Roddy Doyle

Certain very special books--House of Mirth, A Man of Property--are magically able to distill an entire society, without even intending to really, and bottle it into an essence. It's rare to find such novels these days, perhaps because the essence of a society as fragmented and homogenized as our own is so elusive. But the zeitgeist of working class Dublin can be savored, at least, by opening any of Roddy Doyle's half dozen novels. Like Wharton and Gallsworthy, he is able to focus his world thanks to a narrow scope and a flawless ear for dialogue. Whether we are tagging along with the exploits of an eleven-year-old in Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993) or fretting with the battered wife in The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996), Doyle completely submerges us in his characters, so that we see, hear, and feel the world as they would. And unlike Faulkner or his Irish countryman Joyce, Doyle is able to carry it off with a style that seems a perfect fit with the time and place--simple, understated, inherently visual. Oh yea, and it's funny as hell--`great crack', as Jimmy Rabbitte Sr might say.

Rabbitte and his disorderly clan are the stars of Doyle's first three novels, often referred to as "the Barrytown Trilogy", though each book has an entirely separate storyline. In The Commitments (1987) Jimmy Jr organizes a soul band; The Snapper (1990) follows daughter Sharon's out-of-wedlock pregnancy; and The Van (1991) concerns Jimmy Sr himself, as he and pub friend Bimbo go into business together selling fish & chips. Despite the simple language and plot, entering one of the Barrytown novels can be disorienting. Because we are all but looking out of the eyes of the main character, no background and very little description is provided. (When we walk through our house, do we really notice the furniture? Do we ruminate on our life story?) I would call the experience cinematic (indeed, all three books in the Barrytown Trilogy have been made into films) but we do not even have the benefit of scenery. There's also the Irish slang, which liberally peppers the dialogue. I actually had to write a list of terms down ("janey", "mot", "the jacks", "a brasser") and ask a friend of mine, a Dubliner, what they meant. But once you are past this and used to the water, as it were, in Barrytown, the books are a great spectacle. There's narrative tension as our main character rises to the occasion (a band, a baby, a business), tussling with inter-family friction and neighborhood slander to achieve that one small thing. The high points for me, however, are the little snippets of family life that Doyle scatters liberally throughout. Take this bit where Linda and Tracy, the twins, inform Jimmy Sr why their teacher Miss O'Keefe said he should be ashamed of himself:

--She told everyone to say wha' our mammies an' our daddies said to each other tha' mornin'.
--Oh my God! said Veronica.
Jimmy Jr started laughing. Darren was listening now as well.
--An' it was real borin' cos they were all sayin' things like Good mornin' dear an' Give us the milk. --An' Tracy said wha' you said to Mammy.
She looked at Tracy. Tracy was going to kill her.
Veronica sat down.
--An' would yeh by any chance remember wha' I said to your mammy? Jimmy Sr asked.
--Yea.
--Well? What was it?
--Yeh pointed ou' the window--at the rainin'--
She pointed at the window.
--An' then yeh said--
Jimmy Jr laughed. He remembered.
--Go on, said Jimmy Sr.
--You said It looks like another fuck of a day.
Jimmy Jr howled. So did Darren. Jimmy Sr tried not to.

In Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha Doyle continued with the same devices and setting, in this case dispensing with a plot and simply transcribing the raw brilliance of childhood--much of it, I'm sure, from his own memory. He started a new trilogy with A Star Called Henry (1999), a more conventional first person narrative taking place in the tumultuous era of the 1916 rebellion in Ireland. Paddy Clarke won the Booker Prize in Britain and Henry received glowing reviews, but Roddy Doyle will probably be remembered for his early work with the Barrytown Trilogy. He lives in Dublin, where he was born and raised, and for many years taught English and Geography at a community school. Biographers have described Doyle as a private man who attempts to avoid the fame that comes with bestsellerdom. Nor does he embrace the literary world of writing schools, mentorships, etc. ("Leave cloning to the sheep", he once commented). He continues to live among the Dublin poor and working classes--which is fitting, as they are the bread and butter of his writing, at least up to the present time.

It should be remembered that not long ago the working classes had no writers of their own--that while Dreisser, Sinclair and the others wrote about them it was always with a dingy realism and a plea for social change. The Barrytown Trilogy contains no class or social message, but it has what is perhaps more important: a view from the inside, an honest celebration of working class Ireland and, to a lesser extent, the Western world the late 20th century, when even a blue collar slob like Jimmy Rabbitte Sr bellies up to the library to check out "your man Charles Dickens". And what better symbol for our time than Jimmy and Bimbo's white chipper van? Dirty and cramped but highly mobile, they drive it about selling fries and burgers after the pubs close. People complain and throw things at it; sometimes teenagers rock it. Jimmy and Bimbo are always in a sweat and usually cursing, but it's their own, their very own van, and after all it's great crack.

- Joel Van Valin

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