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Stephen: Ha ha. You could even have 'Bi-Polar Arctic-Antartic' if you think about it, ey?
Barry: Ha ha. It's good that we can have a bit of a laugh about our difficulties, right?"
The novelist, Christopher Morley once said, "Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs." Cormac McDermott's newest work, a book of comedy sketches, is exactly that: a jumble of everyday affairs where people inadvertently find humor in their situation. McDermott presents to the reader a variety of short sitcoms, if you will, hoping to give you a good chuckle. Each skit is set up as a scene, like in a play, of interactions between two or three characters in very ordinary settings. The characters may be driving a car, sitting in a living room, attending a sporting event, frequenting a pub, etc. The humor is in their back and forth discussions or the irony of what they are saying about their perspective of the world.
He is also from Dublin, Ireland, and many of the sketches and jokes are very much wry humor mixed with McDermott's personal world view and life experiences. While this may not resonate with every reader, the skits are short and fast and if you understand what is happening or can pick up on the cultural and political references, you will appreciate the joke. For others, some of the dialect and conversations may be head scratchers. Yet, if you read them carefully, once or twice, you'll discover the punch line and possibly appreciate McDermott's humor. Just as Jimmy asks Paddy in Scene From a Football Manager's Office, "I'm sure the men will see the funny side of it, ey?" and Paddy says, "Hopefully they will."