Previously: Every French novel ever.
1. Fleeing The Impoverished, Drunken Countryside For Dublin
2. The Estate Decays
3. A Man Laughs Unhappily
4. We Do Not Speak That Name In These Parts, Stranger
5. The Landlord Pays A Visit But Does Not Sit Down
6. The Boy Sickens
7. THE ENGLISH
8. Poor In Material Goods But Rich In Sweeping Vistas Of The Hills And Also The Sea, My Son
9. Do You Know What Would Be Very Sad? So Many Things; Let’s List Them All
10. A Series Of Seemingly Unrelated Vignettes That Are Quite Possibly A Dream
11. Looking At A River Well Have You I Remember The Smell Of Her Broach The Day The Ship Sailed I Do Yes I Do Always Have
12. A Funeral Is Ruined
13. Everyone Starts Talking About The Wallpaper
14. A Chapter Written Inexplicably In French Just To Show Off
15. The Hell Sermon From Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man You’re All Thinking Of
16. An Accidental Circumcision Followed By 14 Pages About The Length And Goodness Of The Nose
17. A Friendly Argument With The Vicar
18. The Boy Dies
19. Leaving Out The Back Without Paying, That’s What Old Dad Did Best
20. A Bit In Gaelic Just To Remind You The Author Knows Gaelic
21. The Washerwoman Coughs
22. We Do Not Speak Of The Boy
23. Fleeing Broken, Vice-Riddled Dublin For The Countryside
24. An Insane Man Is Buried Up To His Neck In Ants And Forced To Play Chess With The Devil, Who Does Not Exist
25. Poverty, Failure, Exile and Loss, And The Apple Tree Did Not Bloom This Spring And Never Will Again
26. Conditions Worsen
Tags: books, brian o’nolan, everything is the worst here, irish fiction, james joyce, just assholes, lady morgan, maria edgeworth, samuel beckett, tristam shandy
Every Canadian novel ever next, please? I mean, beyond “Everything dies.” “The Prairies have a bleak majesty that reflect the woman’s emotional landscape.” Actually, the Irish novels aren’t terribly different than some Canadian novels set not on the Prairies.
hmmmmmmmmmm maybe i will ask mallory if i can guest star once
i feel like willa cather could be included in this category! maybe “north american great plains fiction”
Every Canadian Novel Ever would involve a lot of weird Southern Ontario Gothic coverage.
The Pretty Young Schoolmarm Dodges Unwanted Advances From the School Trustees.
The French-Canadian Man Spends Half the Year in a Lumber Camp in Abitibi to Escape the Pressures of Raising 12 Children.
The French-Canadian Man Is Crippled in a Lumber Camp Accident and Succumbs to Alcoholism After Returning Home.
The Catholic Church is Not Helpful.
Somebody From the Country Visits Montreal, and is Uncomfortable.
The narrator despises her narrow-minded, provincial town, but continues to operate by its moral code even in the big city.
The Great War came and changed everything but also changed nothing.
English/French relations are really a metaphor.
People have a lot of emotions, but don’t talk about them because it’s impolite to do so.
The minister’s wife dresses too nicely; parishioners disapprove.
Communing With Nature
Some Plucky Kid Gets Into Mischief
Is This Even Canadian It Hardly Even Mentions Canada
The Incident At The River
There Is An Accident In The Coal Mine
The Lead Pushes Her Father Down The Stairs
Incest, In Three Parts
“Winter sucks and is extremely cold.”
“A murderess is possibly mad or just a traumatized immigrant.”
“Newfoundland Is Beautiful And Tragic”
“A Man In Toronto Has Feelings”
“A Rural Farm Family Has Hidden Problems”
Kate Beaton covered this pretty well: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=267
A young schoolmistress adapts to the quirks of rural life.
A plain and sensible woman stifles all feelings of tenderness.
The young schoolmistress develops a maternal fondness for a sickly/poor/lonely child.
A child learns about life from an animal not normally considered domestic. The animal returns to the wild.
It’s snowing.
It’s cold inside, too.
The sickly/poor/lonely child dies.
The young schoolmistress feels helpless and considers leaving the countryside.
An animal misses the child.
The death of a longtime companion causes the plain and sensible woman to regret her emotional reticence.
The young schoolmistress marries the vicar.
The plain, sensible woman dies.
It’s still snowing.
We’re running out of firewood.
Every Irish Author’s Biography Ever: He died in France, or maybe Switzerland.
Every Ukrainian Poet’s Biography Ever: He died of tuberculosis at 42, or maybe 44.
You forgot:
An Englishman is Bad
We Need the English to Rule Over Us For We Are Drunks
The Landlord Lives in London
All The Trees Have Been Cut Down
I studied Irish Literature for my MA and so, on this Monday morning, my heart is bursting with joy.
Lady Morgan! Maria Edgeworth! THE ENGLISH!
I am just so happy, guys.
Me toooo! I died at the English bit, just died. That was just too perfect.
And Lady Morgan was such a BAMF! Truly a misandrist hero for us all.
I feel like at least five more chapters should be ‘THE ENGLISH’.
Also, ‘The Church is a Hypocrite, but Without It, What Do We Have?’
and
‘ A Bad Catholic’
The first of those is basically Ireland in real life and the present day.
Everyone in my family names their kid after a character from Leon Uris’ “Trinity,” and I just sit there like, “we can keep bitching about the English OR we can throw off the shackles of our far greater enemy which hounds us from cradle to grave and beyond, THE MOTHERFUCKING CHURCH,” but noooooo.
Like, obviously the English are not the greatest, but the English never managed to actually interfere with your ability to masturbate with confidence.
you wait.
I like you. Stay! Make an account!
Well, except when they were starving you to death.
shoulda stuck with our natural diet of seaweed and fish instead of hopping on that imported devil starch
That Time One Million People Starved to Death Despite Being Surrounded By The World’s Largest Fishery
I find this hilarious because I automatically associate Leon Uris with “Exodus.”
He has a shtick, and it is called Riling the American Descendants of Various Groups While Over-Simplifying Complicated Geo-Political Issues
Does Trinity have sex scenes that include a remote field and the woman shouting “Yes! Now!” ? Cuz that’s every sex scene in Exodus.
Nicole, I am Irish, and we STILL haven’t managed to pull that one off. Except now the greater enemy seems to be “the Germans”, what with having to pay outrageous interest on our European loans just to keep cash in our banking system. *stares out into the bleak landscape*
Doesn’t that really mean that the greatest enemy is your own government who took out those loans?
Nicole our families should hang out.
1. My brother is named Conor. Was horrified when I finally read Trinity.
2. My great grandfather converted to Catholicism when he immigrated to Toronto to get laid (love you great grandma!), but my grandmother is still gets teary eyed when discussing the plight of Catholics in the north and thinks Gerry Adams is a lovely man.
This is my all-time favourite installment. Basically works for “All Irish Songs,” too, in which “and then I think about my dead mother” ends all choruses.
Right?
“The love of my life died and was more beautiful than when she lived”
“Something something rose”
I have never left Ireland for longer than a month, and yet every time I listen to Spancill Hill or The Island by Dolores Keane I get a lump in my throat. Why??
“My true love was hanged/shot”
“A fickle young man left me, and now I am dying”
“They quietly froze to death, but it was poetic”
There’s also the Christmas carols, which all basically go “Mary, Mary, isn’t she wonderful! And oh yeah she had a baby so we should like him too. “
“A Woman Is Sad and Resigned To Her Struggling Life With Alcoholics.”
“Lets All Do What Punks Will Do in 50-Or-So Years But Write About It Considerably Less Insufferably”*
“Look I’m Confused About Where To Put My Stones Should They Go Here or In This Pocket OMG Help”
*peeing outside and pretending it’s revolutionary but actually making it look poetic, wiping boogers on stuff, talking blithely about where his junk should go
BICYCLES
EVERY IRISH-AMERICAN NOVEL EVER WRITTEN:
27. A Family Who Emigrated Generations Ago And Has Never Missed a Meal Continues to Talk About the Potato Famine on a Weekly Basis
28. In Which A Super-Rich Political Dynasty of Drunk Murderers Pretend They Haven’t Been White For Basically Ever and Lie About Having Seen “No Irish Need Apply” Signs
29. Let’s Financially Support Terrorist Organizations That Actual Irish People Are Informed Enough to Be Repulsed By
30. Drunk Asshole of Scotch-Irish Descent Wears ‘Kiss Me I’m Irish’ Shirt on St. Patrick’s Day, Is Sincere.
Oh God, 29. I’m from Dublin, and the only time I have ever committed an act of vandalism was when I spent summer 1997 in Boston on a student visa and a car near our apartment was covered in Noraid stickers. My friend and I keyed it. I have no regrets.
SERIOUSLY. Bless you.
We found a news article about my great-great grandfather getting drunk at a party and kicking his mother in the stomach. The title was “IT MAY BE MURDER.” It reads like a parody of Irish Americans.
O’Neal here. Just wanted to thank you for this outline, which I’ll print out and bring to the family reunion in July so they can start writing their book titled “Things We Literally Believe and Think Are True.” Everyone’ll be psyched you saved them so much work!
As you can imagine, I am always so much fun for tour guides when my family visits our ancestral homeland.
Actual tour guide on our Boyne Valley tour last week: “Dublin is one of only two cities in the world to have UNESCO City of Literature status.”
(I mean, she was wrong. But not by much. And also boy howdy do the Irish love their literary heritage.)
My mom was so mad when she read “Trinity” while pregnant with me that she stomped downstairs to yell at the perfectly pleasant Englishman in the downstairs apartment after every chapter. He would just say “terribly sorry” and offer her tea. And my uncle is constantly planting orange lilies in their yard, because this is 2014, WHO WOULD CARE? and she goes ballistic about it.
“I don’t want to visit Ireland, they’re all stark raving mad” (My English ex-boyf, 2007)
I have only ever heard of this objection to orange from Irish-Americans and it sounds completely insane to me because here in Dublin it is totally meaningless – I’ve never heard of anyone having any issues with the colour in my entire life. I’m looking out my window at my neighbour’s orange-flower-filled suburban Dublin garden right now!
“terribly sorry, tea?”
This is the best response to someone yelling at me for things my ancestors did to their ancestors that materially benefit me and disadvantage them. Apologize, offer beverage, listen. Good tips.
Thought there’d be more dead kids. I’ve never read “Angela’s Ashes” because the little boy on the cover is obviously going to die. And all of his friends and his dog.
ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh angela no
Me tooooo/neeeeeiiither. Everyone is like read it read it it’s so great, and I’m like noooo, I can feel the sadness just oozing at me from in between the pages….
I took a class in Irish autobiography in grad school and my prof had a LOT to say about poverty porn in that genre, Angela’s Ashes in particular. I still haven’t read it because you totally *can* feel the sadness just seeping forth.
I’m mot going to lie, most of the children in that book die. The little boy on the cover does not; he wrote the damn book. (Fine, he died in 2009, apparently.)
“A Monk Swimming” is written by his little brother, and glosses over a lot of the infant mortality to spend more time about how he trolled Prince Phillip once because they let anyone in a tux into the British Embassy and there was free food/drink there.
MAEVE BINCHY WAS KEEPING IT TIGHT, THO. RIP, MAEVE.
Maeve understood that men were the real enemy.
Read ALL her books. Even better: She’s how I (Dutchie) learnt English. Go Maeve.
Was in Dublin for the last couple of weeks, visiting the mother-in-law, which involves loads of cozy chats with Quite Old Irish people, and they all have either Maeve stories or Paddy Moloney stories, or both. This time it was mostly about Maeve and her favorite pub in Dalkey.
Best.
I’ll be here all day, trolling my fellow Irish-Americans/Canadians, but I have to shower quickly first. Literally nothing fills me with a greater sense of satisfaction.
LIZ LEMON OPENS WINDOW ON SAINT PATRICK’S DAY WEARING ORANGE, SHOUTS: “Hey, MEEEGAN!”
thousands of drunk green-clad women turn around
it wasn’t until I went to Belfast and saw a bunch of murals involving Dutch slogans that I realized that orange and the Dutch Oranje were the same thing
I have only ever met one Irish person called Megan in 22 years of living in rural Ireland, and Dublin. Is it an Irish-American thing or something bc Idgi
Irish-Americans LIVE to misunderstand your ways. It’s like German-American cultural meetings where everyone dresses like 19th century Bavarians.
This is one of my bigger fears for Vietnamese American communities: that future generations will entirely misconstrue cultural heritage. Can’t think of a solid example yet though, so I’m holding out hope. There’s the Heineken and Hennessey consumption and the gambling, but everything I know of points to that being pretty consistent throughout the diaspora.
Although hipsters in my city tried doing a Tet celebration seemingly because they had some Vietnamese wine, which… o_O
Yeah, also bagpipes are Scottish and we couldn’t give a shit about corned beef.
You can’t get bacon when the only butcher around is a kosher butcher, but you can get a nice salted brisket. New York.
In fifth grade, I was writing an article on the history of St. Patrick’s day for a one-shot (American) school newspaper. My dad, who had been a journalism major in his day, passed on to me some essential advice he’d received from a grizzled old editor:
“When you’re writing about Ireland, never use sure, and…, and god help you if you say begorrah.”
And me da’s advice has long stood me in excellent stead, so it has.
I had always thought this was a terrible old trope, but then I read Tana French’s books, and she is a Certified Irish Person and her characters say “Sure, and” ALL THE TIME and now I just don’t know what to believe.
Fair play to you.
More Irish-isms (mostly from Marian Keyes novels)
Press for cupboard
She’s after being a lesbian/He’s after getting married (I still don’t fully understand that construction)
Feck
Ride me sideways
Haven’t you any money child? (vs. Don’t you have)
A lot of those weird constructions come direct translations from Irish! Same with ‘I do be doing such-and-such’, it’s because that’s the continuous present tense in Irish. (Also we don’t really call.it Gaelic, I think that’s more of a Scottish thing?)
When we say “she’s after…” doing something, it usually means “she’s just…” done something. Non-Irish people trying to write Irish characters ALWAYS get this wrong and use it as if it’s just another form of the past tense. But it is not!
The “after” construction is called the “hot news perfect.” It does, as Firoola, points out, derive from Irish Gaelic. Hiberno-English is pretty fascinating. I did a project on it in my History of the English Language class in college.
Amazing, wonderful comment. Thank you. The hot-news perfect! Language is great. They kind of have this in Spanish too with the verb “acabar de” — “Acabo de llegar” means something like “I just this second got here.”
I couldn’t love ‘hot news perfect’ more if I tried. My gossipy heart just blossomed reading that. Thank you.
That is so helpful! I always thought it was something more like ‘tryna’ is right now.
“Haven’t you any” isn’t so much an Irish-ism as it just the English language being spoken by people who speak it. As opposed to Americans who don’t.
…as does Judy Plum in the Pat of Silver Bush books. LMM wouldn’t make that up, would she?!?
(Although she was Scottish…)
“She was niver the same again.”
As a Certified Irish Person I can confirm that “sure” gets added into sentences every now and then. More like, “it’ll be grand (fine), sure”. I have never heard an Irish person ever say begorrah.
“And me da’s advice has long stood me in excellent stead, so it has.”
I love you 🙂
I am forever in the debt of the Irish immigrant to the US who often called people “eeeejut”. I have every aspect of her voice forever in my mind’s ear. In my hateful secret heart I often call others eeeejut. So many seem to deserve it, and often.
My beautiful daughter was in Ireland with her BFF, visiting the BFF’s family ancestral home. They visit the Guinness factory, met extremely handsome charming Irish gentlemen, who buy drinks. BUT THEN Irish dude learns daughter’s name and says sadly, “I could never take you home to my mother, that’s a Proddy name.”
So he foregoes even having dinner w/ beautiful daughter, because she has a Protestant NAME.
Sounds about right. Some of my irish family refused to ever speak to my grandmother again because she married a protestant. They pretended she was dead.
True story: I (English lady) moved to Ireland to live with my Irish ex-bf, and on the bus from the airport an old man starts giving out to then-bf about the fact that I was English. I genuinely never expected to receive abuse for being in a ‘mixed’ partnership. SO odd.
ETA: this was in, like, 2012.
Our cousin John (spits on his grave) dumped his kids on my great-grandmother and peaced out after his wife died IN CHILDBIRTH, NEVER took the kids back when he remarried, just had more kids with her, and when one of the Round One kids married a Protestant, he sent her a letter saying he was “disowning her.” And she was all: “uh, wow, oh no, that’s gonna make a huge difference in my life.”
I don’t even know John and I’m spitting on his grave right next to you.
wow that is beyond awful wth.
he was garbage
At the funeral, the priest started talking about what a blah blah pillar of the blah blah family man he was, and his daughter Colleen stage-whispered DO YOU THINK THEY HAVE THE RIGHT CORPSE?
My great-grandfather did pretty much the same thing, having 6 kids with his first wife, emigrating to the US (potato famine, ya’ll), then the first wife dies, he ditches the kids in orphanages, marries again, has 6 more kids. He was apparently an awful drunk as well, to round out the stereotype.
We discovered all of this when a child of the second family did a family tree and found all of us, the descendents of the first wife. In the end a Catholic priest cousin from family #2 and a nun cousin from family #1 worked out the history together and reunited several generations that one unthinking jerk had left scattered and broken.
Unexpected win for the clergy in this case.
Ah we’re all laughing now lads, we even date atheists these days!
But are they Catholic atheists or Protestant atheists?
We do indeed, although letting it slip in front of the few relatives who still go to Mass is not the best idea – they are Silently Disapproving all the time now! I guess silence is better than a sermon, mind…
I once dated a true Scotsman (hurhur) from Dundee, who spoke these undying words:
“If you don’t learn to hold your drink better, I can never introduce you to my mother.”
(Because I’m a super lightweight who gets pissed after 3 half pints).
I never thought I had any Irish ancestry, and then my MIL found that I do have an Irish forebear from County Cork. I excitedly told my mentor, a twinkly Irishman (not Irish-American).
His response? “Well, I guess I’ll still associate with you.” (He is from Clare.)
Unless this was 20 years ago, he only said to get out of paying for dinner.
My surname is O’ (last name) and a couple of miles over there’s a family of just (last name)s with no O. Anytime we talk about them my dad says they ‘took the soup’ because during the Famine, Protestant missionaries offered soup in return for converting from Catholicism and changing your name, and obviously this family did they didn’t want to damn starve, but people STILL refer to it like it’s this shameful thing. It’s mad altogether.
I confused the hell out of a drunk Irishman who criticized my proddy name. I told him my Cajun grandmother’s family name: French word for “monk”. Who’s got Catholic ancestors, now, Paddy? He was still working out whether I was worthy of his attention when I accidentally-on-purpose walked out and left him with the tab.
Leon Uris is about as Irish as Peking Duck
I love how many of these are Joyce.
I can’t decide which, if any, is Strumpet City though. 26 maybe? I mean everything is getting worse all the time for everyone but goddamn, I love that book.
Nah, if any were ‘Strumpet City’ it would include: ‘Man Dies In Basement, Gets Eaten By Rats, Is Not Allowed To Rest In Peace With Beloved Dog.”
Still makes me want to cry just thinking about it 🙁
Two Young Catholic Country Girls Corrupted by the Attentions of Wealthy (Likely, Protestant) Gentleman in the City
She Took the Ferry to London and Never Looked Back
There’s the Irish novel and then there’s the Irish novel written by others usually for the American market and they get a bit carried away with the Paddy Whackery. At this point in our history we have a pretty good idea of who we are, at least those of us who don’t fall into the shape shifting required for our visitors. We do have some special traits, but we’re also as thick as shite.
I humbly request more posts with the “just assholes” tag, as it’s already been That Kind of Day and I need some further hatertainment.
Hatertainment. I like that.
Our landlord visited yesterday, didn’t sit down for a cup of tea, the mother was sickened. IRISH LITERATURE IS TRANSCENDS ALL TIME, no matter the era we’re still the same pricks.
Ah, The Mother. And The Auld Fella, institutions the two of them. Have you seen the Irish Mammies account on Twitter? It is magical and amazing and I love it.
I bought her the book to irritate her but she got a laugh out of it. Should have expected it from the woman that jumps up and down at the thought of the Mrs Brown’s Boys movie.
Oooohhh let’s not even talk about Mrs Brown’s Boys. It makes me irrationally angry.
Is it about a bicycle?
If anyone mapped the soul of the Irish it was Flann O’Brien, the absurdity and the sheer insanity all contained on one tiny dark damp island. We don’t exist until you open up the lid and look at us then we’re like the little world in the locker in Men in Black.
That’s why I miss Kevin Myers, since he retired from the Indo. I’d swear, some days that man was channeling Myles na gCopaleen.
“Clary drank a little warm milk and died.”
The best part of this already excellent post is Nicole in the comments.
27. “Nothing overtly gay is going to happen, but we’re still going to mention Oscar Wilde about a hundred more times.”
This series is amazing and I cannot wait for it to get increasingly recondite.
EVERY CZECH NOVEL EVER
1. The Oppressors Have Arrived Speaking German, Or Perhaps Russian
2. We Are Never Bored In The Country
3. A Strapping Man Dies For A Meaningless Cause
4. Loafing As Protest
The entire world will soon be under water because capitalism. Oh, wait, that’s just reality.
She went to London to make money, and now she’s a prostitute
The village drunk shows up drunk at the wake of the richest man in the village
“All the old ways are dying,” says the man in the pub where he went to escape the old ways
“Things couldn’t be worse”, said continously until death
One more.
“Are you trying to tell me she married a PROTESTANT?”
Alternatively
“ABANDONED SMITHS SONG TITLES”
May have missed it in the comments but another title would certainly be: “Remembering Things About A Country I Will Never Set Foot In Again”
I feel so honoured to have my country’s gloriously miserable literature appear here! Particularly marvellous because I was just in the James Joyce house in Dublin today (and actually, there was such a great documentary about the role of exceptional feminists in publishing in getting his works into circulation. And one about librarians!).
Personally I would add several chapters about The Troubled Inner Lives of Priests, or perhaps Our Family Friend, The Priest, Has Been Behaving Strangely Of Late, or perhaps, A Schoolfriend Has A Vocation. (Also, have any toasties read Lamb by Bernard MacLaverty?)
The Feminization of this Handbag is a Metaphor for Colonialism
Yup. As mentioned above, Maeve and Edna seem to be missing.
Pregnancy church pregnancy church pregnancy church.
Also, Why the clearly talented parish priest was sent to this backwater….
My parents were seated in an Irish pub, up here in Ottawa (Canada) on St. Patrick’s day in the mid-80s.
Two young ladies were trying to catch the waiter’s attention, batting their eyes and giggling, until one got the courage to make an approach. She told him she loved his accent, loves Ireland, was so very impressed… but, why aren’t you wearing green?
“I’m wearin’ feckin’ orange, am I not?”
All these comments just go to show that you can’t get enough of a bad thing, which is also why I wrote an Irish novel, too….
I feel like the chapter
And Then a Child Was Diddled, Maybe.
is missing.
This is a serious question: are there ANY novels about Irish people (either in Ireland or Irish Americans) where no one’s an alcoholic? Recently I was trying to think of one and couldn’t!