The Moral of the Story Isn't

According to a reviewer in the Daily Telegraph, Esther Freud's new book The Wild (Hamish Hamilton) is too sophisticated to have a moral.

Very good. Ms Freud's book is an evocation of childhood, and of course children are devoid of morals - certainly, the ones I know. Indeed you might define children as human creatures lacking in morality. That is what makes them so delightful. The trouble is, they grow up. In the same edition of the Telegraph we were also told, apropos science writer Matt Ridley's new book Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (Fourth Estate), that his elucidation of the significance of promiscuity among mice "is a model of its kind".

Good. No morals among mice either.

Of course, these may be foreign mice. It's hard to know about Irish mice, little being available on the subject apart from the late Prof Tomas "Quiltie" McRaftaire's incisive monograph Gra agus Pleisiur: an Luch Eireanneach ag Spraoi (Seanachas Ard Mhacha, Vol XXII, pps 23-98)

The English reviewers, despite their increasing sophistication, still have their blind spots. For example, while most of them have correctly noted that Tama Janowitz's latest book, A Certain Age, is a commentary on the loveless sex, brittle relationships and neurotic unfulfilled women that characterise New York, many of them persist in regarding it as a satire. This is quite touchingly naive. The more advanced among us recognise A Certain Age as a piece of social realism, with New York culture, as defined by Janowitz, as something to aspire to. "Brittle' is good, "loveless" is better and "neurotic" is only the supposed insult applied by the hopeless to the achiever.

But regarding morals, or the lack of them, this country long ago led the way in the literary field. Oscar Wilde said that there was no such thing as a moral or immoral book - books were either well written or badly written, and that was all. Joyce felt that the artist could not be a moral arbiter, but merely stood outside his creation, aloof, paring his fingernails.

However, while we Irish have been in the avant garde of global culture, with our literature, art and music increasingly denuded of morals and manners, our society still suffers from moral scruples. To engage properly in European and global society, we need to throw off these lingering doubts, which make such a show of us across the world. We have to grow up. Or rather, we must become again as little children, and slough off our morals. Despite all our success and new-found wealth, we still have an embarrassing reputation for, and obsession with, religious and moral matters. There are still far too many of us worrying about what is good and what is bad. We also have a laughable but fortunately decreasing concern for the poor, and a lingering belief, which we really must banish, that there are some people out there, and always will be, who simply can't look after themselves.

We are a very long way from the entirely selfish society we clearly aspire to. It is time for us to take our place among the uncaring nations of the world. To see how embarrassing our plight is, all one has to do is look at our reflection in the media. While the British papers increasingly publish letters on trivia, the letters page of Irish newspapers remain packed with contributors expressing all kinds of outdated and prissy concerns. For example, acres of space are currently devoted to expressions of horror about the revelations of the various tribunals, as if in this day and age there can actually be something seriously wrong with chicanery, hypocrisy, underhand dealing, theft, prevarication, economy with the truth and straightforward ripping-off.

Similarly, long soggy letters are still being regularly published, seven days a week, bemoaning the "plight" of the poor, the underprivileged, the ill, the homeless, the drug-addicted, the sidelined and the insane.

No doubt our editors feel that in all conscience they are obliged to publish this kind of stuff, but as sophisticates themselves, in their hearts they must know that conscience itself is way past its sell-by date, as indeed is heart. The whole charade, admitting as it does to blots on our character, is holding us back as a nation. Letting go can be difficult, but if we are ever to have any kind of real standing in the world, we must stiffen up, have the courage of our convictions, stamp on as many people as we can and make it clear that if the meek are indeed to inherit the earth, they will not do so until the rest of us are ready to hand it over to them: that is, when hell freezes over.

bglacken@irish-times.ie