A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age [Paperback]

John Doyle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 21, 2006

Celebrated TV critic John Doyle has penned an Irish memoir that gives a portrait of a boy and his country transformed by television. Funny, insightful, and engaging, A Great Feast of Light begins in the small town of Nenagh, where young John's father purchased the family's first television in 1962, and ends in 1979 with the Pope's historic visit to the Emerald Isle, the appearance of "Dallas" on Irish TV, and twenty-two-year-old John's escape to North America. By day, John was schooled by the Christian brothers in the valor of Irish rebel heroes and the saintliness of Catholic martyrs. But in the evenings, television conveyed more subversive messages: American westerns, "I Love Lucy, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Laugh-In, The Muppet Show, Starsky and Hutch, and Monty Python suggested ways of life that were exciting and free. News coverage of American civil rights and women's rights protests, Irish street riots, bombings, and Bloody Sunday clashed with Catholic conservatism. While the "global village" was yanking Ireland out of its past, one intelligent and sardonic boy was taking notes. His story, at once a charming coming-of-age tale and a compelling social history, is a welcome addition to the literature of Ireland.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This coming-of-age memoir is not only about the author but Ireland itself. Ireland's state-run television—called Radio Telefis Éireann (RTE)—was introduced on the last day of 1961. Doyle (now a TV critic for a Toronto newspaper), weaves tales of Bat Masterson along with everyday life in Nenagh, County Tipperary, where priests, begrudgers and busybodies prevail in a country not much changed from when Frank McCourt escaped it more than a decade before. "Nenagh was full of religion," according to Doyle, and he successfully escaped a nation where priests and the fear of sex—not to mention poverty, immigration, revolution in the north and lack of birth control and divorce—reigned by tuning in such shows as Gunsmoke and Monty Python. Doyle does a marvelous of job of dissecting the cultures of each county by what kind of programming they provided. As the book ends, we see the walls of old Ireland collapsing as the Catholic Church loses its place of prominence and new laws on birth control and divorce are introduced into the country, just as Ireland's economic prominence is in its ascendancy. A marvelous read, with keen insights and laugh-out-loud moments, that explains how Ireland, with the help of the TV set, has evolved over the past 40 years. (Jan.)
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Review

"When you're small and in a small town people think you're blank, hardly there at all. Doyle keeps the breathless reader close and whispers ample rare sightings as if to... birdwatchers....ghost hunters. The result is a whispering Ireland where enlightenment's a bird and insularity's a ghost and even a boy knows better than to disturb either. A great feast of enlightenment."
--Gord Downie

"From the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (December 21, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786718145
• ISBN-13: 978-0786718146
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,782,932 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great slice of Irish life, July 1, 2007

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Hearth (Darnestown, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age (Paperback)

Coming from an Irish background, I'm always interested in what Irish life is like. This book starts out in the fifties and shows the dramatic effect of access to television on an Irish family. The outside world came to insular Ireland and nothing was ever the same. Excellent, well told. It doesn't pound on the metaphor, but shows how life did really change.