posted
'Tis lovely book about a poor Irish Catholic American family told through the eyes of the oldest boy. The father is a hopeless alcoholic who consistently drinks his wages and the family's welfare money, and it is a sad thing because the mother is an angel fit to carry her name.
What makes the book beautiful, from my perspective, is that the community and the narrator are true Catholics. It's not a matter of faith, rather, it's just the way the world is, despite the presence of Protestants and heathens: the perfidious English, the Hindus, and the Chinese millions. There are good people and bad people, but no where in the book are there religious poseurs and the absence of poseurs allows the possibility of terror and beauty to seep into the book. A woman comments on the chances of her neighbor having a baby and it goes like this, "Forty-five she is now and if there's another child we'll have to look for a star in the East." And it's as honest and simple as that.
I have more to say, but if nobody else has read it, I'll keep my peace. The reason for every action is shameless grounded in a myth, and not the myth of rational science, there is no calculating or conniving, just people living in a world robust with ideas.
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posted
I think what makes the book good is no matter how horrible that man's childhood was, they still managed to find some sort of happiness and beauty in their lives. Like when they stayed with their aunt who had plenty of food and a warm house and still was so bitter towards them. They went home and had a great day and felt bad for the aunt for never having days like that in her life.
I'm just a bit frustrated by the brutality and cruelty of a lot of the teachers and the priests though... They didn't seem to do enough to really help the poor there in my eyes.
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posted
'Tis is good and also Teacher Man... I love his writing style. He makes me think in an Irish accent.
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It was, though it lacked the brightness of the book Emily Watson is in it and she's my favourite actress.
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All of the characters spoke and acted with forthrightness, even the father who drinks away the dole and raises the kids in the middle of the night and offers a them a penny if they pledge to die for Ireland.
The people's heads were full of stories and songs. There wasn't an MBA in the crowd, and that's how I like it. It's like their poverty and Catholicism isolated from a world of intrigue, and in a way, afforded them to live more fully.
I say that they lived more fully because every action was compared to a myth, the myths of what it meant to be a man or to have dignity, or the myth of what it meant to be a Catholic, or the myth of what it meant to be Irish. And since the these myths were delicate and beautiful or terrible, the decisions made in their emulation were delicate and beautiful and terrible.
In comparison the myths we live under now, that everyone ought and does act in their rational self-interest, and that everything rational is better than everything irrational, the myths we live under today ostensibly denigrate the qualities associated with myth, giving life a banal taste, crowding out a space for that which is delicate, beautiful, or terrible. Because that which is delicate, beautiful, or terrible is also vulnerable, and we don't like vulnerable, so instead of myths, we have pre-nuptial agreements and insurance policies.
That's the long way around, but I also think that this is the case.
posted
I'm not sure if I agree with that concept... I was frutrated and how the father drank away their money all the time and ho wtheir lives could have been better if he had just done something about the drinking, but the times were different, they didn't have AA or rehab and Guiness was apart of the culture, but a lot of the other men had pints after work and still brought home money for the kids and didn't drink away money for the new baby when the family is struggling just to get bread. I think that poverty can give people an interesting perspective on things, just listen to the sort of voice this guy has when it comes to writing, but you seem to be romanticising things a bit too much, and it wasn't romantic for the people who lived it, but harsh and full of starvation, death and TB.
But there also were good stories though... much like how us black people had gospel and the blues to bring more meaning to their lives. Also parallel it with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, an excellent fiction story that has a simular theme and a scene where the mother doesn't want her children to romanticize their poverty, but to find a way out of it.
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I didn't mean so much to romanticize the poverty as much as the catholism and patriotism. It's possible that they are inextricable, going together like a three-handed jig, but I don't know.
I will say that before work this morning, I stopped into the book store and read the introduction to "Teacher Man," and I started crying when he spoke about how desperately he wanted to finish Angela's Ashes, and then I laughed a page later when spoke about his dreams as a young teacher.
That's another thing that gets me. I find his characters are adorable because of their worthy, elaborate, conflicted dreams.
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