original New York School - a label which, according to John Ashbery 'never denoted very much except friendship among the writers involved'. Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, Barbara Guest, as well as W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, were among his associates. Schuyler's sociable rather than social verse is typified by his elegy Wystan Auden, with its rambling, anecdotal address: 'I remember Chester so often saying,/"Oh Wystan!" while Wystan looked/pleased at having stirred him up.' This conversational style gave the lie to a diffidence which prevented him from giving public poetry readings until just after his 65th birthday. The new confidence was reflected in the explicitly life-affirming tone of his later work and endorsed by the award of a Pulitzer prize for the autobiographical The Morning of the Poem in 1980. An arm-chair Anglophile, although he never visited England, he maintained subscriptions to Industrial Archaeology and Country life. His Selected Poems were published for the first time in this country by Carcanet last year.

The American poet John Finlay died in February after a long illness which began when he contracted AIDS. He was just 50. An Alabaman, who studied for his PhD at Louisiana State University, Finlay spent most of his life in the deep South. It was a withdrawn and simple life, devoted mainly to literature, religion and philosophy. He wrote relatively little and published less.

His extreme self-discipline is plainly the source of the grandeur and rhetorical power that characterize his rigorously classical poetry. There are three slim collections: The Wide Porch and Other Poems (R.L. Barth, 1984), Between the Gulfs (R.L. Barth, 1986), and The Salt of Exposure (Cummington Press, 1988). At attempt is now being made to find a publisher for his collected poems.

Finlay was also an impressive critic and thinker - learned, devout and relentlessly logical. His essays on literature and ideas have been published over the years in The Southern Review and The Hudson Review.
(C.W.)

The death of Graham Greene at the beginning of April was a major literary event. Although he died in bed from a blood disorder, he had spent many of his 86 years haunted by the conviction that he would soon be killed. Greene did his best to pre-empt destiny: during what was by his account a deeply unhappy school career he swallowed hyposulphate, hay-fever drops, eye-drops, deadly nightshade and a whole tin of hair pomade. By his 20th birthday he was playing Russian roulette. When conversion to the Roman Catholic church ruled out the possibility of further suicide attempts, Greene actively sought out danger. Initially this impulse lead him to the criminal underworld, first of London and then Brighton. Brighton Rock, through the character of Pinkie, dramatizes his self-destructive preoccupations. The theme of damnation and redemption receives a more explicitly Catholic treatment in The Power and the Glory, an investigation of the brutal persecution of the church in Mexico, sometimes regarded as his masterpiece.

Greene spent much of the war in Sierra Leone, working under Kim Philby at the Foreign Office as an MI6 agent. Parting from his wife soon afterwards, he embarked on a string of affairs - two of which provided inspiration for the brilliant post-war novels The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair. Greene said that his inability to keep the vow of chastity dissuaded him from the priest's vocation. He refused a private audience with the stigmatic Padre Pio because he feared that he would change his life. Sainthood, however, was accessible: 'If you are a saint it's not so difficult to be a saint', says Sarah in The End of the Affair. Equally, Greene believed in the necessity of doubt and caused controversy by criticizing the present Pope in The Tablet for his lack of scepticism. In 1926 Greene had selected as his baptismal name Thomas.

Max Frisch owed his critical vehemence, together with the stability that enabled him to blur fact and fiction with unusual ease, to his disgust with the 'oppressive adequacy' of his native Switzerland. Once asked by a journalist, 'What makes you go to New York?' he replied 'Zurich'. It was, however, in Zurich that Frisch died in April at the age of 79. Much of his early creative energy was employed in architecture, an artistic apprenticeship which gave him the subtle understanding of symmetry and structure which informs his later literary work. This is not to say that Frisch ever countenanced formal orthodoxy. The publication of his Dairies in 1950 helped to establish a freewheeling new genre with the post-war German-speaking readership. Indeed, much of Frisch's work represents the efforts of a profoundly alienated man to establish an identity; novels like Homo Faber (1957) and Man in the Holocene (1979) are, emphatically, processes of self-invention. Formatic license in no way precludes personal honesty. The esoteric symbols produced by the claustrophobic relationship described in the novel Montauk (1975), an account of the friendship between Frisch and fellow writer Ingeborg Bachmann, are a case in point. The subtitle of The Fire Raisers, probably Frisch's most famous play, might serve as an epitaph: 'Amorality with a moral'.

The great French publisher Claude Gallimard has died in Paris at the age of 77. During his managing directorship Editions Gallimard developed what is now reckoned to be, in terms of titles published, the largest fiction list in the world. Growing from a chaotic writers' co-operative which had the distinction of André Gide as President of its selection committee and of rejecting Proust's early work, the firm was rationalized by Gallimard's father, Gaston, then nurtured through the 1950s by his elder brother Michel. If Claude Gallimard lacked their literary flair, he made up for it with his business acumen. Taking control of the company in 1960, he diversified what was still a narrowly literary concern, introduced British and American style cover designs - 'Folio' classics closely resembled their Penguin counterparts - and went looking for best-sellers. Gallimard's habit of taking on eminent authors to edit series and his unpredictable, monarchical temperament, provoked comparisons with Louis XIV at Versailles. As with any aristocratic court, Editions Gallimard has become replete with factionalism. It is assumed that Gallimard's manoeuvres to ensure the succession of his son Antoine will, in fact, result in the end of family ownership.

Alain-Fournier's famous school at Epineuil-le-Fleuriel, made famous by Le Grand Meaulnes, closed for good at Easter, the 35 pupils being transferred to a local girls' school. The Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, is considering plans to save it - possibly as a museum. It is exactly a hundred years ago this autumn that Fournier entered the school at the age of five. He stayed for seven years and since then 10,000 tourists a year have visited the place. Among the final batch of pupils was Michaël Coffin, great-grandson of the novel's 'le Petit Coffin'.
(D.A.)

The Mayor of Charleville (birthplace of Rimbaud) informs us that, in November this year, a monument to commemorate the anniversary of the poet's death will be unveiled on the Ile du Vieux-Moulin. This 7th-tall bronze by Michel Gillet will feature a stylized portrait head in the shape of a heart. Those who wish to subscribe 750frs plus 30frs postage (closing date June) will receive a 10" tin reproduction. From a different (and less reliable?) source we learn that the towns of Charleville and Harar (Ethiopia) may be twinned for the occasion.

The 4th John Hewitt International Summer School has been scheduled to take place in County Antrim between 29 July-4 August. A contemporary of Hugh MacDiarmid and E.P. Thompson, Hewitt was one who 'wholeheartedly partook of the left-wing idealism of post-war Britain'. The conference, basing itself on Hewitt's poetry, branches out into many different areas. Speakers include Neal Ascherson, Tony Harrison, Liz Lochhead and Tom Paulin. [Telephone: 0504 265621 (ext. 5305), or after 6pm 0266 656773.]

The International Writers' Conference, resplendent in its abstract and colourful logo, has won one of the first European Platform Awards. Valued at ECU 25,000, the EC award enables the Conference to complete its forthcoming Book Exhibition in particular. The IWC, established by the Arts Council in 1988 is especially high profile in 1991 because Dublin is the European City of Culture. Their conference this year, which took place in June, was in the National Conference Hall, Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2.

The British Comparative Literature Association announced details of their 1992 Translation Competition. There are six categories: EC languages, Non-EC languages, Swedish, 'Hebrew, Yiddish and other languages on a Jewish theme', Chinese and Persian. Among the judges are Edwin Morgan, Daniel Weissbort and Michael Schmidt. The deadline is 31 October 1991. For rules and entry forms write to: BCLA Competition Organizer, Dr Julie Scott Meisami, The Oriental Institute, Pusey Lane, Oxford, OX1 2LE.

Modern Hebrew Literature's New Series has reached its 5th issue and, in an exemplary range of contents and contributors, concentrates on those novelists, poets, dramatists and critics who have advanced a 'modernist creativity in Israel'. Highlights include excerpts from the late work of Nobel Prize winner S.Y. Agnon, and Aharon Appelfeld. [Mailing Address: PO Box 10051, 52001 Ramat Gan, Israel]

Poems on the Underground celebrates five years of 'poetry in public spaces' with another diverse selection, including three poems written in London by Michael Drayton, A.E. Housman and Gavin Ewart. Five thousand advertising spaces have been provided by London Underground which now pays for all production costs as well. Five thousand additional posters are sent to schools, libraries and private subscribers.

The second issue of the attractive The Printer's Devil has arrived. Published by South East Arts as a vehicle for new writers from the region, the volume, edited by Sean O'Brien and Stephen Plaice, includes work by those 'recently famous' - Matthew Sweeney, John Burneside and Mark Illis. There is also a focus on the work of novelist and social commentator Simon Raven, helpfully characterized by the editors as 'a romantic reactionary with a classical education'. Copies of the magazine are available from 10, Mount Ephraim, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN4 8AS, price £4.95.