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Tradition, Change, and the Fate of the Irish Pub
Walker & Company
February 2009
On Sale: February 3, 2009
256 pages
ISBN: 0802717012
EAN: 9780802717016
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Seamlessly blending history and reportage, Bill Barich
offers a heartfelt homage to the traditional Irish pub, and
to the central piece of Irish culture disappearing along
with it. After meeting an I rishwoman in London and moving to
Dublin, Bill Barich—a “blow-in,” or stranger, in Irish
parlance—found himself looking for a traditional I rish pub
to be his local. There are nearly twelve thousand pubs in
Ireland, so he appeared to have plenty of choices. He
wanted a pub like the one in John Ford’s classic movie, The
Quiet Man, offering talk and drink with no distractions,
but such pubs are now scare as publicans increasingly rely
on flat-screen televisions, rock music, even Texas Hold ’Em
to attract a dwindling clientele. For Barich, this signaled
that something deeper was at play—an erosion of the essence
of Ireland, perhaps without the Irish even being aware. A Pint of Plain is Barich’s witty, deeply observant
portrait of an Ireland vanishing before our eyes. Drawing
on the wit and wisdom of Flann O’Brien (the title comes
from one of his poems), James Joyce, Brendan Behan, and J.
M. Synge, Barich explores how I rish culture has become a
commodity for exports for such firms as the I rish Pub
Company, which has built some five hundred “authentic”
Irish pubs in forty-five countries, where “authenticity is
in the eye of the beholder.” The tale of Arthur Guinness
and the famous brewery he founded in the mid-eighteenth
century reveals the astonishing fact that more stout is
sold in Nigeria than in Ireland itself. While 85 percent of
the I rish still stop by a pub at least once a month,
strict drunk-driving laws have helped to kill business in
rural areas. Even traditional I rish music, whose rich
roots “connect the past to the present and close a circle,”
is much less prominent in pub life. I ronically, while I
rish pubs in the countryside are closing at the alarming
rate of one per day, plastic I PC-type pubs are being born
in foreign countries at the exact same rate. From the famed watering holes of Dublin to tiny village
pubs, Barich introduces a colorful array of characters,
and, ever pursuing craic, the ineffable Irish word for a
good time, engages in an unvarnished yet affectionate
discussion about what it means to be Irish today.
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