A Pint of Plain Tradition Change and the Fate of the Irish Pub (Audible Audio Edition) Bill Barich Daniel Noel Audible Studios Books
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Seamlessly blending history and reportage, Bill Barich offers a heartfelt homage to the traditional Irish pub, and to the central piece of Irish culture disappearing along with it. After meeting an Irishwoman in London and moving to Dublin, Bill Baricha found himself looking for a traditional Irish pub to be his local.
There are nearly 12,000 pubs in Ireland, so he appeared to have plenty of choices. He wanted a pub like the one in John Fords classic movie, "The Quiet Man", offering talk and drink with no distractions, but such pubs are now scare as publicans increasingly rely on flat-screen televisions, rock music, even Texas Hold 'Em to attract a dwindling clientele. For Barich, this signaled that something deeper was at playan erosion of the essence of Ireland, perhaps without the Irish even being aware.
A Pint of Plain is Barichs witty, deeply observant portrait of an Ireland vanishing before our eyes. Drawing on the wit and wisdom of Flann O'Brien, James Joyce, Brendan Behan, and J. M. Synge, Barich explores how Irish culture has become a commodity for exports for such firms as the Irish Pub Company, which has built some 500 authentic Irish pubs in 45 countries, where authenticity is in the eye of the beholder. The tale of Arthur Guinness and the famous brewery he founded in the mid-18th century reveals the astonishing fact that more stout is sold in Nigeria than in Ireland itself.
From the famed watering holes of Dublin to tiny village pubs, Barich introduces a colorful array of characters, and, ever pursuing craic, the ineffable Irish word for a good time, engages in an unvarnished yet affectionate discussion about what it means to be Irish today.
A Pint of Plain Tradition Change and the Fate of the Irish Pub (Audible Audio Edition) Bill Barich Daniel Noel Audible Studios Books
This was an interesting book. I checked out a few of these pubs in Ireland and the descriptions were accurate. I especially liked the Grave Diggers Pub next door to the Glasnevin Cemetary. It's not a flashy sports pub but it is one of a kind.Product details
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A Pint of Plain Tradition Change and the Fate of the Irish Pub (Audible Audio Edition) Bill Barich Daniel Noel Audible Studios Books Reviews
The Irish pub was reeling when Bill Barich wrote”A Pint of Plain” in 2007-8. At the time, it appeared that modernity would do for them, in two ways — first, prosperity was making pubs absurdly expensive ($3 million, and up if the land was ripe for development); and, second, what the Irish call drink-driving laws were massacring rural pubs, which was most of them.
The prosperity proved to be imaginary, but the drink-driving laws were real enough. Since “A Pint of Plain” was published something like a fifth to a quarter of pubs have closed. And the rest, well, as Barich was lamenting a decade ago, they are changing beyond recognition.
Pub consultants recommend offering better food as a way to keep up business. So this is what you get at The Hill in Ranelagh (the first pub described by Barich) “The Frickel and Cheese — Deep Fried Crispy Pickles, Cheese, Slow Roasted Tomato, Rocket, Hot Sauce & Garlic Mayo on a Brioche Bun.”
The rest of the Americanized menu sounds even worse.
Here is what Barich said about it a decade ago “The Hill struck me as Ranelagh’s most eye-catching pub, so I tried it first. Founded in 1845, it occupies a knoll on the fringe of the village and has a canary-yellow paint job that flashes like a beacon on gloomy, overcast afternoons. Off the beaten path, it doesn’t attract many outsiders, and its stalwart regulars give it an inbred quality a stranger — or a ‘blow-in,’ as the Irish put it— might have trouble cracking.”
The perfect traditional pub that Barich sought perhaps never was. His model was the pub in the 1951 film “The Quiet Man,” but the exterior shots were of a grocery, and the interiors were filmed on a set (which he quaintly calls a sound stage) in Los Angeles. The set furniture has since been shipped to Eire and used to open a pub.
This, and other things, sets Barich off on an extended rumination about authenticity.
An authentic rural pub wouldn’t be affected by drink-driving laws, since all the tipplers would have walked up. If pubs are disappearing from the countryside, it must be mostly due to the depopulation of the rural areas, which has been going on since 1798 and is now about finished.
If Irish pubs are disappearing from Eire, they are propagating across the world — even Dubai. The ones I have been in from New York to Hawaii are not much like the ones Barich liked in Ireland, except perhaps for the uappetizing food. It is a curious fact — not occurring to Barich — that the Irish saloonkeepers in America made little or no effort to reproduce what Barich takes to be the true spirit of the pub “a space apart for socializing, where casual friendships and a democratic spirit prevail.”
“A Pint of Plain” is an amusing read, since Barich never stops himself from pursuing bits of history or sociology that have only marginal connections to beer drinking.
He also gets points for knowing the meaning of stevedore, the only modern author I have encountered who does.
Love this book. Informative, sad, funny, and well-written. An incisive look at the dying traditions of Irish culture. A terrible loss.
Pleasent read
Gives one a pretty good idea of the pub scene in Ireland, but sort of dragged on. As someone who's travelled to Ireland, this undervalued the great institution that the local pub is and should be.
Colourful and quirky descriptions....
good story of the history of the public houses in Ireland and how society and DUI laws have changed things.
In a Pint of Plain, Bill Barich takes the reader with him as he searches for the "traditional" Irish pub in post Celtic Tiger Ireland. Weaving tales of some of Ireland's more colorful and notable pub dwellers and a discussion of the evolution of Ireland's pub culture into his urban and rural jaunt, the author is clearly disppointed with what he sees as an Ireland embracing a modernity that replaces what to him might have been a more charming past. At the end of the day, who's to say what defines "traditional"? I'm confident that Barich didn't draft his manuscript with a quill and that his search was not executed on horseback. So, as slick and contempory as it may have become, why begrudge an Ireland eager to embrace a higher standrard of living and an Ireland that is not content to be someone's museum piece? Why condemn smart and business savvy publicans who understand and respond to the wants and expectations of a changing clientele?
Shunning anything that runs afoul (read television and recorded music) of his pub ideal and dismissing those shops that flirt with an atmosphere that might be defined as "traditional" by most standards as prepackaged, prefabricated, Ireland-by-Disney shlock, Barich seems more interested in simply finding a pub that suits him.
Opining on how Ireland's culture is being exported while concurrently being diluted at home, the author's search seems to be more a quixotic quest that has no more chance of success than a search for Waltons Mountain or Walnut Grove. Ultimately, what he is nostalgic for in the Irish pub is rooted in a time when Ireland suffered poverty, economic stagnation and an oppressive theocracy. Would he be content to assume that baggage as part of his desire for "tradition"?
Overall, A Pint of Plain is an enjoyable, fun read. I'm sure Mr. Barich's pub is out there somewhere. He may just have to go to the Bunratty Folk Park to find it. Or he could go to Tom Collins on Cecil Street in Limerick. I'd be interested in his opinion of that shop.
This was an interesting book. I checked out a few of these pubs in Ireland and the descriptions were accurate. I especially liked the Grave Diggers Pub next door to the Glasnevin Cemetary. It's not a flashy sports pub but it is one of a kind.
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