A Pint of Plain: Tradition, Change, and the Fate of the Irish Pub
by Bill Barich
That writers and alcohol go together like gin and tonic might be true around the world, but it seems especially true in Ireland, where most every pub around claims James Joyce as a regular.
In his quest for the perfect pub, Bill Barich does find the true Joycean spots, like Davy Byrnes, referred to as a “moral pub” in Ulysses because the proprietor frowned upon gambling, and which today serves Leopold Bloom’s lunch, a gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of burgundy, for roughly $15. He finds other literary pubs, too, like McDaids, once the post-World War II “pub of choice for Dublin’s self-destructive literary stars,” now nothing but “a tenderly curated museum piece.”
But Barich is after more than just the trivia of pubs, even if he relishes a few well-chosen details. In A Pint of Plain, a phrase made famous in a poem by Flann O’Brien (otherwise known as Brian O’Nolan, McDaids regular), Barich is after the magic of pubs. He uncovers their social role, their history – their rise and fall with commerce, globalization, drunkenness laws – and their worldwide export (thanks in no small part to the company behind Guinness). He knows what makes a solid bartender and a perfect pour. But Barich is primarily after that ineffable something that makes for an ideal watering hole – the “craic,” an “elusive and free-floating” quality, the contagious pleasure of collectively performed fun, the atmosphere, the authenticity, the Irishness.
Barich starts his search in his adopted neighborhood of Ranelagh, continuing to the tourist destinations and hidden spots of Dublin and out to lesser-known rural towns. He follows the counsel of friends and guidebooks, often debunking the optimistic claims of the latter, and ultimately visiting over 100 pubs (though he’s endearingly nervous about having missed a gem among the 11,873 Irish pubs he did not visit). He starts out imagining that the collection of good “bric-a-brac” is a testament to a pub’s authenticity, but finds that such knick knacks are usually purposefully chosen, and brand new, as much a gimmick as some of the other stuff we Americans often associate with a fun bar – trivia nights, karaoke, DJs, big screen TVs, even recorded music.
As Barich travels, he picks up the life stories of publicans and tales from bar patrons, from veteran drinkers like Willie the docker (who would rather go sober than drink the pittance his doctor allows, two pints per week) to the German tourist who reads Karl May and still thinks his home country bests Ireland for love of beer. Barich describes them novelistically, as when an old regular at a rough pub, after initially eyeing Barich as a “blow-in” or stranger, pounds his fist on the bar to catch the attention of a distracted barman. “The bruiser’s gesture on my behalf, so polite and aware, had less to do with my discomfort,” Barich writes, “than with a desire to uphold the dignity of the Liberties, his home turf, and show it in the best possible light. It’s not as tough as you’ve heard, stranger, he might have said.”
Barich blends his anecdotes with a broader history, relating it all in the easy style of a good bar-going conversationalist, rather than as a historian or a sociologist. When he does bring academic research to bear on the conversation, it’s generally only a line or two, dropped casually and sometimes dismissively. The rare sociologist that receives more space, and rightfully so, is Ray Oldenburg, whose theory of “third places” speaks to why the pub is so important: it provides “neutral ground that erases the distinction between a host and a guest,” a place for plain, intimate, trusting conversation, “not bingo, karaoke, Texas Hold ‘Em, or a televised football match.”
Barich finds only a precious few such places, and he describes them with bite. Of one, he writes, “Time passed slowly at Mulligan’s, or maybe it ceased to exist.” Of Kavanagh’s, he notes, “If you introduced a scrap of plastic, it might burst into flame.” At Mary Hickey’s, he imagines that his easy camaraderie with other patrons “recaptured the spirit and flavor of thousands of other gatherings at Hickey’s over the years.”
But primarily, a sense of loss, a hazy preemptive nostalgia, pervades A Pint of Plain. Ireland is becoming more like the rest of the world, and the rest of the world copies, in the form of “plastic pubs,” a “romantic, changeless” fairy-tale Ireland. “People long for the mythical kingdom of harps and Guinness, bards and crumbling castles, where conflict doesn’t exist and Tim Finnegan wakes from the dead, buoyed back to life by a baptismal splash of whiskey,” Barich writes. But the pub isn’t merely romantic, Barich finds. Essential to understanding real Irishness, the historic identity, is the humble pub – an essentially democratic, leveling institution that is fading, and can’t be replicated.
Excerpt: “To date, the Irish Pub Company has built about five hundred pubs in forty-five countries. Italy, its foremost client, has almost reached the saturation point, with more than a hundred Harrington & Son-style operations strung from Milan to Palermo. (Names must be chosen carefully, the Irish Pub Concept site suggests. The tag “& Son” confers a patina of history.) There’s no shortage of new applicants, though, with plenty of prospective moguls in Russia, China, and Dubai, where the company already has twenty employees, clamoring for an opportunity. Some projects are small and simple…while others are huge and complex, such as Nine Fine Irishmen… [in] MGM’s New York-New York Hotel & Casino on the Vegas strip. The Irishmen led a futile rising in 1848, but that hasn’t hurt business…the pub has been a huge hit and grosses about $14 million a year.”
Further Reading: A Fine Place to Daydream: Racehorses, Romance, and the Irish
Send A Letter To the Editors