"Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970, and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century"
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Then comes the sly provocation: Ireland “almost bypassed the twentieth century.” He’s not denying history; he’s indicting a stalled century in which much of Europe cycled through mass politics, secularization, and consumer modernity while Ireland lingered in a post-independence holding pattern. The subtext is that the mid-century Irish state offered stability by freezing social change, and that the costs were paid in silence, emigration, and curtailed imagination - themes that run through McGahern’s fiction.
The punchline, though, is also a warning about speed. When change finally arrived (television, EU membership, urbanization, loosening Church power), it came as compression: decades of social permission granted in a rush. “Bypassed” hints at whiplash. Ireland didn’t gently evolve into the modern; it sprinted past the messy middle, and the present still carries that skipped-over reckoning.
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APA Style (7th ed.)
McGahern, John. (2026, February 16). Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970, and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ireland-is-a-peculiar-society-in-the-sense-that-114175/
Chicago Style
McGahern, John. "Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970, and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century." FixQuotes. February 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ireland-is-a-peculiar-society-in-the-sense-that-114175/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970, and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century." FixQuotes, 16 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ireland-is-a-peculiar-society-in-the-sense-that-114175/. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.
