Among the generation of Irish writers who emerged in the 1980s, Roddy Doyle is one of the most popular both at home and worldwide. While his popular appeal has been undisputed from the moment his privately published first novel, The Commitments (1987), became widely available when it was republished by William Heinemann in 1988, Doyle's status among critics was initially less clear. Whereas his work found immediate approval with the literary establishments in England and the United States, his use of four-letter words in his dialogue and his cinematic style led Irish critics to conclude that Doyle was catering to a voyeuristic Anglo-American audience eager for the perpetuation of the stereotypical foul-mouthed, illiterate, working-class Irishman. With the publication of his fourth novel, Paddy Clarke, Ha-Ha-Ha (1993), however, many of these critics finally agreed that Irish literature had produced yet another major talent. This assessment was underlined when Paddy Clarke, Ha-Ha-Ha won...