Saturday, October 15, 2022

My hero / Roddy Doyle by Kerry Hudson

 

Roddy Doyle

My hero: Roddy Doyle by Kerry Hudson

The Irish writer's tender portrayals of working-class families proved ordinary lives were a suitable subject for winning fiction


Kerry Hudson
Fri 19 Jul 2013 16.59 BST

R

oddy Doyle is one of Ireland's greatest writers. He is also my favourite teacher. His books arrived when I needed them most and, like the best of educations, changed my perceptions and the course of my life.

Doyle started writing during his 14 years teaching, a job he loved. He described his pupils as entertaining and full of energy, and though he says his first unpublished novel, "Your Granny's a Hunger Striker", was "utter shite" he'd clearly learned from his mistakes by the time he self-published The Commitments in 1987. Just four years later The Van was shortlisted for the Booker prize.

His career now spans nearly three decades and includes not only novels, but short stories, screen and stage plays, and children's books. If that wasn't enough to keep a man busy, in 2008 he set up the blisteringly named Fighting Words, a charity running writing classes for disadvantaged kids in Dublin. He is no fan of the literary limelight or tortured artistic musing; his is a practical approach to his craft, working a nine-to-five day, usually on several projects.

I was 16 when I discovered The Commitments in the library on the edge of our council estate. It was the first time I'd read about the world I came from in a proper book; the wisecracks, hardmen, family ties, feuds and heartbreaks, and all portrayed with honesty, tenderness and decency. He'd created characters who were hard-up but still fighting, still laughing, who still had their dignity, though often not much else.

Doyle's books have become my constant. As I raged, drank and hoped my way through my late teens, looking for answers, his stories offered them. In my 20s, and now, 30s, each of his books taught me important lessons: about writing, about life. He gave me permission to speak up, to recognise that stories from poorer streets too could spark and sing on the page. Though we've never met, he is still my most admired teacher.


THE GUARDIAN






2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
054 My hero / Michael de Montaigne by Liyun Li
055 My hero / Michael Donaghy by Maggie O'Farrell
056 My hero / Richmal Crompton by Louise Crompton
057 My hero / Edward Thomas by David Constantine
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal
059 My hero / Sefton by Jilly Cooper

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 My hero / Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 My hero / Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson

102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill
111 My hero / Arnold Lobell by Julia Donaldson (23 December)

2012 (PAGE 9)
115 My hero / Nadime Gordimer by Tessa Hadley (27 January)

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2013

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194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman (13 September)
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer (1 November)

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2015
250 My hero John Bayley by Richard Eyre (22 January)
2016

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