Paul Krugman's "leprechaun economics" is hard to beat as a description of the record increase in Ireland's gross domestic product. But I also enjoyed the verdict of the Financial Times, which placed the figures in the context of Ireland's rich literary tradition.
As a work of fiction, it suggested, the 26.3 per cent GDP rise compared well with the "imperishable classics" of "James Joyce and Flann O'Brien". And on behalf of all Flannoraks – although it was not the FT's main point – I welcome the promotion of our man implicit here.
For too long, it has been an unwritten law that, in references to the great Irish modern novelists, Flann must always share billing not just with Joyce, but also Samuel Beckett.
Furthermore, he tends to be portrayed as the junior partner of the three. In the blessed trinity, Joyce and Beckett are the father and the son, while Flann is the Holy Ghost-writer, whose exact whereabouts in the pantheon are unknowable.
But the FT clearly identified him, rather than Beckett, as the man to make make sense of Ireland's latest economic miracle. So where in his oeuvre should we look for enlightenment?
Not in An Béal Bocht, obviously. If anything, that tends to understate Irish GDP, preferring to highlight the noble poverty of the Truly Gaelic Gael. The Hard Life is no use either.
O'Brien's absurdist masterpiece, The Third Policeman, may be nearer the mark. It is, in general, full of mad calculations. As well as monitoring the dangerous effects of molecular interchange between humans and bicycles, the protagonists have to visit the boiler-house of hell daily and record random numbers.
But the mysterious role of leased aircraft in Ireland’s GDP also reminded me of the part wherein Sergeant Pluck attempts to explain atomic theory. In general, as he points out, “everything is composed of small particles of itself [...] flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures”.
Then he too reaches for the L-word to describe the behaviour of “these diminutive gentlemen [...] atoms”, which are as lively as “twenty leprechauns doing a jig on top of a tombstone”. Finally, he invites us to reflect on the concept of a sheep. “What is a sheep only millions of little bits of sheepness whirling around and doing intricate convolutions inside the sheep?”
And there, more or less, you have the Irish economic miracle of 2016. Where once we had a Celtic Tiger, now we have a Flann O’Brien sheep. Furious activity at microscopic level; not much visible to the human eye.
Mícheál Ó Nualláin
Alas, the GDP drama was not Flann’s only appearance in the news this week. He also also mentioned for more sombre reasons – the death, at 88, of his brother Mícheál Ó Nualláin.
Not to be confused with “The Brother”, about whom another of Brian O’Nolan’s alter egos so often wrote, Michéal was the last surviving sibling of 12. Extraordinarily, he outlived Brian by half a century. With his demise, an era belatedly closes.
In the context of molecular interchange, Micheál had a risky childhood. He spent part of it doing school homework at the same table whereon his older brother, as Myles na gCopaleen, thrashed out columns on a typewriter, hitting the keys with such savagery that it was eventually necessary to put a cloth under the machine to muffle the noise.
If the impressionable Michéal absorbed some of the table, or the typewriter, or the literary genius, he nevertheless grew up to be an artist in his own right, and a very good one. In later years, he also earned a slightly eccentric public image. But on the several occasions I had the pleasure to meet him, he was invariably a gentleman (something that, as a few traumatised survivors can still testify, could not always be said of Myles).
My favourite meeting with Micheál was in 2011, at the launch of a stamp to mark Brian’s centenary. Amid generally jovial proceedings, it was recalled that, back in the 1950s, commenting on a similar launch, Myles had excoriated the Post Office over some error.
Then, railing at their incompetence, he went on to suggest that future stamp commissions should feature more realistic scenes from Irish life, such as “some Feena Fayl big-shot fixing a job for a relative”.
But in 2011, unusually, the joke was on him. Nobody questioned the quality of the portrait chosen for his stamp, nor could they. The picture – a copy of which I proudly own – was painted by the artist best qualified, his loving brother.