A Pint of Plain: Tradition, Change, and the Fate of the Irish Pub

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Type Paperback

Release Date 2010-02-02

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Description

ShhhhhhDon’t inform, but this is really a book concerning globalization, not concerning yer only man’ (i.e., the well-pulled pint of porter). Together with Oirish’ pubs cropping up in each burg and burb, what has happened to the originals?An outstanding, however sneaky, addition to the literature of globalization.”Booklist
A Pint of Plain is Bill Barich’s witty, deeply observant portrait of an Ireland vanishing before our eyes. Drawing on the wit and wisdom of O’Brien, Joyce, Behan, and Synge, Barich explores how Irish culture has become a commodity for export. While Irish pubs in the countryside are closing at the alarming rate of one per day, replicas are being born in foreign countries at the same rate. From the famed watering holes of Dublin to tiny village pubs, Barich introduces a colorful array of characters, and engages in an unvarnished yet affectionate discussion concerning what it means to be Irish today.

Customer Reviews

Hypocritical and Self Righteous 2010-08-10

By BigRedDog423

The problem with this book wasn't premise but rather the writer. Here is a man desperate to find a place that lives up to his ideal (classic film "A Quiet Man") which is itself a prepackaged piece of propaganda that was considered unrealistic 60 years ago. He disdains the Irish for not preserving his idea of their culture. Why should they not be allowed the modern advances that he himself enjoys? Why are they not allowed to own homes in the suburbs? Why can't their villages enjoy TVs and telephones? This is a man who probably goes to Native American reservations and yells at them for not wearing headdresses and living in teepees.

As someone who has visited many of the pubs he disdains in Dublin, I think this man needs to grow up. As long as there are good people and good drink, a pub will be a good one. Not because it acts as some living museum that he hopes to will into existence but because it does it's job as a place for socializing and craic. As far as I'm concerned, big screen TVs, guitars in sessions, karaoke nights, and tourists from all over the world only serve to improve the fun and interesting conversations that pubs are supposed to be based on. What should have been an interesting collection of anecdotes instead became the rantings of a petulant child decrying change and demanding the world conform to his favorite movie.

Critical outsider 2010-06-07

By Shamrock

Ok book but this guy is an outsider commenting on Irish culture. I picked this up thinking it was going to be humorous anecdotes of things that happen in Irish Pubs. According to him, Pubs should have no TV and only "traditional music" with no recorded music being played. Also the only things people should talk about are great works of literature and poetry. This guys is such a freaking snob it is sickening. No wonder most of the "common" folk did not want to discuss the works of Yeats and Joyce. If I walked into a corner pub in the U.S. full of longshoremen and started asking who wanted to discuss the nuances of Mark Twain, then spoke down to them when no one wanted to, I would take a beating. It is as if he blames the Irish for simply trying to get through their day to day existence and that every one of them should be living as they did in the early 1900's and pondering where their culture is going instead of trying to pay the mortgage. He believes that Irish culture should resemble the Quiet Man and he is upset that he cannot find a pub like the one in the movie. He also believes that one should never sink so low as to visit anything even remotely resembling a "tourist" bar. You know what, I watched Happy Days one time but I do not believe that Milwaukee is stuck in the 1950's and not every restaurant there resembles "Arnold's" Drive In.

I frankly think that it is none of his business what the Irish do or do not do with their culture.

A warm glimpse into Irish drink and daily living 2009-05-17

By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)

A PINT OF PLAIN: TRADITION, CHANGE AND THE FATE OF THE IRISH PUB arrived too late for St. Patrick's Day feature in our March issue but deserves a place in any general lending library strong in Irish history, culture and food and drink. After meeting an Irishwoman in London and moving to Dublin the author began seeking a traditional Irish pub to be 'his'. His search offers views of a bygone Ireland, modern Irish culture, blends in literary references, and offers a warm glimpse into Irish drink and daily living. Highly recommended.

"Fairytale Ireland" is nearly dead and gone, despite the Tourist Board 2009-04-29

By John L Murphy (Los Angeles)

"Drink is a good man's weakness." Proverbial wisdom Barich passes along during his personal and historical tour of Irish pubs. "Fairytale Ireland" may be marketed under the "Irish Pub Concept" pre-fab faux-antique corporate chains, as traditional pubs decline and decay under stricter drunk-driving laws. These in turn necessitated by the commuters ripping along (Barich estimates a fifteen-fold increase) rural roads as tract homes tear up fields for the Celtic Tiger's rapacious tail. And, such new residents don't frequent the "local," preferring their Carlsberg or Coors in cans from the logoed franchises that replace the family-run stores in the market towns overwhelmed by the blow-ins from the cities and all over the world.

So the cycle continues, and Long Island-born, California-residing Barich, now moved himself to Dublin, tells the tale of a slow death to civility, custom, and charm. About half his book takes place in Dublin, and he tells each chapter set there with grace and pace. He knows how to veer from his main story into anecdotes and byways before returning to his narrative, and this relation of his saga reflects well how a tale's told by a teller in a pub. He classifies the remaining pubs into trophy bars, pitched for tourists more than the neighbors and often based on their venerable status; pleasant but less distinguished corner houses; and corporate chains, which in Ireland appear to erase their "tradition" for a streamlined gentrification, even as abroad you find such enterprises as a hundred "Harrington & Sons" fake pubs saturating the Italian consumer.

Such globalization leads to Irish rejection of Guinness as an old man's heavy stout. Younger Irish follow their Anglo-American cousins in choosing more wine, and lighter German or American beers to quaff, often at home rather than in the company of those who at many pubs tend to be older, more insular, and stodgier. Younger Irish appear too to be suburban rather than urban in their tastes; immigrants replace the stereotypical publican, and such changes are more than cosmetic. They, for Barich, represent the decline of what Perry Share calls the "third place" of camaraderie outside home or work that the pub has long represented, the true public house.

The erosion of such ties for many Irish shows their fragmentation along Western lines as they retreat from the communal, village, farm-based culture into a sprawl of strip malls, semi-detached estates, and endless commutes far from the small towns where the suburbs now stretch to and supplant. Like farmers, publicans find few of the next generation willing to take on the intensive labor demanded to make a living.

"It's been said that a publican must be a democrat, an autocrat, an acrobat, and a doormat," Barich observes (21). He's good at summing up, in the second half, his encounters, or lack of such, in rural Ireland. Outside Sligo town, Barich finds one pub in the middle of a dark nowhere, a remnant of when the pub was also a house, and run by the family for the surrounding peasants. Three fellows hunch over the bar, "each in solitary contemplation of his jar. Their mood was desultory, as if a night at the pub was a dreary job they meant to quit as soon as they could." (163)

In Clonaslee in the Slieve Bloom mountains, bored teens in hoodies under a drizzle hunch too, too young to drink legally. Smoking, they slouch outside the supermarket. "Whenever an older boy wheeled by in a car and blew his horn, they roused themselves for a salute, pumping their fists and leaning hopefully toward the driver as they might toward a cherished vision of the future." (213) In this village, Barich also seems to stumble upon his Platonic vision of the type of pub such as Dublin's Brazen Head could never live up to. M. D. Hickey's stands, with four people inside the room the size of a walk-in closet. The true nature of the old pub, half-house, half-shebeen, here welcomes him with that elusive, however energetically marketed by the Tourist Board, hospitality that finds fewer givers and takers in these hectic, yuppified Irish times.

There were, perhaps it being hectic, a few slips in proofreading. "1852" for "1952" should mark one capital city pub's leasing. A "Vicentian" priest makes an off-stage appearance, while three times, "Malm Cross" gets a mention instead of "Maam" (or alternately "Maum") for the anglicization of the Irish toponym "Mám." Given Barich's ill-starred exploration of Cong of "The Quiet Man" fame or blame, it's puzzling how this error of that nearby place name would be tripled.

Otherwise, his scholarship's apparent if worn lightly; there's a list of his sources appended, but the very readable, brisk text moves free of footnotes. Barich does not end on any hokey epiphany that all will be well at the one last pub at the end of a rainbowed road. The historic identity that the pub stands for, the civility and communal bonds it fosters, now find themselves razed by generic retailers owned far away. Values corrode as "the local-- as in the particular, the unique-- was under siege, batted about the head by the insistently global." (235)

One example that causes controversy stands for the whole capitulation of Ireland to modernization. "The two-lane blacktops pressed into service as highways are a problem, but should Tara be threatened to correct it, simply to please the commuters?" (200) The destruction of the national heritage, the exfoliation of the island's greenbelt, the savaging of the landscape by lack of planning: these too despoil the image of Ireland the postcards and guidebooks persist in peddling, not to mention the ubiquitious Guinness-- now owned by an Italian distributor (along with Alpo pet food, Burger King, Pillsbury dough, and the pseudo-ethnic concoction, Haagen-Dazs).

Like the Pope writing a book about John Lennon... 2009-04-17

By Joshua R. Cronin (Clarno, OR)

Barich is searching for a myth. There are plenty of authentic Irish pubs, both in Ireland and elsewhere. What makes a good pub? It's a place that meets your needs, be it a quiet spot for a pint, a place to discuss the ponies and dogs, a place for a session and maybe a set or two, or a place to watch rugby or football. The notion that there's one authentic pub experience, or any inauthentic experience is basically ridiculous. Barich wants a pub that is suspended in time, yet not touristy or a "museum piece." Of course Ireland is changing. Of course pubs are changing. Who's to judge what's authentic? Guitars in sessions??? They've been there for years. So has the bodhran, like it or not. It's all about the craic, and that's all about what you're looking for at the moment. Barich is judgemental and narrow-minded in his view of what's authentic. He's seeking an ideal that he's been told is "authentic" and overlooking a good experience because there are too many tourists or the session is a bit pre-fab. I've found good craic in a pub with big screen TVs and in a pub with an oul' fella belting out country tunes while singing along to a drum machine. One thing that doesn't belong in a pub is an academic, trying to quantify good craic. Get out there and have a few pints and find a pub that fits. It's a better use of your time than trying to slog through this book.

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