THIS irreverent gospel according to Joseph O'Connor takes us through Ireland, the rest of Europe, America, Australia and even Nicaragua. Although the title is a bit misleading - it should be something like Joseph O'Connor's Thoughts about Home and abroad, because it is not about the Irish male in general on his raucous and rumbustious travels - the real and biting wit flows as our anti hero treks from the Australian local radio circuit to America, where seriously deflatingly for his male ego he fails in his attempt to donate sperm at a sperm bank.
Here are a few examples of the views of Joseph O'Connor:
Journalists: "They all want to be Woodward and Bernstein, but the truth is some of them are Beavis and Butthead"; and "Many journalists would suck the alcohol out of a dishcloth."
The English: "must surely be the only race who regard tea drinking and masturbation as mutually complementary leisure activities"; and "You could not hold a tupperware party in Manchester, never mind the Olympic Games."
His own beloved Ireland does not escape the lash: "The whole country is beginning to look like one of Shane McGowan's songs. The Irish are discovering the gentle art of fleecing tourists instead of sheep"; and "Pop stars and super models are attracted to Dublin the way toddlers are attracted to dog turds."
He is bitter about the placid tolerance of emigration: "Ireland must be the last country in the world where people have to leave the country in order to get a flat." Among his tales which I found fascinating is the one about a woman friend in a Boston suburb "where the muggers are practically unionised", who buys Safe-T-Guy, a rubber blow up man who can be put a car to imitate a real male passenger or stood at a window to deter burglars. She pays $100 for Safe-T-Guy only to find out when he arrives in the mail (or should it be male) that he is naked. She then has to go to the additional expanse of dressing him up. Only in America?
Sex in all its forms looms, encapsulated in this frank confession by a wry Melbournite: "The only difference between my missus and a rottweiler is that when a rotty starts to savage you, he locks his bloody jaws shut."
About two thirds of the way through the book O'Connor's wit seems to wane somewhat and he becomes fairly serious, dealing with family problems when he was an adolescent. He writes paeans of praise for Bob Geldof and the punk rock band, the Boomtown Rats, whose arrival on the scene gave him a sense of rebellious hope. With a few fellow pupils of Blackrock College, he stuck a picture of Geldof over that of President de Valera in the college Hall of Fame. Both were Blackrock past pupils, but what impact Geldof's picture had in the common room can only be imagined.
All in all, a good read of biting wit interspersed with some serious thought.