‘Little details are important’

Roddy Doyle enthralls audience in DNLF Summer Series

Booker prize winner and bestselling author Roddy Doyle brought the life and times of the literary world's most famous modern Irish family - the Rabbittes - to Nenagh on June 26 in an engaging and entertaining talk as part of the Dromineer Nenagh Literary Festival (DNLF) Summer Series.

On a glorious summer’s evening at Tullamore Park, the author was led through his work, his life and his inspirations by fellow author and lecturer on the UL Creative Writing programme Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, who described Doyle as "one of the greatest Irish writers ever”.

Doyle burst on to the literary stage with the publication of his first novel The Commitments back in 1987 - most people will have seen the Alan Parker screen version - followed by The Snapper and The Van. Each dealt with the Rabbitte family, headed by its patriarch Jimmy.

As Roddy explained to the audience at Tullamore Park, at the time, it made sense to follow the family’s fortunes until it came to the point where they didn’t want him to be part of their family and he didn’t want to be part of theirs. An amicable split followed, but if it did, so did works such as The Woman who walked into Doors and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, the coming-of-age tale that picked up the 1993 Booker Prize.

The attentive audience lapped it up, as Doyle explained how he takes experience and fictionalises it.

His formative years were spent teaching in Kilbarrack on Dublin’s northside, but his influence was the Dublin working class people populating the works of Sean O’Casey, explaining that his generation “were the grandchildren of the O’Casey era”. His mother’s first cousin was the US-based Irish journalist and writer Maeve Brennan, a fact lost on him until later in life when he discovered her work.

Ms Moore Fitzgerald pointed out that Doyle had “shaped us” through his work, which was a mixture of “comedy and profound emotional truths”.

This is certainly true of The Woman who walked into Doors, which deals with domestic abuse and his acclaimed TV series Family, the chronicling of family break up and its effects, which caused uproar when broadcast on RTÉ in 1994.

DEATH THREATS

Doyle revealed that his mother had been pushed while outside of her house and he had received death threats after it screened, including one written in blood. However, the series had stirred up a national debate over the way it portrayed Irish family life, as well as challenging the then conservative way Irish TV portrayed the Irish family.

Doyle is also the author of a number of children’s stories as well as stage plays, including Brownbread, which was performed by Nenagh Players a number of years ago.

In a wide-ranging talk, Doyle emphasised how the “little details are important” when it comes to his writings and displayed how his observational wit is as sharp as the legendary Irish comedian Dave Allen; Doyle can take a situation or a phrase and turn it into an image that sticks in the mind forever.

To end, he read an extract from his yet to be published untitled next novel.

Ahead of the talk, the audience was treated to superb harp playing of Clodagh Moylan along with cheese and wine sponsored by Peter and Mary Ward of Country Choice.

Festival curator and chair Geraldine McNulty thanked the festival’s main sponsors the Arts Council and Tipperary County Council as well as the Kennedy family, who allow the use of Tullamore Park for the festival, and Country Choice.

This year’s Dromineer Nenagh Literary Festival takes place from October 8 to 11.