It's been a while since my last post--events (principally the passing of a close grandparent) have distracted me from my duty to the blogosphere. The break makes you realize one clear connection between a blog and its pre-digital antecedent, the diary. In both cases, gaps in the entries often actually suggest heightened activity rather than a lull or an absence of anything to say. Sheer busyness might mean there's simply not time to write or emotions might still be too raw to be recorded. Life goes on despite the blank pages.

This seems to counter the French writer Henry de Montherlant's famous, and rather smug, dictum that "Happiness writes white." But it seems to me that few, except the preternaturally gifted, can write creatively when upset, anxious, or merely distracted. This impression seems to lie behind the phoniness I sometimes detect in fictions that employ a diary or epistolary form. For how many people race to their diaries to record an accident or trauma? Yet sentences along the lines of "My hands are still shaking as I transcribe the events I have just witnessed" seem to open too many letters in novels. Perhaps the most famous epistolary novel (and the longest in English) is Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. At least Richardson recognizes that sometimes the pen cannot or will refuse to capture the holder's experience. Since the novel was published more than 250 years ago there's been an ongoing debate (at least among those paid to query such matters) about whether the heroine Clarissa was actually raped by the caddish Lovelace. The very idea of rape is so abhorrent to Clarissa that she, through her letters, cannot bring herself to describe what actually happened between her and Lovelace. Sometimes, contre Montherlant, misery can only write white.

Happiness is in very short supply in the book I've been reading over the past week or so (yes, I know, I've somehow found the time to read--put it down to the consolations of art): Gerard Woodward extraordinary "I'll Go to Bed at Noon." It's difficult to give an idea of the tone of this book, which chronicles the disastrous alcoholic lives of the Jones family and its circle in 1970s London, but two incidents might give a flavour of Woodward's barmy brilliance. When his cat Scipio dies, Janus, the demonic drunken son of Colette and Aldous--as another critic has pointed out, many of the names seem inspired by Iris Murdoch--delivers an elaborate eulogy to his dead tabby, tracing the cat's esteemed lineage before finishing with a quote from Schiller's Ode to Joy. Later on, Janus who works as a night porter in a hospital, brings home a brain wrapped in a tabloid newspaper and asks his mother to study it. Strange, disturbing, and frequently hilarious, Woodward's novel is among the best five new works of fiction I've read this year.

The competition to become the first Irish person in space is becoming ever more bemusing. First, Bill Cullen, professional self-made man and memorialist of Dublin in the rare ole times (see here for his musical tastes), announced he would be the first Irishman to be launched into (sub)orbit via the services of Virgin Galactic (which will hopefully be more reliable than Branson's terrestrial transport). Yet on Matt Cooper's show on Today FM yesterday evening, Tom Higgins, MD of Realm Communications, claimed that he had received assurances from the Virgin outfit that he, in fact, was the first in line. Like many of his listeners, Cooper was wondering how the hell the MD of a communications company could afford to fork out the $200,000 for the short jaunt into the thermosphere. Yet Realm Communications, as Higgins candidly revealed, is really just a sober facade for his real money-spinner: Irish Psychics Live.

This premium-rate telephone "service" costs a jaw-dropping €2.40 per minute, which gives you access to "genuine celtic psychics, the most psychic race in the world." If further incentive is needed, prospective customers are informed that "only the most spiritually gifted individuals are selected to participate in our service." It's easy to laugh at such garbage, but it's probable that the bulk of Higgins' considerable revenue comes from the poorly educated or desperate--those who can ill afford to waste two-and-half-euros a minute on Celtic mist. Perhaps in his search for immortality in space, Higgins' company can adopt the motto adopted by many (including the RAF) who take to the air: Per Ardua ad Astra (Through Struggle to the Stars). Unfortunately, it's likely that much of the struggle will be borne by Higgins' deluded customer base as they figure out how to pay their huge phone bills.

A propos of nothing in particular, I offer this link to a fascinating record of a family's birth, growth, and maturation. You can find out more about the Argentinean photojournalist behind the project, Diego Goldberg, here. What is interesting is that the stark portraits of this attractive family encourage speculation about the lives led between the shots--in my case, I wonder what it was like to attempt to lead a bourgeois existence in a society most of us in Europe know only from history books and dystopian fiction: a fascist regime under which thousands simply disappeared during the night. And in recent years, the Argentine economy has gone into freefall, with malnutrition common in the slums of this once prosperous nation.

So would I look at these people differently if I knew they were from placid, stable states such as France or Italy?

Europeans never miss an opportunity to mock Americans' grasp of geography; we chortle with glee when some poor hick stopped in the street points to west Africa when asked the location of Iraq. (One wonders whether a similar Vox Pop in, say, Dublin's Grafton Street would elicit more precise directions).

Well, here's a chance to see if that sense of smugness is well earned--go to here, and see how well you do on Americans' home ground*. You might hiss that this isn't the same as finding an actual country on the map, but given that at least 24 out of that country's 50 states have a higher population than the Republic, it's not as though we're dealing with trivial jurisdictions.

As I mentioned above, I'm not entirely convinced that the average character on an Irish street has a far superior grasp of world geography than her or his trans-Atlantic counterpart. In fact, I wonder how well some people would do with a similar game in which players were asked to drop Irish counties into the right location. I'm sure many would Dubliners would grapple with the landlocked counties of the Republic, let alone those of the North, the fate of which apparently hangs on "Dr." Paisley's touching faith in the veracity of photography. Obviously, the sectarian war horse has never heard of Photoshop.

*If you think this game, provided by Sheppard Software, is too easy, you can try the advanced version.

Although the web version of the New Yorker does not appear to mention it, the Ian McEwan short story "The Diagnosis", which appears in this week's issue, is almost certainly the opening chapter of the writer's forthcoming novel, "Saturday".

My first encounter with McEwan's work came through reading what, in my view, is still his best novel, The Child in Time over a decade ago.* In particular, I remember being unsettled by the compelling storyline of the bumptious Tory politician regressing to childhood. Anyone who's read the book can probably recall the vivid scene in which the queasy protagonist unwillingly follows the huge "boy" up a rope ladder to his tree house built in the upper reaches of a huge oak. As well as demonstrating his strengths--among them an almost phenomenological approach to depicting nightmarish events (shown off brilliantly in that by-now famous ballooning accident that opens Enduring Love)--that 1987 novel, in retrospect, uncovered some of the writer's limitations. The approach to politics and society is rather woolly, reeking of the hyperbole of the 1980s (Thatcher's Britain portrayed as a near totalitarian regime). More importantly, there's an emotional inertness that seems common to all McEwan's books and characters. In The Child in Time, for example, the protagonist's search for his missing child felt closer to an artistic motif than a paralysing obsession.

In many cases, this icy distance works very well: The Comfort of Strangers is a near perfect novella, delivering its shocks before outstaying its welcome. But it did become more problematic in what has become McEwan's greatest success, Atonement, through which the erstwhile English Kafka was taken up by book clubs across the United States. For me, the first third of the novel, redolent of Waugh and Wodehouse, played like a socio-sexual re-enactment of Cleudo (the housekeeper's son is bonking the tearaway gal in the old library). And the subsequent false accusation that leads to the jailing of Robbie Turner for sexual assault seemed dangerously improbable--almost a breach of the trust between the author and reader. If I remember correctly, any number of people could have come forward and vouched for Turner's innocence, but it seemed as though the character's fate could never veer from the greased rails of the plot. It's not so much the police who march the accused off to the local nick as the author, glancing over the shoulder at his timetable of arrivals and departures.

This impression was later confirmed by the "postmodern" ending, which reinforced the fictive and pre-ordained nature of what preceded. Novel readers, in general, are not Calvinists--they want to believe in characters' free will even if in the universe they inhabit the damned and elect have been chosen before the first paragraph has been started.

It will be interesting to see whether McEwan's smooth prose and his skill in creating atmosphere and scenes can overcome his weakness for contrived plotting evident in his most recent works. (The Booker-Prize winning Amsterdam required a jack for readers to suspend their disbelief). The extract in the New Yorker adequately demonstrates his knack at handling professional jargon and processes (this time a neurosurgeon's) as well as his ability to stage a defining incident (here it's a car crash that bring the protagonist into contact with a psychotic with the quintessential McEwan name of Baxter (sound familiar?)).

Whether the novel simply re-visits the loony stalker theme of Enduring Love or evolves into something more low-key and interesting as Henry Perowne tries to interpret the events he's jostled by on this particular Saturday (the day of massive marches in London against war in Iraq) remains to be seen. Unfortunately I'd say the former is more likely than the latter.

*I wonder if your estimation of a writer is not bound to suffer precipitously if the first book you read by them also happens to be their best. For example, after I read a lurid paperback copy of Martin Amis's Money I had to find everything else by him. After I had consumed squibs such as Other People, Dead Babies, and, later, the bloated The Information, the ardour had cooled somewhat.

In his column in yesterday's Sunday Business Post, David McWilliams convincingly restates why the toll bridge on the M50 is perhaps the crowning glory of "rip-off Ireland." Many people may not be aware of it, but the toll operator built only the bridge while the rest of the gridlocked M50 was paid for out of public funds. This, as McWilliams has pointed out, has lead to the bizarre situation in which

"...not only does the state pay for all the road up to the 500-metre stretch of bridge, but it is complicit in the rip-off because it actually ushers the motorist into the clutches of the toll.

There is no alternative route once you get on the M50.You are automatically a sucker for the toll bridge. Therefore, this is a 'no risk - all return' venture for the owners."

Due to legal obligations, if the state were to buy out National Toll Road's highwayman-like operations, the compensation bill could reach at least €300 million--so that the cost of the "poxy" M50 bridge (McWilliams's adjective!) would not fall that short of the magnificent and recently opened Millau Viaduct (which came in at around €395 million). The comparison is beyond embarrassing.

Yet one has little expectation that the State will tackle this fleecing of its citizens. For example, when it was announced that the M50 toll would rise from €1.50 to €1.80--an inflation-busting 20% hike--I decided to lodge a complaint with the Department of Transport. It's a futile gesture, I know, but I was interested in seeing how some mandarin on Kildare Street could excuse such exploitation.

I stuck to the facts, merely pointing out the disproportionate scale of the increase and manfully desisting from any gibe or speculation about Minister Martin Cullen being slightly distracted at the moment.

I sent the message off the info@transport.ie over two weeks ago. Guess what I got back in return? Nothing. Nada. Zip. At least when you press those pedestrian buttons at traffic lights a WAIT sign is illuminated. But the organs of state cannot even be bothered to install an e-mail handling application to give at least the illusion of responsiveness. But perhaps they know their citizens--if fact, make that subjects--too well. Because, for all our talk about the wild Irish and our anti-authoritarian streak, we show a consistent willingness to be treated like dirt. We grumble, but do little more. The fact there aren't riots while people queue for an hour to pay at the M50 toll booths is a daily testimony to that.

In the great software development tradition of asking Joe Public to help out for free, I'm asking anybody who might be interested to check out a modest app I've developed. Mainly created to learn about C# and .NET deployment, History Tester 1.0 is available from www.download.com--I know I've gone ahead and given it a full-blown release number despite product testing consisting of me trying to crash the program for about two weeks, but it seems to work for most development houses. The app's been designed (and I quote) "to help history students, particularly those studying for the Irish Leaving Certificate, to test and improve their knowledge of Irish and European history from the mid-nineteenth century to 1970s."

Sounds gripping, eh? Although the zip file you need to download is a very reasonable 271 KB, you will need to have Microsoft .NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package installed to run the thing. This weighs in at a rather obese 23.6 MB so if you've got a 56 K modem you might want to think about how desperately you want to brush up on your European or Irish history. On the plus side, after you've installed the .NET Framework you'll be able to launch any app created in C# or VB.NET (until Microsoft upgrades the Framework).

If you can stomach the installation process and manage to launch and interact with the program, I'd be interested in your comments. If the project is half-successful, I might fill in some obvious gaps with 2.0 (nothing after the decimal point in my release schedule!)

In those happy years before background checks and random drug tests become the norm, the ranks of store Santas in the US came from a far richer and diverse cross-section of humanity. At least if the evidence of these photos is any guide. (And what can you say about the rheumy-eyed character in this slide?)

Well, that's it from me for 2004. If you're fortunate, you won't be staring at a computer monitor for the rest of the year. I hope to pick up the thread of my ramblings sometime early in January.

Happy Holidays (as we who have dealings with corporate America have learned to call Christmas)!