Roddy Doyle,
born 8 May 1958, is Ireland’s leading contemporary novelist and following the
death of Seamus Heaney, it could be argued he is the country’s foremost
literary figure. He is the author of ten novels for adults, seven books for
children, seven stage plays and screenplays, a prose memoir of his parents’
lives and innumerable short stories, including ongoing episodes in the
celebrated Two Pints series, in which two emblematic middle aged Dubs meet
over a few jars to chew the fat over current affairs. Set in his beloved home
turf of north inner Dublin, where he taught in a secondary school after
graduating from UCD, Doyle’s first novel, The Commitments was published in
1987 and allowed him to introduce his readers to the Rabbitte family in a
series of novels that became known as The Barrytown Quartet. This latest
addition to his canon being 2013’s The Guts, that told of Jimmy
Rabbitte’s battle with stomach cancer, while The Commitments is now on
the West End stage as a musical, recreating the nuances and travails of Dublin
working class life in the 1980s economic recession. His next project is to
co-author Roy Keane’s latest volume of memoirs, which will no doubt be an
intriguing read, if Doyle’s Chelsea supporting roots come to the fore. PUSH spoke
to Roddy Doyle in January 2014.
Other than the evocation of Civil War era
Ireland and Jazz Age America in The Last
Roundup trilogy, your novels are mainly set in a strictly defined
geographical area from of north Dublin, perhaps unfairly described as extending
from Parnell Square to Glasnevin Cemetery, and often in the here and now. Would
you say your role as a writer is to chronicle the shifting tectonic plates of
contemporary Irish life, such as allowing the reader to the 55 year old Paula
Spencer seeing The White Stripes live in Phoenix Park for instance, or the
changing racial demographics of Irish society in the first decade of the new
millennium, as shown in The Deportees
collection of short stories, by holding a mirror to society? Or do you see
yourself more as providing a blueprint or template indication of how you’d like
Irish society to evolve?
I’d be very reluctant to assert
that I had any kind of a role, other than to write. Yes, most of my work is set on the northside
of Dublin, in the here and now. But
that’s because I like that part of the world and I’m quite content in the
present day. I don’t feel I have a
mission. I come up with the character,
say Paula Spencer, and I gradually try to see and describe the world as she
would see it; I choose her words. This
isn’t to trivialise my work; I take what I do very seriously. But my attention is on word by word, line by
line, page by page progression. Often,
when I’m finished a novel or story – sometimes quite a long time after – it
occurs to me that there was a theme hanging over me as I wrote. It struck to me, but only as I was finishing
the last book of The Last Roundup trilogy, that I was writing about identity,
personal and national – and who controls that identity and its definition.
You first introduced the reader to Jimmy
Rabbitte Jr in The Commitments in
1987. In 2013 he was back under the
microscope in The Guts. Looking at
that time frame; which of those Irelands, the 1980s era of mass unemployment at
home and relentless waves of emigration by young Irish people, or the current
situation, whereby all Irish mainstream political parties appear to have no
answer to endless future years of post-Celtic Tiger penury and grinding
domestic poverty, is the better Ireland?
How have things changed during Jimmy Rabbitte Jr’s adult years?
I don’t think one is any better,
or worse, than the other. Nostalgia,
which seemed to be the almost immediate response to the economic downturn, is
lazy and sentimental. Things weren’t
better, or any more virtuous, because Garrett Fitzgerald (flint faced, right
wing Taoiseach from 1982-1987 and unsmiling proponent of moral rectitude - IC)
was in power. I don’t pine for more
innocent times and I thought the Tiger years had a lot going for them – before
the brief madness. The fundamental
difference between 1980s Ireland and now is, I think, expectation. In the ‘80s, poverty and deprivation were no
surprise; we were living in Ireland, after all – a failed state, the basket
case of Europe – so we expected nothing better.
Then things changed, probably for the better – and the new poverty is a
shock. It’s stunning. Or, at least it seemed to be 2009 and for
some years after.
Undeniably the portrayals of the various
members of the Rabbitte family in The
Barrytown Quartet are deeply affectionate; one of my favourites being Jimmy Sr retelling
the plot of David Copperfield (“there’s
this cunt Mr Micawber…”). It has been said, and I agree, readers actually love
the Rabbittes, like we love our relations or neighbours, but other families
you’ve written about, such as the Spencers, firstly in Family and then The Woman
Who Walked into Doors or the Smarts in A
Star Called Henry are often grossly dysfunctional and alarmingly abusive.
As you also wrote a portrait of your parents in Rory and Ita, how important to you is the concept of the family?
I’ve never seen family as a
concept – more a solid thing, really; a fact.
We may try to escape but even that – the urge to escape – proves the
family’s importance. Some families work,
and others don’t – and others still do and don’t; probably most, actually. Plonk a fictional character into a family and
you have, immediately, characters, and the potential for farce, tragedy, and everything
in between, and at the same time.
Families are the story-teller’s perfect tool.
You are a professed atheist and expressed
unequivocal support for the repeal on the ban on divorce in Ireland, which had
been enshrined in law by Eamon De Valera’s 1937 Irish constitution, as well as
aligning yourself with other socially progressive movements in Irish society
throughout your career as a novelist. Do you see this as the responsibility of
the writer in contemporary Ireland? Without categorising you as a non-patriarchal
Socialist patrician, would your sympathy be more with HG Wells or Joseph
Conrad, bearing in mind the latter’s comments; “Wells does not love humanity
but thinks he can improve it; I love humanity but I know it is unimprovable?”
I wouldn’t burden any writer with
any responsibility other than to write.
I don’t feel a need to convert anyone to anything. I’m comfortable in my atheism in Ireland
today but have no interest in convincing others that it is the way to go. Ireland has become quite a free, open
society, and I like it – despite the fuck-ups, maybe even because of them. I’d probably drop somewhere between Wells and
Conrad but I don’t think I’d be interested in having a pint with either of
them.
Your single proviso for this interview was
that you’d only talk about books you’ve already published; hence the intriguing
Mr Keane is off the agenda. However, can you reveal whether there are any
further visits planned to the lives of Paula Spencer or any of the other
Rabbittes, so tantalisingly alluded to in The
Guts? Are your experiences in the theatre with the musical version of The Commitments guiding you towards
further adventures in drama? Perhaps a joint venture with legendary folk
virtuoso Christy Moore, who Jimmy Jr experiences an epiphany towards when
listening to him at The Electric Picnic (Ireland’s celebrated annual music
festival in Stradbally, Co. Laois), could be in the pipeline…
I’ve written ten novels but only
one, Paddy
Clarke Ha Ha Ha, stands alone.
I’ve always gone back to earlier characters and I’m likely to do it
again. I loved the experience of writing
The
Commitments’ musical script, and experiencing the rehearsals. But that is because, at least in part, I saw
it as a once-in-a-lifetime event. I
can’t see myself doing it again. But I
wouldn’t be closed to the possibility. Essentially,
I’m a novelist. If I stray from that,
it’s because I see the other writing as an adventure.
Finally, as your success as a writer enabled
you to quit the chalkface and dedicate yourself to your writing, I wonder do
you ever miss teaching? Or has your vocation transferred from a desire to
impart knowledge and improve minds in the classroom to a need to do that via
your written works?
I don’t miss teaching. I co-founded a writing centre for children
and young people, called Fighting Words,
here in Dublin. I’m there now, as I
write this, in the company of a group of teenagers who meet here on Wednesday
afternoons to write. So, I’m here one or
two afternoons a week, and that gives me my teaching fix. It’s a bit like being a grandparent, I’d
imagine. I get the company of the kids
for a few hours, and I can throw a bit of hard-won wisdom at them – and then
they go home. And so do I.
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