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Abstract
This article examines the work of Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, the biggest selling author in Ireland in recent years. It argues that O'Carroll-Kelly, a school-level rugby player whose life is charted through to his late twenties, mirrors many of the major themes and issues present in early twenty-first-century Irish life. The article demonstrates how masculinity is a key trope in the works, and this is closely linked to a sense of privilege, of overinflated ego and overt sexuality that has become a noticeable phenomenon in sectors of Irish society in recent years. The article also demonstrates how a fictional character's life is mirrored in the real-life exploits of the author in the new media of social networking sites and in the lives of young rugby-playing men in areas of affluent south Dublin.
Notes
1. Cecilia Ahern, P.S. I Love You (London, 2002). The film of the same name was released in 2007 (Alcon Productions).
2. Bianca Luykx, ‘At home with Ross O'Carroll-Kelly’, VIP Magazine, Jan. 2006.
3. Foxrock: affluent South Dublin suburb.
4. BT2: a major store in city-centre Dublin, known for selling designer label clothes to a younger, fashionable and affluent clientele.
5. Aengus Collins, ‘Ross loses the plot en route to Tallaght’, Irish Times, 12 April 2003.
6. The Economist, 16 Nov. 2004.
7. Alan Parker (director), The Commitments (London, 1991). The Barrytown trilogy comprised Roddy Doyle, The Commitments (London, 1987), The Snapper (London, 1990) and The Van (London, 1991).
8. Luykx, ‘At home with Ross O'Carroll-Kelly’. Bachelors Walk is the road that is first crossed when entering the Northside (i.e. anything north of the River Liffey). An Phoblacht is the official newspaper of Sinn Féin. The giant heroin needle refers to the Millennium spire in the centre of O'Connell Street and cross-references the street's reputation as an area of drug dealing.
9. All Ross O'Carroll-Kelly titles were published in paperback by Penguin Ireland.
10. DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transport): a train system that runs along the coast from Howth in the north of the city to Bray in the south.
11. ‘Interview with Paul Howard’, available online at www.oxygen.ie/page/121, accessed 12 Nov. 2008.
12. ‘Interview with Paul Howard’, available online at www.oxygen.ie/page/121, accessed 12 Nov. 2008. D4 refers to the postal area covering the most affluent section of Dublin where the main O'Carroll-Kelly stories take place.
13. Edmund Van Esbeck, Irish Times, 7 Sept. 1993.
14. Syd Millar, Irish Times, 19 Oct. 1994.
15. The best commentary on these changes are put forward by David McWilliams, The Pope's children (Dublin, 2001).
16. ‘Interview with Paul Howard’.
17. Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, The mis-education years (Dublin, 2004), pp. 232–3. Fehily refers to Father Fehily, principal and rugby coach of Castlerock College. Known for his appreciation of Nazi Germany, his motivational speeches contained a very definite Hitlerian flavour and his rugby stratagems came straight from a Von Leeb battle plan. Taught Castlerock students that they were the elite and that exams didn't matter once you could play rugby. For details, see www.rossocarrollkelly.ie, accessed 1 Nov. 2008.
18. O'Carroll-Kelly, The mis-education years, p. 207.
19. O'Carroll-Kelly, The mis-education years, p. 227.
20. O'Carroll-Kelly, The mis-education years, p. 226.
21. See ‘Black days at Blackrock’, Sunday Business Post, 7 March 2004.
22. See ‘Weighty issues for sport’, Irish Times, 22 Nov. 2008; for the IRFU response, see ‘Supplements and the young player’, available online at http://www.irishrugby.ie/476_10312.php, accessed 12 Nov. 2008; and for the discussion in parliament, see ‘Sport and anti-doping question’, 21 Oct. 1998, available online at http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0495/D.0495.199810210011.html, accessed 19 Nov. 2008.
23. O'Carroll-Kelly, The mis-education years, p. 91.
24. ‘Spawning a bundle of Rosser wannabes’, Irish Independent, 31 Aug. 2007.
25. See http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=147757215, accessed 28 Oct. 2008.
26. ‘Getting it “roysh” is Howard's way’, Irish Times, 13 June 2007. Kiely's is a Donnybrook pub (near the home ground of Leinster rugby club), and functions in the books as O'Carroll-Kelly's local.
27. ‘On being Ross’, Irish Times, 25 Oct. 2008.
28. See for example the Sunday Tribune, 30 April 2006.
29. Jeffrey Hill, Sport and the literary imagination (Bern, 2006), p. 15.