Stranger than fiction

You probably couldn’t make it up. The story of the fall of British novelist Jeffrey Archer turned out to be, in the opinion of many seasoned observers, rather better than many of his novels. It had all the elements of a bonkbuster holiday read. Celebrity, wealth, power politics, hookers, lies, deceits, court cases. By jasus, whoever wrote this one had some imagination.

But there’s the question. Is it real? Or are we (pace The Matrix) merely participants in someone else’s novel? Sometimes I wonder!

In the sense that all life is fiction, one acknowledges Archer’s creativity. After all, I’m old enough now to remember how we applauded the punks who established entirely new identities for themselves. Indeed, reinvention (say, like Madonna) is now regarded as an entirely legitimate artistic mechanism to prompt creativity. And why not?

But these are honest changes. They may be self-interested and self-promoting, but they don’t create entire structures of lies that rob and cheat. Archer attempted to create a fiction of ‘facts’ that would vindicate him, and reassert the judgement he won in 1987 when he sued the Daily Star over allegations that he had slept with a prostitute.

Quite why he bothered I don’t know. Shagging a hooker isn’t necessarily the end of the line, is it? I mean, that’s not what done him in. In fact, if he adopted Hugh Grant’s approach, or George Michael’s, he could have turned it all to his advantage. Or look at Big Bill (err... in a very different context, of course!). But no such savvy in the penthouse.

Au contraire. As with so many other similar cases, it was the cover-up that was wrong, and the lies and deceits that were necessary to support it. The trial judge called it an “extremely distasteful case” involving “as serious an offence of perjury as I have had experience of and have been able to find in the books”. So there!

But maybe people like Archer think that the rules don’t apply to them. He may have thought that this was just a novel by another mechanism?

Did he think he could make it up, that fact and fiction would merge? And, bearing in mind some of the fictions that quite ordinary people daily perpetrate, say in chat rooms, is Archer’s misdeed so exceptional? Or is it that, as with many other cases, that he’s so bleeding obvious about it, and such a Tory prat, and so clearly cut out to be an example, that he’s ordained to take the hit for all the lies and deceits of a society?

Who knows? Certainly, there’s an awful lot of hypocrisy about, and many of those throwing stones are not without sin. And who’s to say that, in the same situation, any of us might be different? But on the other hand, Archer represented an appalling world and vision, that of the 80s and of Thatcher’s Britain in particular. I mean .. ohhhhh! Appalling!! So most people just say ‘fuck him’.

Part of the fiction is the notion that all these people are having a great time swilling champagne with Jeffrey, that it’s all glamorous and fantastic and something that the rest of us should envy and aspire to. It’s a kind of Hello/VIP thing. Now, of course, none of those featured in these and other august journals of their type are in any way dishonest, oh Gawd no! Far from it. But they are celebrities and, as I think John Updike wrote, celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.

And he’s a writer too!!

But enough of that. Intimations of normality aside, good work was done in the world last week. The big development was the historic agreement on Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions at the World Climate Summit in the Hague. Amazing, and made all the sweeter for being unexpected, and achieved in the face of opposition from the United States. Indeed, the George Bush era US is now isolated on the question of global warming.

Sure, the new agreement is heavily compromised, but it’s still a major advance towards controlling the world’s emission of greenhouse gases. And it marks a shift in world leadership, possibly even in the balance of world power. The process of negotiation was led by the EU, in partnership with the G77 group of developing nations.

Head and shoulders above the rest stood conference chairman Jan Pronk – he’s the Dutch Environment Minister. He was awarded with a standing ovation for his role in brokering the agreement. In contrast, the head of the American delegation was booed.

And the outcome? Well, there will be pains, of that you may be sure. Despite being, in Mary Harney’s immortal words, closer to Boston than Berlin, we’ll have to shoulder our burden. Mind you, from all we read about scandals and corruption in Argentina, we’re probably closer to Buenos Aires than Boston.

On which subject, apparently the Taoiseach’s visit to Argentina gave new heart to the country’s Irish community… that’s those whose families immigrated between six and two generations ago. Well, invigorating them is all well and good. But can any of them play football? And in particular, are any of them strikers? Or central defenders?

It’s revealing that nobody from Irish soccer has bothered to investigate the possibility. Yeah, they speak Spanish, but what of it? In contrast, every Tom Dick and Harry in the UK is investigated. And they’re as hard to understand as any Argentinian!! Huh. Still a colony in all but name.

Meanwhile, Mount Etna is erupting. And the optics let us know, in no uncertain terms, where the fundamental balance of power lies on this earth. Agree, disagree as ye will. Mother Earth is still the boss, novel or no novel, Bush or no Bush, gaucho or gouger.

Worth remembering, in our moments of delusion.