Review
Not quite Gonzo, but no worse a book for that, says Catherine McGrotty
- Fear and Loathing in Dublin
- Liberties
Rum Diary…
Don’t let this book’s frankly, derivative title put you off.
Madden’s memoir of his time as a young, homosexual, alcoholic reporter in 1970s Dublin is as compelling as anything Hunter S. ever wrote – if for quite different reasons. Firmly in the closet after a Catholic upbringing that leaves him utterly unable to admit to his homosexuality, Madden turns to alcohol to dull the pain. After his mother dies, he struggles increasingly with his alcoholism and begins to suffer paranoid delusions. It is only after a series of surreal, drunken ‘adventures’ around Dublin (of the sort Thompson would have been proud of), that Madden finds the will to check himself into a mental institution where he meets (among others) a cool-as-a-cucumber murderer, a bitchy gay couple with a penchant for rouge and vodka, and a psychiatrist willing to bully his patients into sanity. It’s a measure of what his life was like that the characters he meets within St Patrick’s are only marginally stranger than the characters he has been consorting with as a young reporter. It is Madden’s apposite sketches of the people who touched his life that give the book much of its colour. He writes beautifully (as one would expect from such a successful playwright) and it’s impossible not to get drawn into the sometimes seedy world he describes. As a work of entertainment, it’s a winner. As a record of the experience of ‘coming out’ in Catholic Ireland 30 years ago and the prejudice the Gay community had to deal with, it’s superb. As a depiction of one man’s descent into the depths of alcohol addiction and psychosis, it’s riveting. However, Gonzo journalism it ain’t – and it’s no worse a book for that.
Catherine McGrotty