A typical evening at the principal Dublin theatres could extend over five or six hours and consisted of a mainpiece, frequently with a prologue and epilogue, followed by one, and occasionally two, afterpieces.

But the volume is also an introspective self-portrait, set down in the same fluent, fleet-footed prose that made his 1995 book “Dreams From My Father” such a haunting family memoir.”

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They make their world sound as if it were an extension of the Wild West, which in a way it is, with boomers today still regarding themselves as pioneering men, the last of America's unhenpecked heroes […]