‘Keep the aspidistra flying’: The satirising of Celtic Tiger, ‘aspirational’ lifestyles in Mark O’Rowe’s early work (Pre-published version)

Abstract

In recent years, Fintan O’Toole and other commentators have alleged that Irish writers have shirked the responsibility to capture and critique the changing Ireland within which they live.1 O’Toole is particularly appalled by the fact that Irish writers have not written more explicitly about Celtic Tiger greed and corruption. It is certainly true that, over the past twenty years, many – or, indeed, most – of the major works produced by Ireland’s celebrated playwrights and fiction writers have been set in pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland, or (more worrying still) in an Ireland that seems quite unlike the one that we inhabit today.2 This tendency to look back may be due to future shock – that is, Irish writers might have found it hard to describe such a rapidly changing environment. On the other hand, it may simply be because great literary works are often born out of an author’s memory. (After all, Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), like Beckett’s Company (1980) and Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), did appear before the public many years after the autobiographical incidents they describe.)