Something of a Hero: An Interview with Roddy Doyle - Interview

Literary Review, Summer, 1999 by Karen Sbrockey

What motivated you to do The Commitments?

I decided I wanted to write about the type of kids I taught and had become charmed by, really, and whose company I enjoyed, who are typical of the type of place I came from. I didn't want it to be a school story. I wanted to see them a few years after they would leave school, still young, but adult. Forming a band just struck me as being a good excuse to bring them together. It could have been a football team because I'm also very fond of football, but I can't see football being funny--or amusing on paper. Also, it would have been restricted to one sex.

Were you satisfied with the film [The Commitments]?

The Commitments I think is terrific. [But] now and again, I thought the outsider's view of Ireland crept in. For example, there's one scene where one of the young guys goes to confession. Now, the punch line is good, but he wouldn't go to confession. I know that. I'm from Ireland. Now and again, there was a bit too much of the holy statues around and nuns going through hospital. I've been a patient and a visitor in hospitals myself and I've yet to see a nun.

Were you surprised how popular The Commitments was outside Ireland?

I was, I have to admit. I was even more surprised at the popularity of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha, to be honest with you. It's been my most popular book by a long distance, and I was one of those quite convinced that it would not have a hell of a lot of appeal outside of Ireland at all.

When you write, do you think of your audience as Ireland primarily, or do you think toward America?

No, I don't look at America. I think if I started looking at America, you'd never see the same type of writing again. If I started rewriting [The Woman Who Walked Into Doors] thinking, well, Sally Field will read this and she'll want to make a movie, it's goodbye. The book is gone. If it's true to me, if I think it's accurate, if I think it's well put together and well structured, if I'm happy with it, then I'm finished with it.

[The Woman Who Walked Into Doors] will not be as commercially successful as Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha. There's no doubt about that whatsoever. Paddy Clarke, with nothing to do with me, became a very popular Christmas present after the Booker Prize. I know some people who got four and five copies of it and had to go without sweaters and shirts for the holidays. [But] you will not be giving your granny a copy of The Woman Who Walked Into Doors: 'It's lovely, Granny, it's about domestic violence. It's right down your alley.' It's not going to happen. Now, if I started thinking, I want a book that'll be even more successful than Paddy Clarke, I won't write it.

My books have been translated into Korean and Chinese. [But] the stories are universal. Childhood is essentially the same all over the world. Pregnancy is the same all over the world. On top of that, they're set in a couple of square miles of one particular, unique locality in the world. If I start thinking about markets, that unique locality will disappear and it will just be bland.