The Irish Sophisticates

This chapter places The New Yorker ’s mid-twentieth-century Irish fiction contributions within their publishing contexts. My close readings show the Irish writers’ engagement with America’s middlebrow culture and the issues of class and Irishness. During this period, The New Yorker catered to an upper middle-class audience, as well as readers who aspired to belong to that class. The magazine cultivated a sophisticated self-image and consciously deployed a sardonic humor. At the same time, in post-independence Ireland, the Irish nationalists enshrined Catholicism and rurality as essential markers of Irish identity – characteristics which were seemingly incongruous with The New Yorker ’s urban sophistication. How did The New Yorker ’s Irish contributors negotiate these conflicting images and sensibilities? By examining The New Yorker ’s middlebrow brand of sophistication, this chapter provides a new understanding of how the Irish writers in the metropolitan magazine – whom I call “Irish sophisticates” – dealt with Irishness through self-mockery, satire, and a rich diversity of representational ploys.