The rare oul times, etc

ONE of the characters who makes a fleeting guest appearance in John Doran's breezy reminiscences goes by the nickname "Bitchin' Truth". The book could have done with a bit more of him, or rather of what he has been christened. Bitching might not be a measure of veracity, but at least it's in keeping with some of the more salutary possibilities created by autobiography, others being frank condemnation of the absurdity of fate, the transgressive potential of confusion, and humble though discontented acknowledgment of the imperfect but indispensable alliance between ego and ergo.

And bitching has at least a tang that will pass as truth, all important in a literary form which purports to be nothing but the God's honest but cannot be, simply by the mere fact of being written. In Red Doran, however, we have an autobiography which might be subtitled, "On Not Being Bitch Enough".

The author was born in Derry - better make that the Waterside, or better yet, The Fountain - and the book begins with an intimate portrait of the streets and characters of that part of the world between the wars and during the second World War. Of course, the Dorans and their neighbours were poor, ill educated, unemployed, discriminated against, Catholic croyant in an automatic kind of way; not particularly pratiquant (ditto for their nationalism). But sure, those were the days, they had the best of good times, nobody knew any better and they were better off, God be merciful to them, etc, etc. There's no doubt about it nostalgia is definitely a disease, fatal to memory as a cultural resource of any value.

While in his teens, the author takes up boxing, and his exploits in this area are treated in similarly simplistic vein. (There's a fascinating book waiting to be written about the fight game in the North in those days.) But the bulk of Red Doran is devoted to the author's career as a waiter aboard luxury liners. As is suggested, the Cold War saw the heyday of the ocean cruise, and the voyages took John Doran round the world and virtually from Pole to Pole.

Undoubtedly this amount of travel must have broadened the mind. Still, it's a bit dispiriting to find (to take two of many examples) the Watts section of Los Angeles likened to the Congo, and to be told: "It seems to me that if you see one of these South Americans you've seen them all." Later, working as a waiter in Los Angeles, John Doran made much of his Irish accent and the clientele "loved it. It was fun and I really loved it too. (And I made a lot of money along the way as well.)"

After LA it's home to Derry and various other adventures in employment - and out. The most sustained piece of writing in the book is a graphic account of a nocturnal attack on the Doran family home. And - as in Montevideo, Port Moresby and Hell's Kitchen - the author survives. And that's his story. He willingly typecasts himself as a rover, a bit of a scapegrace, a rough diamond with a heart of gold, a picaro. He'll try anything once and is a past master of letting anecdotes speak louder than words. "This life is all a game of bluff," he says. And as though to prove it, Red Doran is a series of animated snapshots, all foreground and fixed smiles, lacking the depth - that impersonal space with which the world is suffused - of a proper, not to say more complex or more adult, picture. {CORRECTION} 96042300037