Making Mischief in Dublin

By Paul Gray

James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man famously begins, "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road . . ." Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Viking; 282 pages; $20.95) opens this way: "We were coming down our road." The echo sounds intentional, as if Doyle, with fine Irish fatalism, knows that all books about Dublin's seedy, seething street life carry the curse of invidious comparison with the works of the master. Why not invoke it at the top and then get on with the story?

This maneuver may be unduly superstitious, particularly since Doyle, 35, has been thriving in Joyce's shadow. His first three novels earned impressive reviews and sales, and two of them -- The Commitments and The Snapper (see CINEMA) -- have received successful screen adaptations. And in October, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha won the Booker Prize, Britain's most highly trumpeted literary award. Thanks to the publicity attendant upon the Booker, U.S. readers get the chance to buy Doyle's fourth novel now instead of next April, when it was originally scheduled to cross the Atlantic.

Some people, inevitably, will wonder what the Booker judges could possibly have been thinking. For Paddy Clarke, while intermittently funny, fresh and affecting, is ultimately frustrating. Its hero serves as its narrator, a 10- year-old boy trying, with his gang of schoolmates and other pals, to wreak mischief in their Dublin neighborhood, circa the mid-1960s. Graffiti, whether spray-painted or gouged in wet cement, constitute a major offensive strategy. Another is invading forbidden turf, such as walled-off backyards, where the prospect of a pair of ladies' knickers on a clothesline drives the lads into a frenzy of guilty glee.

Much energy goes into plans for annoying their schoolmasters. The boys make noises when supervisory backs are turned. At the Friday movie showings, a popular game is projecting hand images onto the screen. "That was the easy part," Paddy notes. "The hard bit was getting back to your seat before they turned the lights back on. Everyone would try to stop you, to keep you trapped in the aisle."

Although he has a photograph of Geronimo, "the last of the renegade Apaches," on his bedroom wall and likes to think of himself as a renegade too, Paddy piously believes the conventional wisdom shared by his friends: "When you were doing a funny face or pretending you had a stammer and the wind changed or someone thumped your back you stayed that way forever." And juvenile humor naturally appeals to him: "Did you hear about the leper cowboy? He threw his leg over his horse."

Unfortunately, after 50 or 60 pages of this, the realization dawns that anecdotes and strung-together incidents are all the novel offers in the way of plot. Doyle's impersonation of young Paddy may be too accurate, prompting readers to recall that history is not replete with examples of successful 10- year-old novelists. Joyce's Portrait takes its hero through adolescence; Paddy's self-portrait remains stuck somewhere past the moocow stage.