Connect: The most distinct centenary in Ireland in 2004 will be a quasi-fictional one. James Joyce's "Bloomsday" (June 16th, 1904), the date on which Ulysses is set, in homage to the date of Joyce's first meeting with Nora Barnacle, will attract visitors from Ireland and overseas.
Edwardian rig-outs - boaters, striped jackets, voluminous dresses, bonnets, parasols - will abound in Dublin.
Ordinary Dubs, the sort of characters who appear in the book, won't be donning such outfits, of course. But middle-class accents will attempt prolier-than-thou pronunciations of such phrases as "stately, plump Buck Mulligan", "tripe and onions" and "the heaventree of stars". These will, no doubt, be accompanied by interminable "yesses" and the knowing laughter these induce.
Dublin will be briefly the centre of world literary culture. Ulysses could be museum-ised or it could live in more than memory. We'll see. It's telling that Joyce, for all his lionising of ordinary Dublin people, has been appropriated by littérateurs, some sincere and others merely band-wagoning. Anyway, expect a surge in sales of Ulysses this year.
Still, buying the book is one thing; reading it quite another. Like smokers beginning a new year with intentions to quit, attrition rates will be heavy. Reading Ulysses cover to cover is not to be undertaken lightly. It must be among the most famous, most unread books in history. But an average of five pages a day between now and Bloomsday would see a reader finish it.
"Joyce had to scurry with his family from city to city, in his attempts to avoid the dangers of World War I, as he created a beautiful book in a Europe bent on self-destruction," Declan Kiberd has written. That Europe - in which empires blew themselves asunder - is long gone but there's a new imperialism now and it too could be self-destructive.
This will be a presidential election year in the increasingly imperial US of George Bush. Its outcome is expected to determine much about the world's immediate future. Another Bush victory (all right, a first real presidential victory for Dubya!) and his America will continue to isolate itself from most of the rest of the world. If it does, this could be atrophying and self-destructive for the US.
Since September 11th, 2001, the US has squandered the world's sympathy. Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo are words which represent actions with which most of the world do not agree. In some countries - ours included - the political class has been supportive of the Realpolitik of American military muscle. But ordinary people, the sort celebrated in Ulysses, have not.
The result, paradoxically, in an age of globalisation, is an increasingly isolationist America. For decades - especially since the end of the second World War - the US, in many ways, represented the future. Its dynamism, ambition and money were attractive.
Its films, television and music ruled and changed the world. Now, under Bush, the US reeks of the past, not the future.
Hollywood, American TV and popular music will continue to produce films, programmes and songs but the US is wounded and divided. It is the current imperial power but it's cracking internally. Its media will continue to be used as flagwavers, thereby undermining the democracy the White House insists it will spread abroad. A Bush second term is not an alluring prospect.
Another al-Qaeda attack in an American or European city just might buttress Bush towards electoral invincibility. The "politics of the last atrocity", after all, applies on a global scale as well as in an Irish one. This is especially so when distorting media concentrate on demonising one side and lionising the other. On current form, the US media are certain to do this.
A century ago this year a woman pedestrian was arrested for smoking on New York's Fifth Avenue. "You can't do that here," the policeman reportedly said. Another woman, a passenger in a convertible, was ordered by a less officious New York copper to stop smoking a cigarette. A third woman, however, was jailed for 30 days because she smoked in front of her children.
These incidents have since been used as evidence of anti-feminism, which indeed they were. They were also, of course, anti-smoking. With Ireland's anti-tobacco laws toughened for this year, arrests for smoking could become fashionable again.
Smokers may face a spring of discontent when the new laws come into force in March.
There's overall support for the smoking ban and medical evidence backs it. Fair enough. There ought to be a codicil however. Drivers of "off-road" vehicles, given the pollution their motors cause, must not be allowed to object to people smoking in a prohibited space. In fact, the owners of all cars over, say 1.8 litres, should be obliged to keep silent on smoking.
Anyway, the world of 100 years ago couldn't know the 20th-century horrors to come. We can't know what the 21st century might hold. James Joyce eulogised the ordinary and Ulysses has, so far, stood the test of time while empires and "celebrities" come and go. After all, in 1904, Britain was the world's leading imperial power. Now, thanks to Tony Blair, it's a colony of Bush's America.