Looking beyond the obvious

Questioning Irish neutrality, scrutinising literature and finding the meaning of life. By Edward O'Hare

Writers at War

One book that looks certain to ignite many trenchant arguments is Clair Wills' That Neutral Island, a study of the political and ethical crisis which surrounded Ireland's neutrality during the Second World War. By examining a huge quantity of historical evidence she seeks to explain why Ireland remained outside the conflict and what lasting consequences this had on Irish national identity. Wills contends that Eamon de Valera had good reason to believe that if Ireland had joined the Allies and fought alongside Britain, this would have led to another civil war. Wills constructs her argument from the stories of others. From Elizabeth Bowen, Seán Ó Faoláin and Louis MacNeice collecting information to John Betjeman and Cyril Connolly developing propaganda, every literary figure of the period seemed to have become involved. The book even finds an unlikely hero in Myles na gCopaleen, who lambasted both the “head in sand” policies of the Irish government and the view that the Irish were traitors to freedom in his famous Irish Times satirical column, ‘Cruiskeen Lawn'.

Coetzee as Critic

Perhaps it is an intimation of how much Book Notes needs to rethink life, but the main event of this month is a new book of literary criticism. Most writers dabble at hack-work to fund their own literary escapades or at least to escape a pauper's grave, but none takes on the task of book reviewing quite like JM Coetzee, whose third collection, Inner Workings-Literary Essays 2000-2005, has now been published. Reviews by writers of fiction are unusual because they allow readers to encounter the true voice of the individual and not a piece of ventriloquism.

Coetzee does not just review books, he scrutinises them until they reveal all manner of wonders that even their authors were probably unaware of. These pieces cover such varied topics as the politics of translation, German literature, Saul Bellow, Graham Greene and Franz Kafka. Anyone who has encountered Coetzee's novels, such as Foe and Disgrace, will know that when the Nobel prizewinner publishes a work, he strives to create a unique form of literature that is completely his own. To read a new work by him is to witness the release of a powerful force into human culture.
Well, after all that extreme high-mindedness, Book Notes thinks a few episodes of Ugly Betty and some cream cakes are called for.

All that Jazz

Is there anyone out there who has not stared up at the endless night sky, peered down from atop a windswept mountain or even gazed through the steamy window of a snug and asked themselves the great question, why am I here? In the past, a few bright sparks have cleared away a little of the darkness that has kept humanity wandering blindly all these centuries but only a thinker of towering intellectual prowess and infinite self-belief would dare to say that he knows the meaning of life.

Luckily for us this is the very thing Terry Eagleton claims in his new book called, by jove, The Meaning of Life. He tackles all the great philosophical and theological dilemmas in the laid-back style which has made him the beloved saviour of slacker students around the world. Eagleton defends the significance of our being from moral relativists, geneticists and post-modernist tricksters. For him, meaning is inseparable from happiness because, like a jazz band making music, mankind can only reach understanding when it works together. All this sounds fine but Book Notes wonders how long it will be before Eagleton winds up playing the blues.