Feckers: 50 People Who Fecked Up Ireland

by John Waters

Which 50 People turned Ireland into the fecked-up country she is today? Bono? Haughey? Louis Walsh? de Valera? It's time to name and shame the great, the good and the gobshites.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2010

About the author

John Waters was born in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, in 1955. He held a range of jobs after leaving school, including railway clerk, showband roadie, pirate radio manager, petrol pump attendant and mailcar driver.


He began part-time work as a a journalist in 1981, with Hot Press, Ireland’s leading rock ‘n’ roll magazine and went full-time in 1984, when he moved to Dublin. As a journalist, magazine editor and columnist, he has specialised in raising unpopular issues of public importance, including the repression of Famine memories and the denial of rights to fathers.

Reviews

[Ciara · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a long time to finish this book. I would pick it up and put it down for months but I finally finished it. I did find it hard to get into, it took me a while but by the end I understood the book a lot more. It was a very insightful and often humorous book. John Waters is a very good writer.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up, intending to glance at the fifty folks...most, of course, but not all, Irish--wondering who'd made the cut. I wound up reading through long past midnight. I've followed this long-time critic's commentaries since his days at Hot Press as punk reared, into his political analyses, and past the 2011 publication of these short essays, into his engagement with (post-) Catholic society, and disengagement from many of the 'liberation' causes which led him and millions of his neighbours into consumer-driven, secular, hedonistic, and moral lassitude.

This collection won't make entire sense to anyone not meticulously attentive to party politics, economic debates, televised coverage, and press controversies during about a century of the island's past up to the IMF austerity measures at the time this book appeared. Most of those inducted into this hall of shame, blame, and sometimes justified fame occupy their niches in recent decades nearer to Waters' own career.

He spins provocative observations on the bifurcated, post-independence mentality of a people part bent on clinging to an attenuated and warped tradition after 800 years of British domination, and part-crazed to ape their Anglo-American supposed betters. I applaud Waters' use of "indigenous," too, for I've been asserting on my own before I found its application in these pages, that this now-obligatory term merits the inclusion of native European ethnicities and traditional identity as well as those now synonymous with the "Global South" in prescribed speech.

I'd advise those interested to seek out his online presence. Although herein he smiles at the antics of amateur "Paddy O'Blog" keyboard blatherers, since then, like probably you finding this via a screen, he's come around to accepting the inevitable direction his life's employment has taken since the millennium. This isn't where one should start investigating Waters' worldview, but for Irish-informed audiences, this will do.

[SIMON WEBSTER · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant

Mandatory reading for anyone seeking out a coherent voice to analyze important figures in recent Irish history and their legacy. A rapier to cut through the bullshizzle. Extremely funny.

[Ben Graham · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't tell whether this is meant to be a condemnation or a satire or a bit of both. At times John Waters offers some insightful snippets into characters in Irish history but ultimately the book is undermined by the overbearing sense that John Waters sees the world in a particular way and no one else could possibly be right about it being any other way. Added to that, many of the characters he lacerates and dresses down he does so due to character defects I would say he himself shares and overall the satire fails to land as it feels like it comes from a place of superiority and disapproval rather than one of fallibility and humility.

[Shane · Rating 2 out of 5]

With this book you do have to wade past some instances of deep misogyny and some other odd and awkward personal opinions of the author. Putting that aside it's very sharp and insightful on many counts on the condition of Irishness. Not a book to judge by the cover either, which gives the impression that it's going to be a barrel of laughs. Overall it's a fairly earnest look at Irishness through the lenses of fifty figures, not all of whom are lambasted, most of whom are treated with a quite a degree of sensitivity, and Waters even attempts to rehabilitate many.

[Paul Hayes · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't quite what is says on the tin; definitely an insightful way to look at Irish politics over the past 30 years, plus an obligatory piece on Bono/U2. However, it came across as trying too hard to either be funny in places, or too-intellectual in others.

The rant about Bloggers just sounded bitter, and parts came across as slighty misogynist as well.

And he really could have gone to town on Arthur Guinness (the loyalist who helped fund the Orange order against the Nationalists).

[Stephen McCarthy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A knowledge of the subject matter helps with enjoyment of the book. Some things were lost on me.