Given the time that's in it, some random memories of the literary scene over the last twelve months might be in order:
It was the year in which those who weren't Joycean fanatics (that is, 99.99999 per cent of the population) looked on in astonishment as Danis Rose's "reader's edition" of Ulysses drove the aforementioned fanatics into paroxysms of outrage. Commas, apparently, had been inserted here and there, "snotgreen" had become "snot-green" and "scrotumtightening" had metamorphosed into "scrotum-tightening", and the James Joyce estate went insane - even refusing Gill & Macmillan permission to use extracts from Joyce in their excellent The Ireland Anthology, on the grounds that Macmillan in London were associated with Picador, publisher of the offending Rose book. The rest of us observed all this and thought: get a life.
It was Frank McCourt's year. The late and very much lamented Jim Kemmy introduced me to him at a lunch in the Dail. I'd never met the man, but was immediately taken by his intelligence and dry wit. His book was just as engaging, and never mind the begrudgers who deemed it a frightful slur on Limerick. And his reading of it on audio tape (HarperCollins) is the best reason I can think of for taking a long car journey.
It was the year in which the IMPAC award for fiction yet again failed to make any impact, at least on this reader, though I'm sure the lucky winner enjoyed his hundred-thousand smackers.
It was the year in which an Irish-American funeral director from Michigan wrote a terrific book of essays called The Undertaking. It was subtitled "Life Studies in the Dismal Trade", but there was nothing remotely dismal about Thomas Lynch's approach to his various undertakings. Here he is in an essay called "Crapper":
The thing about the new toilet is that it removes the evidence in such a hurry. The flush toilet, more than any single invention, has "civilised" us in a way that religion and law could never accomplish. No more the morning office of the chamberpot or outhouse where sights and sounds and odours reminded us of the corruptibility of flesh. Since Crapper's marvellous invention, we need only pull the lever behind us and the evidence disappears, a kind of rapture that removes the nuisance . . . Having lost the regular necessity of dealing with unpleasantries, we have lost the ability to do so when the need arises. And we have lost the community well versed in these calamities. In short, when shit happens, we feel alone.
It is the same with our dead. We are embarrassed by them in the way that we are embarrassed by a toilet that overflows the night that company comes. It is an emergency. We call the plumber.
The book is so good you could be reading Montaigne.
It was the year of Richard Murphy's 70th birthday. He is one of our least celebrated poets, which is a pity, because he is one of the very few who matter.
It was the year in which Tom Clancy received $75 million for agreeing to write two novels and dabble in multi-media.
It was the year in which the greatest literary critic of the century, V.S. Pritchett, whose own life also began with the century, died. Here are the opening sentences to three of his essays:
"The comfort we get from Trollope's novels is the sedative of gossip."
"Conrad exists in English literature, but he is a harsh exotic who can never quite be assimilated to our modes."
"Albert Camus is one of those writers who are idolised in their lifetime and then are trapped by their legend."
You read these sentences and you immediately want to read further. You can do so in the 1,300 pages of The Complete Essays, splendidly produced by Chatto & Windus at £35, which sounds expensive but isn't - the book will be with you for life.
It was Yeats's year, with three major biographies, most notably the first instalment of Roy Foster's two-volume magnum opus. The poet also merited the ultimate accolade - a tribute album, Now and in Time to Be, with contributions from Van Morrison, Shane McGowan, the Cranberries, the Waterboys and others. Faith and begorrah, and it wasn't even his centenary.
Speaking of which, it was the year in which EMI coughed up £1 to a young poseur called Murray Lachlan Young for a CD of puerile poeticising.
It was the year of the Francis Stuart debacle. Some of us were of the opinion that only moral imbeciles would choose to bestow on this man the highest literary honour in the land, but there were obviously a lot of these about. However, the protests came too late to have any effect on the old pals' act known as Aosdana.
And it was the year in which Waterstone's conducted a poll to discover what masterpiece of literature people deemed the Book of the Century. It turned out to be Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Oh dear. Still, it could have been Jeffrey Archer.