Uncovering the curiosities of Irish behaviour | Tracy Nyhan

Entertainment editor Tracy Nyhan speaks to author and anthropologist David Slattery before his visit to UCC. Can you tell us about your new book, Poet, Madman, Scoundrel, and give a few examples of the characters dealt with in the book? I wanted to write a book that captured a broader range of Irish humanity than the traditional historical approach. Irish historians can be quite puritanical about who deserves to be remembered, and can set themselves up as moral, political, and patriotic authorities on who deserves to get into our history. As a result, those selected tend to be boring. I decided to set myself up as a different sort of historical authority, and write a book about those I thought were not boring. Yes, that makes my selection highly personal because what bores me is highly individualistic. In general, I am bored by politicians, most people who are successful - especially in worthy fields, churchmen, the pious, and Peig Sayers. But I don’t feel I am doing these an historical injustice by ignoring them because they have plenty historical coverage elsewhere. I noticed that women tend to be forgotten so I tried to include as many of them as possible because, surprisingly, they are as interesting as the men.So who are the people I find interesting in Irish history?  Many of the old saints were quite mad. There are interesting prostitutes and criminals who were relatively successful, at least for a while. I also find artists interesting if they have a weakness for drugs, alcohol, violence, or a particular muse. Ireland produced the best horror writers in the nineteenth century, before the invention of electrical lighting, a skill we have surrendered to Hollywood. We have also had some notable crazy scientists and mathematicians, for example, the Boole sisters from Cork, some of the first publicly acknowledged lesbians, as well as explorers, soldiers, sailors and tall people. My book is really just a dolly-mixture of interesting people who, because of their own strength of character for good or evil, make me proud to be Irish. Robert Emmet is well remembered but we forget his revolution lasted only two hours, that he invented the flick-pike and that his bomb factory blew up. He deserves not to be forgotten for those achievements in incompetence.     Your previous book, How to Be Irish, has achieved widespread acclaim and has been praised by Des Bishop as "an insightful and funny delve into the Irish mind.” On a personal level, how important is it for you to study the Irish mindset? I had three reasons for writing about the Irish mindset from an anthropological point of view. First, I wanted to do something to try to popularise my own discipline - anthropology - in Ireland because, while it is a very interesting discipline, it is not well known. Some people think it may even be the study of ants. Second, if I was going to make anthropology popular in Ireland I thought that I should do it about contemporary Irishness because we Irish are fascinated by ourselves. Third, objectively speaking we have a unique attitude that I felt would be interesting to capture because, while there have been foreign anthropological studies of Irishness, there has been very little by Irish people on Irishness. I especially wanted to look at the lighter side of topics like the dysfunctional Irish family, the role of death and misery, builders, our relationship with global culture, our collective emotional retardation – all the things that we love to complain about.Is it important on a national and international level? For example, is representing aspects of ‘Irishness’ - in the witty approach that you utilise - important for how we view ourselves and for how others view us? While the book is funny, it also has a serious agenda. At the time of writing, because the international reputation of the country was collapsing around us, I wanted to write something that would make Irish people feel good about being Irish and make non-Irish jealous that they might be missing out. It is very important to me that I write about Irishness in such a way that it makes us, in Ireland, feel proud of ourselves. It is great when someone would tell me that they thought that what I wrote was awful but true and made them laugh. At the level of national psychotherapy, we have to celebrate who we are rather than trying to be something else. I try to emphasise the wealth of our culture in social interactions, the complexity of our Hiberno-English: to make us feel like a special club that anyone would want to belong to. In this year of “The Gathering” it is important to show people in an international context how rich and complex our society is, especially if they are planning to come here for a gathering, which actually sounds like something from a zombie film.     Your witty approach is refreshing to say the least – what made you take this approach rather than old-fashioned (boring) approach to writing about history? I have always had a sense of humour which has been a huge defect because it can get in the way of a traditional academic career. History, especially Irish history, is traditionally very serious. Most important thinking tends to be serious. So you can imagine the handicap of having a sense of humour about the Black Death, beheadings, failed revolutions, losing wars and all the other things that characterise the past in Ireland. I have to train myself not to make jokes about the famine, which by the way, I don’t. I would be much happier if I had no sense of humour – if I was an old-fashioned bore - because it makes writing old-fashioned boring stuff easier. But when I think of something funny I tend to write it down without thinking through the consequences. My parents took me aside when I was young and warned me that my life would be ruined if I didn’t stop seeing the humour in things. Naturally I ignored them because that’s what you should do with parental warnings. I read something recently that people are more likely to believe things that they find boring or don’t understand. Consequently, people don’t believe things they find interesting or understand. No one ever believes me, even when I am telling the truth. It is better for any career if you can do indignant ranting about how awful everyone and everything is. I advise anyone wanting to write about culture and history to rant if they can. Eventually, after experimenting with being boring I gave up and went with my wittier instincts. Fortunately, people outside of academic history find it interesting, but they hardly count. I am currently a contributing editor for Popular Anthropology because surprisingly there is an emerging demand for popular stuff. Who could have seen that coming?     David Slattery’s books are available in book shops such as Liam Ruiseal’s in Cork, Easons, online at OrpenPress.com and on Amazon.co.uk where it is also available in Kindle format. He will be speaking tonight (Tuesday) at 19:30 in Civil Engineering G10, hosted by the Historical Society.