Synopsis of Beber para contarla
The pub is not only the place to settle disputes, of course. It is the right place to tell stories, exaggerated or not, and enjoy the delicious opium of good conversation and uninhibited laughter. It is in this spirit that I propose to the reader this anthology of Irish stories owed to writers of other times and to narrators of the new generations, all of them intoxicated to a greater or lesser extent by the culture of drinking. I remember that W. B. Yeats’ widow insisted that poets write better when they are “tipsy”. Brendan Behan, possibly the most famous of Ireland’s literary drinkers, that “drinker who had a problem with writing”, as he was described, coined a phrase to explain the whole experience: “Eating is an achievement; getting drunk is a victory.” In this selection I have tried to represent the most diverse aspects of this culture. Broadly speaking, the brew that is distilled here is a mixture of pleasures, joys, risks and pitfalls; of joy and pathos, of lucidity and inebriation, as well as an extensive and representative sample of twentieth-century Irish narrative.