It’s 5/5 in 2020. Some find meaning in numbers. I remember a modernist painting of the number 5, possibly referring to the five senses, the reality of being alive. And I can’t be the first to think of perfect vision when I hear 2020. My own own vision is far from it. I needed to wear glasses to get my driver’s license earlier today and wear other ones to see small print.

The driver’s license trip earlier today made me appreciate the normal. Most people dread going to the DMV and administrative delays and costs. But with all the lockdown, it was a relief to interact with people if only through masks and administrative small talk. And, hey, my driver’s license photo doesn’t look as bad as my passport one. Simple blessings.

Working through a manuscript update for my book. There weren’t mistakes in the first version that would warrant refunding buyers. Anyone interested enough to buy it should be able to recognize a few typos. But we are trying to fine-tune it. I think Hemingway said something like writing is an endless learning experience in which we are all apprentices.

An update: the full quote is: “we are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” It’s from a work called “The Wild Years,” which admittedly I haven’t read.

Going to break my no-blogs-on-the-weekend rule. A few hackers/spammers have bothered me. I know that’s a risk of advertising, but it seems like vandalizing a company just because you don’t like their ads. I don’t like most ads or paying bills either, but it doesn’t give me the right to be a jerk. Ads are the reason FB exists.

I’ll accept angry or critical comments on my professional FB site, but some I just delete. I tried to block a guy today who actually boasts about being a hacker. One of my composition students who seemed bright argued without qualification in favor of hacking, and this guy certainly seems to think he’s doing the Lord’s work. To me, hacking is possibly crime and at least really rude.

My angry response to him was if you don’t like ads or paying bills, get off FB and move to a socialist country. Maybe I should have said a communist country. Or maybe just stop engaging with jerks. Pax vobiscum.

I am new to running my own website, so it may be a bit sketchy at first. This is the first of occasional blog posts related to my new book and ongoing work.

My thoughts today are on the importance of structure and momentum. The cultural heritage of Ireland provided a solid structure for my argument; sometimes it felt like merely connecting the dots. I relied on a lot of secondary sources to back up the thesis of the book. There is a metaphor for argumentation from the 20th-century philosopher Isaiah Berlin and the ancient Greek philosopher Archilochus that “πόλλ’ οἶδ’ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ’ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα/a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog one important thing.” I take this to mean that a hedgehog has one idea or critical lens to select and analyze evidence, while a fox is more nimble and open to contrary or chaotic data. I confess to being a hedgehog in this book.

If you want a more fox-like approach to the same or similar material, try Declan Kiberd’s writing. I relied heavily on his “Irish Classics” for my writing and am currently reading his more recent “After Ireland…”  The latter takes Samuel Beckett as its point of departure to consider later writers in a more globalized world.

Phatic language is on my mind today. With the virus limiting many to the most basic social interactions with store clerks and others, this seems a more important form of communication. Wikipedia defines it this way: “In linguistics, a phatic expression is communication which serves a social function, such as social pleasantries that don’t seek or offer information of intrinsic value but can signal willingness to observe conventional local expectations for politeness.” The words “okay” and “nice” come to mind.

As quoted in my book, Oscar Wilde has a character in The Picture of Dorian Gray say, “What I want is information; not useful information; useless information.” Wilde was contrasting an aesthetic attitude with the utilitarian conventions of his day, prioritizing the pleasant and beautiful before the useful and pragmatic.

While it is not cited in my book, Samuel Beckett’s short drama Play also seems to employ phatic language in as much as it is difficult for audiences to understand the three characters’ words. Their speech is rapid and disjointed. One of my professors said of this play that it doesn’t really matter what they are saying. Not sure I entirely agree, but his remark seems in keeping with the idea of phatic communication. You can watch a good film adaptation of Play by the director Anthony Minghella on YouTube. Sadly both Minghella and the lead actor, Alan Rickman, have passed away.

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.

People have been turning to literature to understand the current coronavirus and public reaction to it. Camus’ The Plague and Defoe’s  A Journal of the Plague Year have been mentioned. Of course in Irish history the Great Famine comes to mind, and there is an interesting clip from Bryan Fanning, a University College Dublin professor, about the influence the economist Malthus may or may not have had on British response to the famine that can be found on YouTube if you search for “Malthus & The Irish Famine.”

The Great Famine is mentioned briefly in my book with regard to prescient observations by the novelist Samuel Lover ahead of the disaster. Contemporary playwright Tom Murphy addresses the subject head-on in his play Famine. The siege and bunker mentality that has taken hold during this virus also brings to mind a novel by the tragically alcoholic novelist John O’Brien called The Assault on Tony’s about people taking shelter in a bar while a race riot rages outside.

Eavan Boland, who sadly died this week, wrote one of the most powerful poems about the Great Famine. It’s called “Quarantine.” You can find it on Poets.org and clips of her reading it and other poems online. I was lucky enough to hear her speak publicly a few years back in D.C., and one of her remarks from that appearance is included in a footnote in my book.