Semantics of M.A.T.,Banana Republic and Android Donuts!

I was reared in a household in the mid fifties in Ireland where television or indeed other media technology made little intrusive impact on our daily lives and we relied for our news source on a large solid PYE radio set.

To broaden our media awareness, my father used to read to my brother and me before we went to bed. One of his favourite authors he deemed suitable for this nocturnal pursuit was the short stories of O. Henry (the pseudonym for the American writer William Sydney Porter). We loved these stories, because they seemed full of intrigue and suspense, and we were never sure whether the ending would be tragic or comic, a defeat or a victory and hence they were ideal as nighttime entertainment for young inquisitive minds. The source of many of these stories was the book ‘Cabbages and Kings’ in which O. Henry coined the phrase “banana republic” to describe small unstable Latin American countries such as Honduras where he had fled from Houston in 1896 to avoid facing a charge of embezzlement. It is worth noting that this descriptive term is now used to describe any ‘out of control’ republic and has been used extensively to describe our own state’s condition after the recent Bank crises.

I was reminded lately of one of these lovely stories in which O. Henry relates the details of a search for a character known as a Man About Town in New York, but which in now common parlance would simply be referred to as a ‘M.A.T.’ The storey is beautifully written and can be read for free on the Internet. The ending has a twist to it like all good O. Henry stories and the narrator ends up in a hospital bed after a traffic accident none the wiser for his search but on picking up the paper finds himself described as a classic example of a ‘Man About Town’ or ‘M.A.T.’ I still love this little story and I was wondering whether it would have any resonance for our new media savvy youth today.

I feel that the storey would need some updating to give it an I-Pad punch! For example, his search would probably have to be conducted by use of the S.A.S. (Snapdragon Android Phone) powered by at least a 1.6 Donut device with a cloud computing interface if necessary. As a consequence his phone would be more likely to end up in hospital that himself. After all, it would take at least 6 hours in casualty on a trolley in recent Irish experience before he would be able to reflect on his condition as described in the original story and by that time most young people would have ‘zapped’ or ‘app’ed elsewhere. Thus, many young people approaching this storey would entirely miss the twist in the tale of the storey which is perhaps a sad reflection on our instant messaging world.

In conclusion, therefore, surely it is reasonable to speculate whether the aforementioned Fictional Finales are really worth sacrificing for Android Donuts!!