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CULTURE SHOCK:THE NOVELIST Julian Gough stirred some debate recently with his attack on Irish writers for being backward-looking and failing to connect with “the electric currents of the culture”. It is certainly true that, for the most part, Irish writing (indeed Irish art as a whole) was not very good at reflecting boomtime Ireland. It is also true that this has been a problem for the culture – a society without resonant images of its present self is prey to precisely the kind of self-delusion and false consciousness that had such disastrous consequences for our economy and society, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE

There are, however, three important qualifications that need to be taken into account. Firstly, it was ever thus. The realistic tradition in Ireland is, on the whole, a fitful and fragmentary one. We don’t do straight reflections very well – we prefer cracked mirrors. Secondly, and consequently, just because a novel or a play is set in the 1950s doesn’t mean it’s about the 1950s. Art – especially the kind of angular art that is the Irish mainstream – is metaphorical. Most Shakespeare plays are set in Italy and/or the distant past. That does not mean that they are not “about” Tudor and Jacobean England. And thirdly, the present is a tricky tense in Ireland. What is our “now”? It may be globalisation and lattes, cybersex and property prices, but it is also the revelation of the past.