SOURCE: Cosgrove, Brian. “Roddy Doyle's Backward Look: Tradition and Modernity in Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 85, no. 339 (autumn 1996): 231-42.

In the following essay, Cosgrove contrasts traditional Irish ideology and modern Irish thought in Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, comparing Paddy Clarke's childhood and subsequent loss of innocence with the young adults in Ireland who embrace modern ideals and pop culture.

Engaging with Irish Modernity: Doyle and the New Dublin Suburbs

One of the major difficulties in any attempt to interpret the work of Roddy Doyle is that he appears to have no clear ideological position. That there should be no authoritative narrative ‘voice’ is not unexpected: readers of Irish fiction, tutored by Joyce (himself tutored by Flaubert), have long been accustomed to such an absence. Doyle's neutrality of presentation, however, seems even more extreme. His novels, omitting as they do almost all reference...