You can only shake your head and lament the wasted efforts of this young man eschewing learning Gradgrind style in favour of discovering Montessori style. I turn immediately to page ninety eight to read an excerpt from Patrick Pearse’s Letter to Eoin Macneill on the Founding of St Enda’s School. The school was abandoned, the unkempt grounds were closed to the public and we children were trespassing. I was reared beside St Enda’s school in Rathfarnham it was my childhood playground and prime location for the re-enactment of Enid Blyton inspired adventures. Open any page in this handbook and you will understand and appreciate, just a little bit more, the intellectual energy and ‘heated debate’ that proliferated across Ireland between 18, before sadly returning to the doldrums for several decades. Every home should have one indeed, can I suggest to the Irish Tourist Board that every Irish hotel room should have one. It’s a handsome tome stylishly clad in orange hardback – looking, for all the world, like a DIY manual at first glance – a class of a brainiacs breezeblock, if you will - and what a fine idea for an anthology. Most recently it was Handbook of the Irish Revival: An Anthology of Irish Cultural and Political Writings 1891-1922 published by Abbey Theatre Press and co-edited by Kiberd and P. Over the years I have always made it my business to buy anything written, compiled or edited by Declan Kiberd. To this day I cannot look at a Kafka book without seeing floppy-haired Jeremy in my mind’s eye. Just then Declan Kiberd’s door opened and I was ushered in. Reminding Jeremy that English was not Kafka’s first language I wondered aloud if translations could officially be classified as English literature. I assumed my serious thinking expression and searched into the middle distance for a suitable response. I was no expert on the works of the bold Franz but I didn’t want to lose face. “I’m doing Kafka,” he replied in a magisterial tone. I shrugged my shoulders and asked him about his own topic. He reminded me in his patronising, South County Dublin accent that Lewis Carroll was a children’s author and suggested that I might not be allowed investigate something so simplistic and unchallenging. I told him in my best Dublin accent that it was a comparison of Flann O’Brien’s Third Policeman and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. With a haughty glance in my general direction (how blessed was I?) Jeremy enquired what my essay topic might be. Nowadays these modest exercises are given the full-blown title of ‘dissertation’. What could Jeremy and I possibly talk about? We were both sitting outside Declan Kiberd’s office for the same reason as final-year English literature students we needed to speak to him about our ‘extended essay’ topics. I will call the floppy-haired youth Jeremy it was 1981 after all and Brideshead Revisited starring Jeremy Irons was the classiest thing on the telly. I was already sitting on the ground outside Dr Declan Kiberd’s office in University College, Dublin. The floppy-haired youth eyed me disdainfully before throwing himself on the ground with the air of a highbrow resigning himself to sharing the same air space with an average type.
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