My thoughts today are about moving on. I think this book is decent work, and I haven’t finished doing publicity for it. There may be a book reading in the future, if bookstores still exist or I can learn to use Zoom or something like it. But I need something new. There is so much good Irish writing that it would be possible to take the same thesis in this book and apply it to other material.
My inclination now is to consider other sources, maybe Scandinavian realism/naturalism. It’s very different than Irish absurdism. My hunch is that realism and naturalism have more direct influence on public policy than modernist and absurdist works. I am no longer associated with a university, so it will be harder to do the research. If possible, I would like to make a connection, or at least a correlation, between realist drama and public policy.
English majors can overestimate the impact of literature on people’s everyday lives. That’s something to watch out for.