Fintan O'Toole was in a pub in Dublin recently and as he was waiting for my pint, he glanced up at the impressive bronze plaque on the wall. It was oval shaped, with some flowers or leaves at the bottom and a small bust of James Joyce at the top, looking like he'd just sipped a mouthful of sour slops. The source of his distress was obvious enough. In bold letters under his head there was a declaration that "This pub has been granted the JAMES JOYCE PUB AWARD".
The citation went on with a quote from Ulysses about the difficulty of crossing Dublin city without passing a pub and some guff about the wonders of this particular pub. I was just about to look away in disgust at another example of the prostitution and belittlement of art when I read a passage praising the pub for "it's (sic) down to earth athmosphere (even sicer)". It struck me that it takes a special kind of genius to combine the crass exploitation of a great writer with an advertisement for the increasing illiteracy of his country.
I've started a small collection of these gems in the last week, most of which celebrate the splendid impact on Irish culture of Joyce's great contemporary William Butler Yeats. My favourite so far is from the website of one of the major institutions of learning in the city of Joyce and Yeats, the Dublin Institute of Technology: "The Abbey Theatre is one of the landmarks of Irish drama and was set up by the Irish National Theatre Society in 1904 and kept to Yates (sic)
idealistic dream by producing the works of Irish playrights (sic) such as Synge and O Casey."
W.B. Yates, indeed, seems to be almost as popular today in his native land as W.B. Yeats. New Ireland Limousines informs its prospective clients that "Dublin has inspired the works of World renowned Writers such as James Joyce, W B Yates, Patrick Kavanagh." A website called Castles of Galway announces "This is Ballylee Castle in south Galway. W.B. Yates lived here for a time in the 1920's."
Innisfree Cottage in Co Fermanagh seduces would-be visitors with the slogan "Where peace come dropping slow" and, just for all the ignoramuses out there who don't recognise its origins, adds that "much-loved Irish poet WB Yates inspired the name of the bright and airy" guesthouse. The official record of Dáil debates has Pat Rabbitte at one stage claiming that "W. B. Yates's quotation would be more appropriate." A contributor to a website called Creative Ireland argues that "Francis Bacon, W.B. Yates, James Joyce to mention but a couple could not connect with Irish society". You can indeed see why.
At one level, these mistakes are merely irritating and harmlessly funny. But they do point to something deeper: the way in which Ireland, for want of any other imagery to claim, has wrapped itself in the borrowed clothes of old writers and, in the process, turned them into banal corporate symbols. The deal goes both ways: we are saved the bother of reading and they are embraced, not for the tormented drunks, subversive individualists or shocking truth-tellers that they were but as cosy, harmless creatures who flatter but do not disturb us.
During the recent Irish presidency of the EU, for example, its official website contained links to short pen-pictures of great Irish writers. The texts were staggeringly stupid in ways that ranged from hilarious circumlocution (Brendan Behan didn't try to blow up half the population of England, he "became enthusiastically involved in the IRA's youth wing at an early age") to the grotesquely insulting: "Existentialist, eccentric Samuel Beckett painted his masterful, esoteric plays with a palette of anguish, ennui, and futility." The mixture of illiteracy (painted plays?) and derision (just a harmless eccentric) offered by the State as a description of one of its greatest citizens sums up the crassness that masquerades as culture.
Literary piety has replaced religious piety and patriotic piety, and it is in general even less sincere than either of them. You can buy "quality heat resistant placemats and coasters" with the faces of Yeats, Joyce, Synge and even, just to remind us why satire is dead, Swift. You can eat Lamb Satay in the James Joyce Room at the Euro Bistro in Cork. At Cloghan Castle in Loughrea, you can sleep in "an ornate brass bed from And So To Bed. in the Lady Gregory Suite, while the Yeats Suite holds a solid wood masculine-style bed".
You can invest in an apartment in the Yeats Village in Sligo. At the Druid's Glen Hotel and Country Club in Wicklow, you can dance in the James Joyce Ballroom, do unspeakable things in the Oscar Wilde Suite, get buried up to your neck in sand in the Samuel Beckett Room, muse in the William Butler Yeats Room, and hold a meeting of your company (which sells, presumably, succulent roasted babies) in the Jonathan Swift Boardroom. The Park West industrial estate in Dublin has streets called Joyce Way, Yeats Way and Heaney Avenue, though this is almost forgivable because there is a company called Drink Trade Logistics on Kavanagh Avenue. And in none of these places will you have to mix with smelly, drunken, morose, obscene writers.