Phantom Blooper
03-18-06, 06:20 PM
New York Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com
By JOSEPH O'CONNOR
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006
Green beer. Giant leprechauns. Marching bands in green wigs. T-shirts announcing "Kiss me, I'm Irish." Where in the world could you possibly be? You got it in one: New York.
Back home in dear old Dublin, the city of my birth, we don't do St. Patrick's Day like you guys.
In my childhood, it was a tatty and melancholic affair, the cultural equivalent of a groin strain. March might be a good month for the national day of a tropical island. March in Ireland is dismal and dark, with banshee winds and horizontal rainstorms. The squeal of the bagpipes, the knuckles raw as wounds, the chill making castanets of your teeth. It's hard to feel the stirrings of patriotism in your soul when your knees are knocking in rhythm to "Danny Boy."
We would huddle as a family and wait for the parade, killing time in melodious choruses of that heartbreaking Irish lament: "Toora-loora-loora. Toora-loora-loo. Toora-loora-loora. My butt is turning blue."
A couple of coal trucks would lumber down O'Connell St., bearing frostbitten colleens all jigging in the drizzle. This was long before the era of "Riverdance" glitz: Irish dancing was a matter of earnestness and tweed.
Next, the Irish Army would impressively display its equipment: a peashooter, some catapults and a bicycle. Fleeting attention would be aroused among adolescent boys by the visiting American majorettes in miniskirts and thigh-high boots, who beamed their orthodontically perfect smiles and high-kicked their way through the goose pimples. But the interest was short-lived. Hypothermia is not sexy. To penguins, maybe. Not to us.
There would be a speech by one or another of our corrupt politicians about how wonderful it was to be Irish. We had thrown out the English! We could hold up our heads! The harp of Old Erin was free and pure! (There is a Dublin joke so ancient it was probably written by St. Patrick himself: The reason why the emblem of Ireland is the harp is that the country is run by pulling strings.) We would all cheer bleakly and brandish our flaccid shamrocks before trudging back home through the sleet. Little wonder emigration was so widespread in Ireland. We were fleeing the torture of Paddy's Day.
We know remarkably little about the historical St. Patrick, except that he was definitely, absolutely, not Irish. He may have been French, or he may have been Welsh, which is pretty near to saying he was a limey. Apart from introducing Christianity to Ireland in 432 and expelling all the snakes (the unelected ones, at least), his main legacy is his memoir "The Confessions of Patrick." Trust me, not even Oprah could make it a best seller.
St. Patrick's Day in Dublin has changed in the modern era and is now a tremendous outpouring of Guinness. Yes, all the ancient bardic pursuits are commemorated: street brawling, drunkenness, flashing, mugging and public displays of stage Irishry. You could say it's a stereotype, but alas, in recent years, a small and unrepresentative minority of Dubliners has managed to live up, or down, to it. We have had riots, donnybrooks, attacks on the police. Think "The Quiet Man" remade by Tarantino.
There is a shockingly bigoted Thomas Nast cartoon of St. Patrick's Day in New York, 1867, depicting Irish immigrants as booze-crazed vandals kicking 40 shades of shinola out of each other. Apart from the apelike faces, it's quite an accurate portrayal of what sometimes happens in Dublin in March. The city on St. Patrick's Night can be a pleasant place to walk. Often, it's wiser to run.
Yet many New Yorkers, wonderful people that they are, seem tenderly in love with the images of an older Ireland. Say you are Irish, and they are delighted to shake your hand. It's top of the mornin'. They're Irish, too! Well, their granny was Irish. Or their girlfriend's hairdresser. This dude they know in Brooklyn once saw Ireland on TV and actually owns an album by U2. How is your thatched cottage? Do you play the banjo often? How come you are not shooting someone or reciting poems about your wee mammy? Oh yeah, we love you Irish. All those heroes of Irish history. Michael Collins. Bing Crosby. That other guy.
What New Yorkers don't always get, so it seems to this happy visitor, is that St. Patrick's Day is *authentically Irish the way Little Italy is authentically Venetian. It does not do actual harm, except to ill-prepared livers, but essentially it is a celebration of all that is sentimentally bogus, of images that mean little in the contemporary motherland and perhaps never meant much in the first place. Modern Ireland is a cosmopolitan and wealthy society, rapidly becoming a multiculture. We don't do green beer. We don't do begorrah. We used to have the baggage of poverty and failure. Now the baggage is Louis Vuitton.
Still, everyone in America is Irish on St. Patrick's Day. Teams of genealogists will be scouring the archives for evidence of President Bush's Irish roots. And I'm sure they exist. Not a doubt in my mind. If they don't, why, Donald Rumsfeld can just make 'em up! (WMD: "We're Missin' Dublin!") The President will host a White House gala for prominent Irish politicians, who have been working very hard, for a number of years, to take the weapons out of political life. If Dick Cheney attends - and hey, I'm not saying he shouldn't -let's pray he leaves the shotgun in the limo.
Meanwhile, back in Ireland, another St. Patrick's Day will pass, hopefully in peace and tolerance. Everything is changing. The old order is dead. Dublin looks more like an American city by the week: the same department stores, burger chains, pizza parlors, trendy nightclubs. The power of the Catholic Church has almost disappeared. If St. Patrick came back to Ireland now, he might be startled to learn that you cannot legally smoke in a pub, but you can purchase a condom with your decaf latte. The best way to deal with Paddy's Day may be temporary hibernation. But the pipes, the pipes, are calling.
Joseph O'Connor's acclaimed novel "Star of the Sea" is available in paperback from Harcourt Books. He is a 2006 Fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He'll read from his work at Glucksman Ireland House, 1 Washington Mews (Fifth Ave. between Eighth St. and Washington Square North) on March 30 at 7 p.m.
By JOSEPH O'CONNOR
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006
Green beer. Giant leprechauns. Marching bands in green wigs. T-shirts announcing "Kiss me, I'm Irish." Where in the world could you possibly be? You got it in one: New York.
Back home in dear old Dublin, the city of my birth, we don't do St. Patrick's Day like you guys.
In my childhood, it was a tatty and melancholic affair, the cultural equivalent of a groin strain. March might be a good month for the national day of a tropical island. March in Ireland is dismal and dark, with banshee winds and horizontal rainstorms. The squeal of the bagpipes, the knuckles raw as wounds, the chill making castanets of your teeth. It's hard to feel the stirrings of patriotism in your soul when your knees are knocking in rhythm to "Danny Boy."
We would huddle as a family and wait for the parade, killing time in melodious choruses of that heartbreaking Irish lament: "Toora-loora-loora. Toora-loora-loo. Toora-loora-loora. My butt is turning blue."
A couple of coal trucks would lumber down O'Connell St., bearing frostbitten colleens all jigging in the drizzle. This was long before the era of "Riverdance" glitz: Irish dancing was a matter of earnestness and tweed.
Next, the Irish Army would impressively display its equipment: a peashooter, some catapults and a bicycle. Fleeting attention would be aroused among adolescent boys by the visiting American majorettes in miniskirts and thigh-high boots, who beamed their orthodontically perfect smiles and high-kicked their way through the goose pimples. But the interest was short-lived. Hypothermia is not sexy. To penguins, maybe. Not to us.
There would be a speech by one or another of our corrupt politicians about how wonderful it was to be Irish. We had thrown out the English! We could hold up our heads! The harp of Old Erin was free and pure! (There is a Dublin joke so ancient it was probably written by St. Patrick himself: The reason why the emblem of Ireland is the harp is that the country is run by pulling strings.) We would all cheer bleakly and brandish our flaccid shamrocks before trudging back home through the sleet. Little wonder emigration was so widespread in Ireland. We were fleeing the torture of Paddy's Day.
We know remarkably little about the historical St. Patrick, except that he was definitely, absolutely, not Irish. He may have been French, or he may have been Welsh, which is pretty near to saying he was a limey. Apart from introducing Christianity to Ireland in 432 and expelling all the snakes (the unelected ones, at least), his main legacy is his memoir "The Confessions of Patrick." Trust me, not even Oprah could make it a best seller.
St. Patrick's Day in Dublin has changed in the modern era and is now a tremendous outpouring of Guinness. Yes, all the ancient bardic pursuits are commemorated: street brawling, drunkenness, flashing, mugging and public displays of stage Irishry. You could say it's a stereotype, but alas, in recent years, a small and unrepresentative minority of Dubliners has managed to live up, or down, to it. We have had riots, donnybrooks, attacks on the police. Think "The Quiet Man" remade by Tarantino.
There is a shockingly bigoted Thomas Nast cartoon of St. Patrick's Day in New York, 1867, depicting Irish immigrants as booze-crazed vandals kicking 40 shades of shinola out of each other. Apart from the apelike faces, it's quite an accurate portrayal of what sometimes happens in Dublin in March. The city on St. Patrick's Night can be a pleasant place to walk. Often, it's wiser to run.
Yet many New Yorkers, wonderful people that they are, seem tenderly in love with the images of an older Ireland. Say you are Irish, and they are delighted to shake your hand. It's top of the mornin'. They're Irish, too! Well, their granny was Irish. Or their girlfriend's hairdresser. This dude they know in Brooklyn once saw Ireland on TV and actually owns an album by U2. How is your thatched cottage? Do you play the banjo often? How come you are not shooting someone or reciting poems about your wee mammy? Oh yeah, we love you Irish. All those heroes of Irish history. Michael Collins. Bing Crosby. That other guy.
What New Yorkers don't always get, so it seems to this happy visitor, is that St. Patrick's Day is *authentically Irish the way Little Italy is authentically Venetian. It does not do actual harm, except to ill-prepared livers, but essentially it is a celebration of all that is sentimentally bogus, of images that mean little in the contemporary motherland and perhaps never meant much in the first place. Modern Ireland is a cosmopolitan and wealthy society, rapidly becoming a multiculture. We don't do green beer. We don't do begorrah. We used to have the baggage of poverty and failure. Now the baggage is Louis Vuitton.
Still, everyone in America is Irish on St. Patrick's Day. Teams of genealogists will be scouring the archives for evidence of President Bush's Irish roots. And I'm sure they exist. Not a doubt in my mind. If they don't, why, Donald Rumsfeld can just make 'em up! (WMD: "We're Missin' Dublin!") The President will host a White House gala for prominent Irish politicians, who have been working very hard, for a number of years, to take the weapons out of political life. If Dick Cheney attends - and hey, I'm not saying he shouldn't -let's pray he leaves the shotgun in the limo.
Meanwhile, back in Ireland, another St. Patrick's Day will pass, hopefully in peace and tolerance. Everything is changing. The old order is dead. Dublin looks more like an American city by the week: the same department stores, burger chains, pizza parlors, trendy nightclubs. The power of the Catholic Church has almost disappeared. If St. Patrick came back to Ireland now, he might be startled to learn that you cannot legally smoke in a pub, but you can purchase a condom with your decaf latte. The best way to deal with Paddy's Day may be temporary hibernation. But the pipes, the pipes, are calling.
Joseph O'Connor's acclaimed novel "Star of the Sea" is available in paperback from Harcourt Books. He is a 2006 Fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He'll read from his work at Glucksman Ireland House, 1 Washington Mews (Fifth Ave. between Eighth St. and Washington Square North) on March 30 at 7 p.m.