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Goodbye Yeats and O'Neill : farce in contemporary Irish and Irish-American narratives PDF

324 Pages·2010·2.5 MB·English
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Goodbye Yeats and O’Neill Farce in Contemporary Irish and Irish-American Narratives Costerus New series 183 Series Editors: C.C. Barfoot, Theo D’haen and Erik Kooper Goodbye Yeats and O’Neill Farce in Contemporary Irish and Irish-American Narratives Edward A. Hagan Amsterdam-New York, NY 2010 Cover photo by Cathal Cawley. Photo taken from a wall near Bellews Castle in Castletown, Dundalk, Co. Louth, Ireland, on the grounds of the Dun Lughaidh Secondary School. Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-2993-4 E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-2994-1 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2010 Printed in the Netherlands For Denise, Peter, and Christine CONTENTS Acknowledgements v Introduction. The Donkeys and the Narrowbacks: Contemporary Circus Animals 3 Part One Memoirs – Defining Where We Are Now 1. Defining the Object for Struggle: Epistemology in the Age of Autobiography – Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes and Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark 23 2. Belfast and South Boston: Cut off from Serious Consideration – Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn and Michael Patrick MacDonald, All Souls 51 3. The Void of Irish Identity: Nuala O’Faolain, Are You Somebody 61 Part Two The Writers Strike Back: Using Irony to Subvert the Fascination of Cultural Studies 4. Tim O’Brien’s Ironic Aesthetic: Faith and the Nature of a “True” Story (co-authored with John Briggs) 75 5. The Delusion of Cultural Studies: Colm Tóibín, The Blackwater Lightship 99 Part Three Serious and Not-So-Serious Farce in Contemporary Irish Fiction 6. Picaresque Farce: Nick Laird, Utterly Monkey 113 7. Icons for the New Age: The Transvestite in Patrick McCabe’s Breakfast on Pluto and the Ballet Dancer in Colum McCann’s Dancer 125 8. Home Isn’t There Any More: William Trevor’s The Story of Lucy Gault and John McGahern’s By the Lake 135 9. Transforming Nostalgia for the Victorian: Clare Boylan’s Charlotte Brontë Novel, Emma Brown 149 10. The Irish Western Epic: Roddy Doyle Remakes John Ford – The Last Roundup 165 Part Four Farce in Contemporary Irish-American Fiction: Symptom of the Triviality of American Society 11. The American Wake: Alice McDermott, Child of My Heart 191 12. Being Irish and Being Nothing: The Abyss of Identity in Alice McDermott’s Charming Billy and Edward J. Delaney’s Fiction 205 13. The Headache and the Aspirin: Sex as Disease and Cure in Sherman Alexie’s The Toughest Indian in the World, Colum McCann’s This Side of Brightness, and Other Contemporary Stories 233 14. Low Seriousness in Beth Lordan’s But Come Ye Back 247 15. The Decay of Lying? On Life Support in William Kennedy’s Roscoe and Thomas Kelly’s The Rackets 257 16. Visiting the American Sixties on Ireland: Mary Gordon’s Pearl 269 17. The Necessity and Futility of Romance: Thomas Kelly’s Empire Rising 281 Part Five An Historian’s Need to Define the Irish Story 18. What Is the Irish Story? R.F. Foster’s The Irish Story 293 Postscript The Function of Farce at the Present Time 305 Appendix: The Pattern of Reading in the Dark 311 Bibliography 315 Index 321 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Goodbye Yeats and O’Neill results from conversations with many colleagues and friends over the last five years or so. I am particularly indebted to my colleagues in the Department of Writing, Linguistics, and Creative Process at Western Connecticut State University. Raymond Baubles, Oscar De Los Santos, and John Briggs read the manuscript and, on many runs in Wooster Cemetery past the grave of Charles Ives, they listened patiently to my ravings and offered very helpful suggestions. To Ray Baubles I owe particularly an increased consciousness of the use of Victorian writers in contemporary literature; to Oscar De Los Santos, a greatly enhanced understanding of the relationship between the fantastic and farce; and to John Briggs, the co-author of the chapter on Tim O’Brien, whatever understanding of chaos theory I can claim. But there is no way to adequately express how much of their critical acuity is represented in this book. I have had the great luck of associating with many colleagues at Western Connecticut who have greatly encouraged my work. I must mention the always faithful and wise advice of Herbert Janick, Christopher Kukk, and James Pegolotti, who have run the Wednesday afternoon salon at the Holiday Diner for many years. Dean Linda Vaden-Goad and Assistant Dean Abbey Zink have been most affirming colleagues. I wish to thank also my other colleagues at Western Connecticut and other great friends who supported me intellectually and spiritually in my recovery from serious injuries in an auto accident in 2005 and encouraged me to persevere with my scholarship: Mark Barrett, John Bergstrom, Kathleen Brady, Brendan Brophy, John Caruso, Brian Clements, Jack Dunn, Richard Halliburton, Carol Hawkes, Connie Hellmann, Paul Hines, Denis J. Hynes, Jay Jackson, Jeanne Lakatos, Jack Leopold, Richard J. Lundy, Peter Lyons, John Malone, Hugh McCarney, Cecilia Miller, Vijay Nair, Lynne Paris-Purtle, Thomas Philbrick, and James Scrimgeour. vi I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Joanne Elpern, who runs the interlibrary loan at the Ruth Haas Library. She is a genius at finding materials that would have been otherwise not available to me. I have had great help from colleagues in Irish Studies at home and abroad. I must mention Michael Gillespie, Richard Haslam, Patrick Hicks, Roy Johnston, Thomas Kelly, Joseph Lennon, Beth Lordan, Patrick Maume, Colum McCann, Frank McCourt, Mary McGlynn, Thomas McGuire, Barbara Mennell, Patricia Monaghan, Matthew J. O’Brien, James S. Rogers, Eileen Sullivan, and Eamonn Wall. I thank my cousin, Cathal Cawley, for scouring County Louth in driving rain to find and take the picture that adorns the cover. Thanks to him and all the Cawleys for their hospitality on several occasions while I was working on this book. It has been a sheer joy and great luck to work with my very professional editors at Editions Rodopi. Esther Roth has been prompt and efficient in all matters, and C.C. Barfoot’s very patient and close reading of my typescript has greatly improved the text. I am indebted to New Hibernia Review, The Recorder, and Nua: Studies in Contemporary Irish Literature, which published early versions of three chapters. My work on this project has been facilitated by Connecticut State University/American Association of University Professors Research Grants over a period of several years and by awards of released time for research facilitated by the Western Connecticut State University Research and Development Committee and by Provost Linda Rinker. I cannot begin to express my debt to my wife, Denise Lepicier, and to my children, Peter and Christine, who are constant sources of joy and encouragement. “You stupid donkey pricko!” “Little treacherous narrowbacks they are, each and every one of them.” – the words of Danny Casey about his own children as they grow up in the Bronx. “But don’t you mind your father; baseball is a grand game, too. You’re in New York now.” – the advice of Michael Briody to Casey’s kids when charged with indifference to the “proper sport” of hurling.1 “Everything, always, turns to farce.” – Freddie Montgomery describing his many situations.2 1 Thomas Kelly, Empire Rising (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 216, 226 and 227. 2 John Banville, The Book of Evidence (New York: Vintage, 1989), 46.

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