Invisible Among the Ruins: Field Notes of a Canadian in Ireland

John D. Blackwell is Academic Funding & Research Officer at St. Francis
Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and the co-author of
Canadian Studies: A Guide to the Sources (which can be found at
http://www.iccs-ciec.ca/blackwell.html).

In 1997–98, Dr. John Moss, professor of Canadian literature at the
University of Ottawa, held the Craig Dobbin Chair of Canadian Studies at
University College Dublin. Invisible Among the Ruins is the result of
that Irish sojourn.

Moss, who has traveled widely and written or edited some 20 books,
admits that “my Ireland is fundamentally a literary experience.” In
a highly discursive meditation, Moss juxtaposes his idiosyncratic
“field notes” on Ireland and Canada. “Ireland is a place to come
from, a place of mythic origins, and Canada is a place of arrivals, the
apparently undiscovered country; this means in Ireland a Canadian may
perhaps be more Canadian than at home.”

The author’s stream-of-consciousness weaves patterns of ideas as
complex as a Celtic knot. Infused with literary, historical, and
geographical allusions, the narrative flits frenetically from Oscar
Wilde to Alice Munro, from the Rebellion of 1798 to the Donnelly
murders, from Wicklow to Nunavut. The Arctic holds a special place in
the author’s imagination; he returns to it repeatedly throughout this
book.

A disciple of postmodernism, Moss sometimes leaves the reader
disoriented and perplexed, probably even frustrated, but it is these
jarring contrasts that also enlighten and reveal. At one moment, the
author is waxing romantic about Grace O’Malley, at another he is
prowling through the dusty antique shops of Dublin, praising
“Ireland’s genius for the best breads on the planet,” or lamenting
“the ignorance of Canada in much of the world.” Whatever his
momentary and often irreverent focus, Moss has a flair for seeing
something original in the seemingly familiar. Invisible Among the Ruins
is a poetic and rewarding literary diversion, revealing as much about
the complex cultures of Ireland and Canada, as it does about the
intellectual viewpoint of the author. The richly complex,
impressionistic prose warrants more than one reading. As Moss observes
at the outset of his narrative, “We dwell among ruins on the planetary
surface, pinioned by perspective between the infinite and the
absolute.”