His novels are not slavish documentations they celebrate imagination’s power to alter and overcome a constricting reality
His novels are not slavish documentations; they celebrate imagination’s power to alter and overcome a constricting reality The Van is about a farcical fish and chip shop on wheels. Though he swears by fried food – “Ah now, there’s nothing like a good bag of chips, I could live on ‘em” – Doyle proudly asserts that he has never set foot in any such vehicle. “When Stephen Frears made the film of it, there were three vans on the set I kept well clear of ‘em all Maybe I’m superstitious. At school I’d encourage my students to set their stories in New Delhi, anywhere but Dublin. I’d tell them to go and look at a menu outside an Indian take-away if they wanted to do research.”The members of the band in The Commitments displace their grim, grotty hometown to an imaginary America when they play their own brand of “Dublin soul”. The 10-year-old boy in Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha uses his creative talent to control a disintegrating world Telling lies, he revises and aggrandises the truth.
Words are his weapons, an arsenal of spells: “Fuck was the best word The most dangerous word. You couldn’t whisper it.” And in Doyle’s new novel, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, an abused, alcoholic, under-educated wife – despite having read nothing much except paperbacks by Catherine Cookson and Shirley Conran scavenged from bins in the offices she cleans – settles down to write a book in which she reinterprets her own history and promotes herself to the status of a heroine.”Yes,” said Doyle, “she’s doing the same thing as me – only I have a bit more practice. That’s why the chapters are numbered in this one, a huge technical innovation for me. I thought that Paula would probably start by putting a big 1 at the top of the first page Actually she’s a modernist, though she doesn’t know it. She strays away from chronology when it suits her, and she shifts between the past tense and the present It’s not that anyone can write a novel.
There are some of us who definitely can’t – and that includes quite a number who get published. I just think that there are very few stupid people in the world. There’s such creativity in the way ordinary people use language – in slang, for instance Writing is only one step further on. The good thing is that it’s cheap, you don’t need lots of fancy equipment. After that, getting published is a matter of luck.”Though it seems implausibly cosy, this democratic credo corresponds to Doyle’s own experience.
When no one would publish his first novel, he published his next, The Commitments, himself. “I went into partnership with John Sutton, a friend of mine from university who was struggling to run a theatre company. The bank loan was no more than you’d need to buy a good second-hand car. I didn’t have a mortgage then, so I could afford it.” Publishing the book, like forming a band, was an exercise in the creation of a community, relying on friendships Doyle has loyally maintained: we met in the Dublin office of Sutton’s graphic design company “The publishers in London say John’s my agent. Well, I think he can read, but I doubt that there’s such a thing as a literary agent in all of Ireland. Sometimes we call him my manager, though that makes him sound like Colonel Tom Parker. I had other friends who helped with the proof-reading, and we stuck some of my students on the cover.”Like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, putting on a show in the barn which then magically transfers to Broadway?”Quite right,” said Doyle “My wife did the publicity, that’s how I met her She played Judy Garland.