The Penguin Book of Irish Comic Writing: too Irish, not comic enough

It looked so tempting in the bookshop. Why worry about finding a novel that might or might not turn out to be entertaining, when here is one with “comic” on the cover. It looked guaranteed to be entertaining when read aloud at the dinner table.

The reality was somewhat different. By one simple critera alone, the book failed: does this story make me laugh? Of the 43 stories included, fewer than ten made me laugh out loud. So what were the other stories about? How had they been selected?

Unfortunately, it seems that the compiler of the anthology, Ferdia Mac Anna, had chosen the stories on the basis of his own taste. He was born in 1955, which means that the sixties were too soon for him. Like many males of his generation, he seems to have responded to the idea of ‘liberation’ with the response that it was now OK to give full rein to his very male, very 1970s ideas of freedom: getting sloshed in the pub, doling out some misogynist and sexist remarks to any nearby females, and enjoying swearing for no particular purpose.

So, for example, there is one story, by Joseph O’Connor, about a young Irishman who travels to London to seek work. His sister arranges for him to meet a successful Irish businessman, who finds the young man some work. Instead of being grateful, the narrator, Dave, steals from the wallet of someone at his work, then throws away the businessman’s car keys and empties his briefcase on the pavement. Acts of gratuitous malevolence, pure resentment at someone else’s success. However tasteless the businessman might be does not justify such unacceptable behaviour. The worst is that we are expected to find this funny.

Or there is another story about a conceptual artist who progressively sells off his body parts. The story could be funny, but here had no humour whatever. Or the story featuring a young boy who tells everyone he meets to fuck off. We are expected to find this funny as well.  Michael Curtin’s story was one of the most offensive, a bell-ringer who tries (and fails) to seduce a woman in a pub. Even when someone spilled beer all over him, I failed to laugh.

Perhaps I sound like a curmudgeon, but for me the stories too often presented an Ireland that seems to be rapidly disappearing, a world of smoking, drinking, and cursing among men. Some of the stories were simply not funny, and some of the others attempted to be funny without achieving it – notably Flann O’Brien, whose humour was in this extract laboured.

One or two of the stories stood out. Frank O’Connor, as usual, was hilarious in his description of a young boy’s first confession. It is dated 1953, at which time it was, I think, still possible to have a humorous story set around confession at the local parish church. When the young boy confesses evil thoughts towards his bullying sister, the priest astonishes him by saying she will get her comeuppance sooner or later. Maeve Binchy tells a story, set in London, about liberal attitudes (for its time) to homosexuality, with comic consequences: the narrator is assumed erroneously to be gay and is hence invited back to a social group as a demonstration of their liberal inclusivity. Mary Morrissy writes a tale about a social misfit who steals books.

But for the most part, this is a rather dated collection representing a view of Ireland, and a view of humanity, that I would largely hope to have died out today. The book cover seems to sum it up: a curmudgeonly-looking old man in a cloth cap sitting in a pub, smoking. His dog is looking up at him, as if to say “Time you were moving on from here. We moved on from Joyce years ago”.