Life
[?-?]; b. Co. Roscommon; ed. Mean Scoil Iosef Naofa [St. Joseph], Castlerea; initially
worked as clerk with CIÉ before becoming radio critic on Niall
Stokes’s Hot Press after a stint as news journalist for pirate
radio in Castlerea; interviewed Charles Haughey, Dec. 1984;
afterwards edited In Dublin and later still became a columnist on The
Irish Times; author of Jiving at the Crossroads (1991), chiefly
concerned with the putative urban/rural split in Ireland and the year
of 'GUBU'; Race of Angels, Ireland and the Genesis of U2 (1994),
and Everyday Like Sunday (1995) being Irish Times pieces; issued Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Ireland (1997); also The Politburo Has Decided That You Are Unwell (2004); Waters had a dg., Roisín, with the singer Sinead O’Connor and subsequently expressed public concerns about diminution of father’s role by feminist politics.
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Works
Jiving at the Crossroads (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1991), 188pp.
[ded. ‘To my mother and sisters / and the memory of my father’];
Race of Angels: Ireland and the Genesis of U2 (Belfast: Blackstaff
1994), 314pp.; Everyday Like Sunday (Dublin: Poolbeg 1995), 329pp.;
Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Ireland (London: Duckworth
1997; pb 1998); The Politburo Has Decided That You Are Unwell (Dublin: Liffey Press 2004), 300pp.
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Notes
Liffey Press Notice (Books Ireland, April 2004), calls The Politburo [... &c.]: ‘For years Waters has been a dissident voice writing in his weekly column for The Irish Times, invariably confronting the conventional wisdom on issues ranging from fatherhood and the official denial of the rights of parents and children, to the absurdity of Ireland’s seemingly endless tribunals, to the aftermath of September 11, to the misunderstood meaning of the life of Charles Haughey. In that time, his chief stock-in-trade has been the elegant representation of common sense in the face of ideology, received thinking and self-serving cant. [..., &c.]’
Noreen Bowden, review of The Politburo Has Decided That You Are Unwell: ‘[...]“The Secret History of the Past”, an essay describing the writer’s youth in Castlerea, Co. Roscommon, articulates his efforts to describe the Ireland of Marian statues, cute hoors, and Big Tom to liberal Ireland; the meanings ascribed to these cultural icons by the outsiders “had removed from them all irony, mischief, wit and subversion.” One of his strongest pieces, this 2003 work is most reminiscent of his excellent 1991 book on rural Ireland, Jiving at the Crossroads, and shows his skill at “speaking a language that transcends both prejudice and nostalgia”. (Irish Emigrant, Book Review, May 2004: online.)
On the Citizenship Referendum (2004): ‘This country got rich quick and the people were never told they might have to pay back their dues. The leadership has abdicated responsibility. this vote will create a two-tier idea of belonging in Ireland.’ (Quoted in Angelique Chrisafis, ‘Has Ireland Lost Its Soul?’, in Guardian Weekly, 2 July 2004, p.17.)
John Harrington, The Irish Beckett (Syracuse UP 1991), on the survival of the seanachie role in modern Irish literature, writes: ‘[John] Waters observes that the inheritance is a “dual sense of cultural identity”. The modern Irish comic writer “tends to be suspicious of his rhetorical heritage and at the same time thoroughly capable of exploiting it.” (Harrington, p.80).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)