The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.

This quote by John McGahern speaks to the idea of identity and how it is often seen as something that is predetermined and immutable. McGahern is making the point that being Irish is something that he was born into, and that no matter what he does or tries to do, he will never be something else. By saying that being Irish is "a kind of nonsense," he is trying to emphasize the point that identity is something that is arbitrary and not something to be taken too seriously.