Zachary Lazar's "Sway": Book Review

"They're trying to be serious and sarcastic at the same time, emotional but also cool. All the helpful distinctions are being made pointless by their grating, persistent music." (31-32) Lazar here sums up one of the first concerts by the Stones, but this perception of their aesthetic carries into the whole narrative.

The review by BookReporter posted earlier {as this review has been to Amazon US today} gives the gist of the plot, so I will instead provide what earlier comments have not, a sense of the book's flavor. Lazar writes cleanly and sparely. You get little sense of the physical realm in which his characters roam. Brian reflects on their mid-decade endless tour which "had turned out to be a kind of endless tantalization, a way of traveling the world without ever really seeing it. What they had seen was duty-free shops, swimming pools, parking lots, ashtrays." (97) But, you enter their minds.

Watching Anger's "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome" film, Keith & Mick hear: "'Mortify the spirit in order to more purely inhabit the body,' a voice said in the darkness. 'Enter the nightmare until it loses the veneer of credibility.'" (133) The characters, whether a chillingly realized Manson and his sway over Beausoleil as the first chapter opens (and the only one with Charlie M. in it directly; the novel includes the murders through secondary means, which was a relief considering how intense many of the scenes had been with Anger and the Stones, even these dancers on the edge of a volcano luckily far from that man's evil); a floundering Brian, a shy Keith, and a calculating Mick; lonely Kenneth and a cocky Bobby: they all try to be, "an exception" as everyone below thirty by the end of the decade appears to be to whatever the rule had been.

The omniscient voice indirectly enters into the mentality of protagonists. Manson seems to Bobby to play a role that he makes fun of even as he dares his follower to believe him believing his own acting. No less than Mick, the everyday kids also enter into this attitude of life as trying on one costume after another, to break the mold, to shatter the complacency that rattles them and pursues them. This edginess pervades the whole novel. As filtered through the somewhat older observer-participant, 1969 Kenneth: "They were calling themselves the Love Generation now: these kids who didn't doubt themselves even when they were wrong, who would try anything, who acted as if life was an idea and not a block of time with a beginning and an end." (170)

That passage captures the tone of much of the narrative. This book will not prove soothing. It's sharp, prickly, and feverish. While I wished fewer dreams pervaded the storyline, I suppose it's almost archetypal in its deserts of California and Morocco, and their clash with suburban Cheltenham and Chelsea. It's not hectoring, but it can be relentless, for it repeats the downfall of hope, and the ascension of despair. It's judgmental, as Mick provides along with echoes by the weaker Anger a dissection of the era's utopian yearning. Those who triumph manage to subsume hippie innocence into a dystopian confrontation with reality, the harder-edged zeitgeist that will enable the stronger to survive what overwhelms Bobby and Brian, and which threatens to drown Kenneth and Anita. We know what happened to Manson, Jagger, and Richards.

It's also a sign of Lazar's confidence that he can mix such iconic figures into an imaginative evocation of an era that's so filtered through albums, art, fashion, drugs, excoriation, and nostalgia. Anger films the Hyde Park concert and thinks about "the new death cult in the Aquarian style" how "it was the logic of thanatomania, not a sequence of cause and effect but an underlying current, a unifying style. With each death, the mystery of death took on more and more glamour, the romance making the human world feel less and less bound to the earth." (187) Again, you feel the spare quality of Lazar's voice.

As I mentioned, not an easy novel to like, but one to admire. He's done his research, tinted it with his own imagined journalism deftly, and colored the whole psychedelic trip in colors that convince you. It's most memorable in its afterglow-- one that haunts more than comforts. Not a long book, but the arrangement of chapters, the selection of events, and the detail of the inner demons may blunt the impact for some. This may be verisimilitude, for Lazar's taken on the difficult task of recreating the come-downs after the highs. Necessarily disorienting and dispairing, therefore; the studied langours of the middle of the narrative may have lingered too long in our passages into Brian's addled mind, or in the placement of a rather awkward coda of Anita and Kenneth in 2002.

Yet, Lazar takes on Altamont and conveys it to you vividly, he interprets the Manson Family's fall intelligently, and he gives you a sympathetic without sycophantic portrayal of the Anita-Keith-Mick-Brian tangle, the spell that captures Bobby, and the magick that lures Kenneth all into the evil eye that's got them in its sway.

Lazar at his best can distill the essence of many of his already well-biographed characters with elegance and compassion. For instance, a 1962 Keith "knows every lick from every Chuck Berry record ever made, an indication of how much time he's spent alone." (24) The omniscient narrator on Mick as fame takes hold: "It's a face he's had all his life, one that has molded his personality, and now it's a face that carries him as the personality begins to fade." (48)

Or, Kenneth's view of Mick as he will appear on the American tour: "He could see Mick onstage in either [of two props, two top-hats, one black, one an Uncle Sam starred-and-striped hat} of them, moving toward the microphone, raising his fist. The devil in the top hat-- they were associated somehow. The god of power-- money, politics, war. The sly, sophisticated con man who in the end was just a bewildering reflection of all the people who were looking at him." (207)

Theocracies & Realities

Fifteen years ago, reading about Ireland, Israel, and Tibet, I entertained at least myself with my own musings about my fascination with failed attempts at theocracies. Or, oligarchies in thrall to the religiously obsessed. My interests since childhood have wandered in such realms in my armchair travels. The Six-Day War, the Black & Tan struggles, the flight of the Dalai Lama: these somehow entered into my boyhood reading. I delved deep into the dugouts of Irish republicanism where the far-right and the extreme nationalist found common cause, the fortressed walls where settlers on the West Bank (or Occupied Territories or Judah & Samaria depending on your predilection, as in Northern Ireland, The North, North-east Ireland, Ulster, and Occupied Ireland also show) contended to establish another pre-messianic domain in New Yerushalayim's golden light, and the shattered lamasaries where the snowy lion rampant on the brilliant Tibetan flag once revealed that nation's clash of empty expanse and mind-altering sunbursts of dazzle upon the rarified air's glare.

Yet, whether Mick Collins or David Ben-Gurion or the Dalai Lama, it's easy to romanticize. The Cairo Gang and the Stern Gang uncovered the sordid if necessary evils of a revolution against the British. While the feudal poverty endured by the subjects of the abbots -- in the Himalayas as in the fields of Flanders or the forests of Wales-- attests to the conditions within which a lucky ten percent or so lived relatively comfortably, despite their vows, upon the labors of many who had no choice but to go to bed hungry. Yet, trained as a medievalist in an era and a country far from either the ethos or the edifices, I have tried to understand such mentalities through their remnants, their texts and illustrations and prayers. My knowledge of Tibet pales beside my familiarity with Irish republicanism and that ideology's again removed from my daily toil, let alone the distance bridged by my shelves with their dusty considerations on the clerical discernment of spirits or the neglected wisdom from seven centuries ago directing me along the narrow path to ascetic mystical enlightenment as intended for an anchorite in Northern England.

Not many boys in the States may claim having had a real Tibetan kiss, but my eldest son did, from Sareng, who grew up in the refugee town of Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama resides with many exiles. I've never seen "Seven Years in Tibet," or "Kundun," let alone a documentary on the salt trade there that I'd wanted to years ago and have forgotten the dutifully mundane name of. But, I read Richard Avedon's narrative history "In Exile from the Land of the Snows" and learned of the tortures meted out upon the monks and nuns and laity in Sinkiang prison camps that equal the agonies of the Armenians or Jews or Rom. For a long time, I wondered why our own country did nothing.

Stupidly, in my youth, I waited for a president who'd take up the Tibetan cause, failing to realize that what mattered more were pandas, ping-pong, and profiteers. Now, I even teach those "displaced" workers who've lost their jobs across the fence at "globalized" Boeing; they have even been sent overseas on their last assignment: to train their replacements in China who now build our military's planes. Faustian bargains indeed. We will end this century another shrunken British Empire, our dominion over a few rocky islands of penguins or pigeons. The Chinese and the real Indians will prove our betters, and we will vie with France for past glories and present malaise. As with the past obliterations of peoples and cultures and faiths, we in this ridiculously hypocritical, undereducated and overstimulated nation bow before idols of free trade, most favored nation status, and filthy lucre.

Like Francis Bacon, even my own knowledge fails to inure me from the marketplace, even as I shrink, like him, into my library's comforts. Claiming scant understanding of what's contained in countless volumes and lifetimes of meditation, still, I've integrated a bit of the "Bardo Thodol" into my dissertation. I marvelled at its terrors and beauties when I studied Sogyal Rimpoche's version of it around the time of the death of my mother. Last night, at the end of our yoga session, Layne and I heard our teacher for the first time chant the primordial "Om" three times and then Shanti thrice. Now, of course I thought of the end of "The Waste Land," for my learning's not gone astray. But, I also realized, and perhaps T.S. Eliot did despite his learning, the sheer awe-ful (in the original sense that the anchorites knew that good Saxon word) nature of that cry and that acknowledgement that we know only that we do not know.

Robert, Uma's dad, Thurman, who in his edition of the Tibetan Book of the Dead better titles this treatise by a subtitle, "Liberation Through Understanding in the Between," pioneered as a young American scholar our understanding of what he coins as "psychonauts." Thurman undertook this formidable learning that guided so many-- by explanations such as his life's work-- into the current revival of dharma in the West. Rick Fields, in his history of this movement, "When the Swans Came to the Lake," includes a prophecy I dimly remember of iron birds and red wings in apocalyptic days that fulfills the Buddhist entry into our society. I turn to Thurman's dedication, which I opened by chance only now. It predicts the current crisis and summons up dark memories of such turmoil over the past half-century.

"This book is dedicated to the brave and the gentle people of Tibet, who have suffered and are suffering one of the great tragedies of our time. The entire world is turning its back, due to fear and greed, while the Chinese government pursues its systematic campaign of genocide. May the conscience of all people cry out in one voice! May the Chinese people inform themselves at long last, find out they have been lied to by several of their own governments, and realize they are in extreme contravention of the laws of humanity and of nature! May their hearts then soften and may they take concrete action to repair the great harm they have inflicted on this innocent people. May the Tibetan people soon regain the sovereign freedom they have enjoyed since the dawn of history! And may the sunlight of Tibetan Spiritual Science once again shine brightly upon a freshened world!" (vii)

I think tonight of the recent hundred people reported dead after protests in Tibet. The Chinese regime spins mightily their machine, for we all know no boycott will occur, no goods will stop filling our Wal-Marts, and no debts will suddenly go unpaid-- at least for now-- by the banks and factories and corporations who control globalized profit, no matter the Red Flag or the Stars & Stripes flying outside the firm's headquarters. We too live under an oligarchy, rule by the propertied few, in league with a plutocracy where the grads of Harvard Law and Columbia and Oxford will come November continue their rule. We look back at the monastic worlds of East and West and shake our heads derisively at their backward notions. Yet we live in the most sinister theocracy of all, in thrall to the idols of the marketplace. In this Left Coast, post-Christian secular realm, are we any more free today despite our purported freedom from bondage to our distant lords and under our imperious masters?

Photo: from Independence Cymru blog for 18 March. There's based in San Francisco the International Campaign for Tibet at Save Tibet, and this organization in London: Free Tibet

My article on Horslips!

Here's the abstract for "Horslips in Irish Musical and Literary Culture," in the peer-reviewed online journal of Irish Studies, Estudios Irlandeses 3 (2008): 132-42. Scroll down at Issue 3 at this site, and you can read all 7000 words via htm or pdf formats. My thanks have been expressed at Come Back Horslips to its movers and shakers. Guaranteed jargon-free, unless I quote some know-it-all critic with tenure.

Abstract. This essay examines the literary impact of a musical electric-folk band. Horslips combined psychedelic, and hard rock with Irish traditional motifs and Celtic narrative themes. Spanning the decade from 1970 to 1980, their success and decline followed the trajectory of the countercultural movement, which came late to Ireland. The band’s revival of mythic characters and historical events drawn from the Irish past attracted fans from all over the island, as well as the diaspora; many young people gained an appreciation of their Irish heritage for the first time, as Horslips became the first electric folk-rock band to fuse disparate genres, and to succeed as an Irish-based independent collective who controlled the graphics, marketing, distribution, and promotion of their music. They inspired the likes of U2 and the Irish punk and new-wave rock musicians who followed them, and without the pioneering efforts of Horslips, Irish music and culture today may never have reached its current success, three decades later.

Keywords. Horslips, Irish popular music, Irish traditional music, Cheryl Herr, John Kelly, Patrick McCabe, Paul Muldoon, Gerry Smyth.

My Horslips article

Photo: Horslips in 1972

Condé Nast Traveller Book of Unforgettable Journeys: Book Review

The previous two reviewers [on Amazon US, where I posted this review today] both gave this two stars only. I think the arrangement of the articles, alphabetically by country, detracts from the power of the best entries here. The magazine obviously can attract top authors to contribute, yet the selections vary widely in length, focus, and inherent interest. While there are eight or ten fine pieces, too many others trudge along dutifully and make you wonder why, except for the commission from their publisher, the author bothered at all.

There's not much in the way of editorial guidance. A skimpy introduction, and while each entry does have appended a relevant supplement that appears to be lifted from what would have accompanied the original article, there's no byline to verify or deny this. These "service addenda" are credited only in a list ending the acknowledgements. So, I'm not sure who wrote each one; only two of the authors appear here in this endnote. These suggested itineraries, reading lists, or travel tips, as with the original entries, veer all over the place in quality. From two decades, if these are the best 21 articles from "eighteen eminent contributors," then I'm glad I did not have to read the rest of the magazine's articles that didn't make the cut.

Gregor von Rezzori floats down the Romanian Danube but fails to make us want to follow; Russell Banks did the same for me in the Everglades. Jan Morris on the Big Island of Hawai'i, Nik Cohn in Savannah, Edna O'Brien at Bath, and Patricia Storace in Provence all provide serviceable reports, but none of these grabbed my interest enough. Nicole Krauss enters Japanese gardens in Kyoto, and she does conjure up if you're curious why they cast their spell. Shirley Hazzard tells where to go on Capri, and again the appeal may lure those so inclined. Robert Hughes on Barcelona-- he wrote a long book on the city-- falls into masses of detail beyond the scope of a short essay. Philip Gourevitch uses his experience as an African reporter well, and if you're more curious about safaris than I am, it's a helpful primer. But, despite the noble attempts at ecological journalism by Suketu Mehta from along the endangered Himalayas, his contribution's tonally out of place among the more personal approach of the other entries. I liked better Edmund White's discussion of Petra's natural beauty and eerie remains. Simon Winchester dares to hike up volcanic Mount Mayon in the Philippines and you feel his pain.

My favorite essays? Pico Iyer's visits to Iceland and Ethiopia both reveal, in a very religious vs. a rather secular locale, a poignant sense of the primeval beauty and terror that seem to have endured before mankind's arrival. Francine Prose in tracing Kafka through Prague certainly follows a well-worn path, but her knack for the uncanny makes her essay succeed: she ends it with a vignette of walking along as the streetlights blink out, rather than timed on, at her approach. William Dalrymple finds along his own pilgrim's trail to Compostella a vigorous counter to the pieties and predictabilities of a familiar traveller's tale. These three writers manage to show us what we may already know, as they do, while keeping an eye out for the happenstance. They mix the historical and the recent well, and do not descend into a potted recital of guidebook lore or hackneyed glimpses of quirky local color.

Patricia Storace shows how invisible the reality of Athens is in its ruins and its legends that persist amidst a gossipy, noisy, and frank exchange of daily routine among its bustling and busybody natives. Similarly, Robert Hughes enters the funereal remnants of ghostly Etruria to plumb sarcophagi where the natural and the man-made appear to have exchanged places, such is their decay into the caves beneath the glare.

Finally a couple of places I had no interest in going to, but whose narratives kept me eager to find out what happens next to the writer. James Truman drolly does this in Iran to elegant effect. John Julius Norwich elbows us through the Vatican; it's accompanied by a very detailed insider's walking tour of how to navigate the labyrinthine museums. Whoever wrote this skillful guide on what to see and what to miss amidst the Roman throngs deserves extra editorial credit.

Gaeilge ag claiseach.

Tá Gaelport.com go bhfuil ag fhoilsiú dhá alt faoí an sláinte Ghaeilge an seachtain seo caite. Aríst, scríobhann Manchán Magan. Is maith leis ag plé go leor "No Béarla 2"! Inniu, scríobh mé go beag fúthu anseo-- an fear seisean féin agus an clár teilifíse nua. Léigh mé "Gaeilge? Cé Gall!" le Mánchan. (Tá sé imeartas focal as Gaeilge ní bhfuil as Béarla; is brí "Gall" = strainseir nó Sasanach! Tá ciall níos searbhe, ochón!) Agus chuir mé litirín ar an eagarthóir go "An Amannaí na gCathair na nAingeal" faoí dearmad a dheánamh acu. Thóg siad an learáid mhícheart na leagan cainte ansin, os cionn an píosa. Chuir ealaíontóir an focal "agat" ach "agaibh."

Bheul, deir Manchán ar "An Amannaí Éireannach" smaointe eile againn. Sílím go bhfuil níos hiomlán faoí stádas na Gaeilge. Insíonn Manchán uathu smaointe duairce fós. Creidim d'aithin mé an rud a bhí ar a chroí. Léigh mé a intinn. Foghlaimíonn mé beagán Gaeilge. Tá dúil orm a tosú ceachtanna sa seachtain a scríobh agamsa féin ann nuair go mbeadh an am saoire agam. Críochnaíonn mé frasaí as Gaeilge ina inchinn agam. Tá mé ag lorg ar an foclóir agam go leor, ach tá mé ag stadéar.

Tá Gaelport.com ag fail comhráite éagsúlái na Míchéal Ó Ceallaigh le Gaeilgeorí agus muintir na Ghaeltachtái. Tá siad ag insint faoí radhairc difriúila. Measaim go bhfuil moltaí níos fearr faoí an amárach na Gaeilge. Is an stiúirthóir í na Seachtain na Gaeilge Orla Níc Shuibhne. Rugadh agus tógadh Daire Bracken ina mBaile Átha Cliath. Is fidleír é na banna "Sleamhnú." Is an captaen fhoireann pheile Chiarraí é Dara Ó Cinnéide. Tá sé gcónai i gCorca Duibhne. Is bolscaire í Aoife Ní Thuairisg ar TG4. Maireann sí i gConamara.

Tá fuirseoir óg Des Bishop ann le deanaí. Is Meiriceánach é. Mar sin féin, d'imigh Na Cois Oir ar feadh na déaga. D'fhreastail sé scoil ina hÉireann. D'fhan sé aon mhí déag in aice leis Cois Fharraige ina Gaeltacht Chonamara anuraidh. Bhí mac leinn ina scoil leis foghlameoirái fasta, is cosuil mé. Rinne sé an clár nua, chomh Manchán, faoí an áit na Gaeilge inniu. Beidh ag déarfaidh "Ina t-ainm na Fhada." (Tá sé imeartas focal eile as Béarla amhain! Is ciall é 'fada' as Gaeilge air 'fad ruda'-- mar shampla, is ea 'sineadh fada' leis an guta.) Caitheann Des ag labhairt as Gaeilge. Tá sé ábalta déanamh magadh as an teanga nua!

Grooving in Gaelic.

Two articles that Gaelport.com's published this past week about the health of the Irish language. Again, Manchán Magan writes. He likes to plug his "No Béarla [English language] 2"! Yesterday, I wrote a little here about himself and his TV program. I read "Gaelic? What Gall!" by Manchán. (There's a pun in Irish that's not in English-- the meaning of "Gall" equals "foreigner" or "Englishman" in Irish! More bitter sense, alas.) And, I sent my little letter to the editor of the "Los Angeles Times" about a mistake that they made. They set up an illustration with the wrong expression there, above the piece. The artist put in the word "to you" and not "to you all/both."

Well, Manchán tells us at "The Irish Times" more thoughts. I think that these are more complete about the status of Irish. Manchán still speaks to us of gloomy thoughts. I believe the knowledge that's in his heart. I read inside his mind. I am learning a bit of Irish. I have a desire to start weekly lessons for myself to write in it when I might have the free time. I finish phrases in Irish in my brain. I'm looking in my dictionary a lot, yet I'm studying.

Gaelport.com finds Michael Kelly's various conversations with Irish-learners and the people from the Irish-speaking regions. Tá siad ag insint faoí radhairc difriúila. They are talking about different views. I reckon that they have better opinions about the future of Irish. Orla Níc Shuibhne's a director of the Week in Irish. Daire Bracken was born and raised in Dublin. He's a fiddler in the band "Slide." Dara Ó Cinnéide's captain of the Kerry football team. He's living in Corca Dhuibhne. Aoife Ní Thuairisg is a television announcer for TG4. She lives in Connemara.

Recently, there's Des Bishop, a young comedian. He's American. All the same, he left the East Coast during his teens. He attended school in Ireland. Last year, he stayed eleven months near the Cois Fharraige [seacoast district] in the Connemara Gaeltacht. He was a student in a school for adult learners, like me. He made a new program, like Manchán, about the place of Irish today. It will be called "In the Name of the Fada." (That's another pun only in English! The sense of fada is in Irish 'a long thing'-- for example, it's a "long stretch" over a vowel.) Des can speak Irish. He's able to make jokes in his new language!

Scríobhann/Written by Mícháel Ó Ceallaigh/Michael Kelly le Irish Times. 15ú Martá/ March 2008. How Gaelic Got Its Groove Back

Tugann/Contributed by Manchán Magan le Irish Times. 18ú Martá/ March 2008. The Plot to Make Irish an Alien Language

Grianghraf/ photo: Girl who loves Irish!

Media Mistakes in Irish, part two.

I link to Manchán Magan's website here and have reviewed his two travelogues in English, so his article today in my hometown paper proved a welcome reminder of his familiar (at least to me) jeremiad on his nation's "first official language," once removed. But, the graphic that went along with the brief summary of Magan's "No Béarla" filmed adventure proved his thesis, albeit unwittingly. A spectacled Manchán manque greets two people, peasantish, and they rear up in anger. "Biodh lá maith agat," he tells THEM. And that's the problem, as my letter below to the L.A. Times sent off minutes ago explains. I doubt if this one, anymore than my previous one to the paper's Sports section mine on Kareem Abdul Jabbar's misguided attribution to Pat Riley of the Boston Celtics' cognomen as Viking warriors, will be printed, however.

Randall Enos's cartoon accompanying Manchán Magan's "Gaelic-- What gall?" (March 17) illustrates, probably inadvertently, Magan's own thesis on the decline of Irish-language fluency. Both the depiction-- one man greeting two people with what's loosely translated as "Have a nice day"-- and Glen Hansard's recent thanks to the members of the Academy for his Oscar delivered in Irish make the same mistake. They both use the second-person singular form of address of "agat" rather than the correct plural form of "agaibh."

[Image: my very first self-taught scan! I did not add in efforts to fend off charges of pedantry that Bíodh was missing its accent.]

Proto Indo-European origins: a new book

I have just ordered this, a must-read for me. I'm no linguist, as my attempts in writing Irish on this blog witness. Yet, thanks to an adolescent exposure to Tolkien and a grad school reading in "The Road to Middle Earth" of T.A. Shippey's explanation of his predecessor (once early on at Leeds) in his exploration of "asterisk reality" and its basis in the *PIE etymological suppositions that lexicographers love in charting backwards the words we use today, I have harbored a lingering, if distantly understood, fascination for Proto Indo-European. Coincidentally, in talking after my stint as a guest speaker on book reviewing (thanks to my Amazon experience) to the Publisher's Association of Los Angeles last month-- during the eclipse that made the moon a glowing ashen ember-- to a woman (she never introduced herself by name) whose husband's getting a Ph.D. in Celtic & Indo-European Studies at my alma mater UCLA, I learned that she and he collaborated on a fantasy novel (under a joint pseudonym to protect his budding scholarly reputation) drawing on his academic knowledge of asterisk reality and PIE to construct their own mythical world.

When I studied for my own Ph.D. there, a few minutes walking distance from where I gave my talk, I had met a few Indo-European doctoral students in the cross-fertilization that brought a few folklorists and linguists into the seminars I took on Old and Middle English language and literature. These students appeared fearsomely more learned than we English Lit types. One student told me that the IE field never had recovered (at least twenty years ago at the time of my conversation) from Aryan taints, and that few people were encouraged to pursue their advanced work in this controversial area. I figured such came to UCLA because of Marija Gimbutas, and once I glimpsed this elderly matriarch. She propounded the argument feminists and New Age pagans loved, the Magna Mater/ Great Goddess theory. One afternoon, I caught a blur of her working in her chilly, metal-bookcased, flourescent office beyond a nondescript open door, deep in the recesses of subterranean Haines Hall.

That building's where I taught my very first meeting of my very first course, in English Comp, fall '84. If I had no need for a steady job (look where I wound up with a doctorate in English, let alone a more arcane field!), and if I had more of a perhaps mathematical bent that allowed me to control my acquisition of language more systematically, or perhaps Germanically, then I might have wandered into this region. Instead, as Spike Milligan boasted: "I'm Irish. We think sideways."

I had told that wife of such a UCLA IE wanderer-- presumably more Teutonically disciplined-- that eclipsed evening, of a work newly published. I hazily tried to remember it. I knew it had "horse" or "wheel" or "chariot" in the title, or combinations thereof. Princeton had issued it last year. I went back and located it, so if she ever stumbles on my blog, here 'tis, via Christine Kenneally's "Giddyup" from NY Times Book Review, March 2, 2008. I will, of course, post my layman's review in time on the blog and on Amazon responding to David W. Anthony's "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language." See, I got two out of three titular nouns.

That chariot logically follows, for this cause-and-effect relationship drives Anthony's argument that from the Pontic region near Ukraine, Indo-Europeans spread their domesticated technology and the elite linguistic status. We reconstruct fragments thousands of years later, no matter our own ethnicity, that attest to this legacy in what I compose and you read at this moment. We echo PIE. We faintly repeat its paeans to their male sky-god, their mounted warriors, and their whirling axles.

Giddyup
Image from the review in NYTBR, Frans Lanting (Corbis) Viz.: Ian McCulloch: "bring on the dancing horses." Cf. Siouxsie: "They turn in-- to swimming-- horses."

See my earlier blog entry on medievalist Scott Kleinman's "Mern Þonke" musings about Asterisk Reality. Asterisk Reality

Irish slang in San Francisco

Lee Templeton's e-mail on this, in a promotion also about the SF Irish Music festival for some reason held this weekend, captures the "blas" of the City. She also roused my jealousy at having had to grow up in another conurbation to the south devoid of even Irish American, let alone Hibernian, charm and lore. Although, I was asked by e-mail by a visiting Dub about the March 17 craic. I recommended O'Brien's on Wilshire in Santa Monica, down by the numbered streets, 23rd or so. The times I have darkened the door of a pub or bar seem few, but I hope you enjoy tomorrow and every other occasion for mirth and mingling duly "responsibly." Here's Lora Lee:

And now: The explanation of "Up Eddy, Down Turk"

In his essay "An Irishman Goes to San Francisco", local historian Michael Corrigan recalls an old City greeting, common in his mid-twentieth century neighborhood: "All the way out Market. Up Eddy, Down Turk." He writes:

I once asked Father the significance of this common greeting. Why were people riding all the way out Market, up Eddy, down Turk? What was down Turk?

He replied "It was an old streetcar line that ran all the way out Market Street, turned up Eddy Street and then went down Turk Street. The conductor would call out: 'All the way out Market, up Eddy, down Turk. All the way out Market." He had a nasal drone like a tinker with his horse and wagon. The line's now discontinued.

"But why do people still say that to each other? What does it mean?"

"I don't know," Father said. "It can mean anything. You hit the jackpot, lose a wife, or win the daily double, you say, 'All the way out Market, up Eddy, down Turk.' I guess it means you've gone the distance."

With this bit of local lore for his starting point, Corrigan delved into the almost forgotten slang of San Francisco's Mission District. Like the best of slang, it is rich in metaphor and word-play. Rhyming schemes as colorful as Cockney cousin variants. You "turn to," or go to work, after pulling "Oscar hocks" over "plates of meat"—that is socks over feet. A morning shave was an "ocean wave," and a breakfast of "dummy and cackles" was eggs on toast, something to fill your "jam and jelly" or belly.

Some the imagery seemed universal. A fool was a "salmon" easily hooked and a "trencherman" was a heavy eater. Other phrases were newly minted in American coinage: an eavesdropper (itself a metaphor!) listening in on your conversation was doing an "Erie Canal." And when you wanted to contact a friend across town – or indeed across the country – you picked up the "Alexander Bell" and dialed.

To make things unique (as you need to do in this town), the Mission District Irish community invented an 'infix,' not heard in any other language except Arabic. This is a syllable added in the middle of a one-syllable word. The syllable was roughly pronounced 'ee-iz' or 'ee-ah' – one example Corrigan provides is 'blonde' which would be thus rendered "bliazond."

Fan-freakin'-tastic…

So there it is: a regional dialect that crackles with 20th century American cockiness, throwing sparks on the pavement like a Muni streetcar wire. There's jazz there and burlesque and newsreels and radio serials and mugshots and cigarette machines and betting on the horses at the racetrack and the Yellow Kid and coffee and cable cars. It's 23-Skiddoo, kiddo. (That's another piece of slang coined by San Franciscan cartoonist Thomas A. Dorgan earlier in the century…)

For a full taste, here's a retelling of the old childhood story of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in the full Mission District style. When I first read this, I just delighted in its verve and local character. Only later, when reading Dance Polyhymnia, Aaron McMullan's novel in progress, and I encountered some of the same words and phrases still in use in his part of the world did it all sink in: language itself is an immigrant.

So, gather round kids and listen to the stirring tale of:

Little Red Riding Hood at Granny's Gaff

Back in the days when the trolley cost a nickel, Little Red Riding Hood went to visit her grandmother. She left behind her waspy friend, Goldilocks, the Bliazond who preferred riding around in daddy's heap. Red Riding Hood took Shank's mare through the woods. After awhile, she made a right and then a left chalk and there it was, Granny's Gaff. Little Red Riding Hood didn't suspect an off shore Benjamin, but inside, a wolf-trencherman that he was, had just eaten Granny. He pulled the old woman's dress over his pair of strides when he saw the girl through the window; holy smoke, he thought, with a second meal for the day, he'd be Indiana. Little Red Riding Hood entered the joint and saw here grandmother in the bed. She stared at Granny's chip.

"My, what thick brothers and sisters you have."

"All the better to tickle you with," said the disguised wolf.

"My, my, and what a long 'I suppose' you have."

"All the better to sniff out today's wonderful lunch," answered the wolf.

"Sure but wearing that lean and fat, I can't see your long gray bonny fair."

"Then come closer," said the wolf. "Take a load off those lovely plates of meat." After a pause, the wolf said, "Those pork and beans fit you so well. Join me in a jar. Then have a loaf of dummy to fill that jam and jelly."

Little Red Riding Hood suspected Benjamin was off shore. Where did Granny get those strides? The Alexander was disconnected. Harp that she was, Granny never offered her a drop. She heard hunters shooting outside. Did they have an Erie Canal?"

"What big pearlies you have, Granny."

The wolf had lost patience. "All the better to eat you with, my dear!"

The wolf sat up but Red Riding Hood knocked the wolf on his Happy Easter. She took an Arthur Duffy outta Granny's gaff and headed for the woods calling to the hunters. The main event appeared, pulling a pistol from his sky rocket as the wolf stood in the door. With a bliazast, it was curtains for that wolf.

Photo: No "Turk & Eddy" combo--the streets run west to the Mission District, paralleling north above Market; logically no two-way black-and-white signage. This of Eddy's about as good as ten minutes of googling images gets. San Francisco: Eddy St.

An gairdín ansiud.

Is garraí beag in aice leis teach againn. Tá sé ag líonadh leis blathannaí buí bídeach. Dúisíonn siad go fíanta. Anois, tá an aimsir na h-iarrach. Chuir an baisteach nuair bhí an geimreadh. Mar sin, fásainn fionnán inniu. Tá sé an leath-cluain (pairc, geadán talún, leadhb thalún, áit oscailt!) suaimneach atá sínte le ár cluainse. Is focal difrúil as Gaeilge air spás idir dhá rud: bearna. Is ainm bhruchbhaile Chonamara Chois Fharraige na bhreac-Ghaeltacht siar na gCathair na nGaillimh freisin.

Feiceann mé féar glás. Faigheann tú brobh go ard ansin. Is seanfocal as Gaelige nuair ní chonaic tú daoine eile ar feadh go mór. Abair an fear: "imíonn tú an féar go fada ann, mo chara." Thug "Na francach bhaile na toirní" an teideal na ceirnín go luath di "Na féar fada ann."

Muise, cónaíonn crannaí éagsúla ansin. Ní fhoghlaim go leor fúthu. Níl mé ábalta insint ainmneachaí dílis díobh. Is cuimhne liom go bhfuil an crann is ard. Measaim go raibh an sean-leamhán. Smaoineamh mé go raibh go éirithe fadó. Sílím go raibh an teach ansuid go críochnaithe cúig bliana an uair úd sin. Níl sé an chéad teach eile nua. Ach, is tí againn is sean. Is idir é seasca bliana nó seachtó bliain a aoise.

Inné, chuala mé scéal go halainn. D'inis Léna chugam, bean an tí agam. Tá chomarsaí Pól agus Inge againn. Tá siad an té atá ar thaobh ár laimheanna deise. Is mian leo go laidir. Cheannaigh siad an áit oscailte. Anois, ní tosóidh duine ansin. Imreoidh éin agus cait go saor. Tá siad go sonas ar cheile.

The yard over there.

There's a little yard next to our house. It's filling with tiny yellow flowers. They rise up wildly. Now, it's the season of spring. The rain came when it was the winter. Therefore, grasses grow today. This is the undisturbed half-meadow [field, patch of land, strip of land, open space!] which stretches next to ours. There's in Irish a special word for a gap between two things: bearna. It's also the name of a Conamara Cois Fharraige suburb west of Galway city in the breaking-up Gaelic-speaking region.

I see the green grass. You find tall grass-blades there. There's a proverb in Irish when you did not see another person for a great space of time. Tell the man: "you went away into the long grass, my friend." The Boomtown Rats gave to a later album the title "In the Long Grass."

Certainly, various trees live there. I did not learn many of them. I am not able to tell the proper names of them. I remember that one's the very tall tree. I estimate that it was an old elm. I think that it was planted fifty years ago. I judge that the house over there was finished at that time. The house next door is not new. But, our house is older. It is between sixty and seventy years old in age.

Yesterday, I heard wonderful news. Layne told me, my wife. We have neighbors, Paul and Inge. They are [those] on our right-hand side. They had a strong wish. They bought the open place. Now, no people will build there. Birds and cats will play freely. We are all happy together.

Photo/grianghraf: Portadown/Port an Dúnáin ina Tuaisceart na h-Éireann/North of Ireland, Corcrain Community Project/Tionscnamh den Phobal Chórcrain.Meadows

There Are Hundreds Of Paths Up The Mountain

There are hundreds of paths up the mountain,
all leading in the same direction,
so it doesn't matter which path you take.
The only one wasting time is the one
who runs around and around the mountain,
telling everyone that his or her path is wrong.

Hindu teaching. Diolch yn fawr to Alan Jones on his wise blog (click at right from my list) "Independence Cymru" for this timely insight. He also links to a video:
Treasury of Compassion: Avalokiteshvara

In a week where, as my dear wife has expressed well today at her blog (and in the comment there I blather more-- see link below), the hypocrisy of our blinkered attitudes about claiming to be shocked, shocked (as if we're all chaste Desdemona rather than jaded Emilia in finding out that, yes, some men cheat on their wives, and vice versa) at the downfall of another publicly shamed husband (and silently glowering spouse dragged out into the camera's eye, loyal as she stands in front of the flag) caught with his pants down and his pecker up.

It's also a week when, to less coverage, we read of a quarter of all American girls 15-19 infected with STDs (and half of all African American teens), certainly our prudish, voyeuristic, shamed and smirking combination of a war on drugs and just say___? has failed. Are we better off in our hedonistic celebration of the body? Leo tells me Planned Parenthood's coming to his school perhaps in light of an outbreak of pregnancies. Inspired, he smirked, by the success of the wildly popular teen flick "Juno." I also found out that the JAMA surveyed-- some fieldwork-- lads and lasses "partying on spring break" to find an average alcohol consumption per diem of 10 per gal and 18 per guy. Speaking as somebody's whose limit's about one-fifth of even this determinedly dizzy distaff set (let alone the testosteroned cadre) I find these figures daunting. I guess today's youth build up tolerance.

So, thus flourish fauna in my native habitat. I still forget how stupid many people can be, despite a quarter-century in the classroom. My patience, however, increases for professional reasons and the need to keep a job, so I do forget how the other half lives outside of textbooks and term papers. I do find myself embarassed to be born and stuck where I am. But, my European counterparts tell me it's the same for them, although they tend to teach an elite level compared to L.A's huddled polyglot and harried commuting- texting- chattering masses. Don't know how much the professional atheist literati can take credit for blaming us for our own national stupidity this time around. Or how much the collapse of a stricter society that I can recall vividly having shaped my own youth that terrified me and all my (Catholic, as I knew practically none other) friends regarding the pleasures of the body and the fate of the soul can be mourned, but I place my confusion before you.

And, apropos of Hindu and Buddhists who appear to have spared their peoples the militant missionizing and tyranny of monotheism, I wonder about Western civ and we as victims of iconoclasm. The idols shattered, the chapels on their ruins. Even the Parthenon-- to the "virgin" Athena-- was christened Our Lady of Athens in the fifth century. I think of the jungle carvings in Khajuraho with splendidly erotic, happily serpentine copulations. Those Indian figures radiate carnal joy, and in their embraces, seek the transcendent. These sexy stones (out of many more once extant) only survived the Moghul invasions and Muslim Taliban-like destruction by their remoteness and their coverage in vines. Similar to a few sheila-na-gigs, perhaps?

I read of their erotic endurance in the pages of a discarded Sunday supplement to an English paper brought in by one of my housemates at Irish school one rainy summer night last July in Glencolmcille. There, within a few minutes' walk, other rocks mildewed. One I forgot to hike to had a tiny circle in the middle, albeit higher than the waist, deemed 'the meeting' or once the 'courting' stone. Others phallic, remnants of erect pillars and now silent rites we will never know. Such rituals nearly vanished, at least from the clerical chronicles, once austere evangelists like Colmcille spread from that valley, his birthplace. He meant well, perhaps. Wanted to save my ancestors' pagan souls and stop the clans from rutting with, and like, sheep. Certainly the intensity of the mystic, of the soul yearning for release from our messy guts drove many in the Church towards beauty and wisdom. Yet, for many others, it warped them, and we who had no choice, having never been given any other option on the small island and the narrow path but to submit or be damned.

The familiar hatred of sex and exaltation of the celibate urged Colmcille and 1500 years of Irish Catholics into inendurable renunciation of our nature. His bed, still seen today just beyond the window of my room where I learned more about Khajajuro, was also of stone, but unyielding granite rather than pliant sandstone. Trying to overcome their libido, priests forced us to reject bodily comfort. My paperback "Sex & Marriage in Ancient Ireland" by Patrick C. Power's a thin one. Much thicker tomes stand on my shelves: "Medieval Handbooks of Penance," "Sex, Dissidence, and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages," and the enormous, and admittedly fascinating to me (there's still my papist love of arcana, well before my Jesuit university's B.A. which I thank proudly if perversely, for it is there so many of us not that many years ago quailed at the strictures that kept us from one another's fully carnal knowledge) "Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe."

As James A. Brundage in the latter volume demonstrates so well, these medieval patterns of thinking did not fade; they influenced directly the laws we have today on many state books regarding the illegality of same-sex relationships, sodomy by its multifarious and contradictory examples that fail to explain, and our unease at sex itself. By my young adulthood, to be fair, we'd all internalized the sinfulness of our desires. And, there were far too few Jesuits around our campus to enforce pre-Conciliar chastity. The Jebbies probably did not believe much in such "occasions of sin" anymore, but we did, credulous children of devoted immigrants, the stern working class, and what the President of LMU rumor had it once labelled as our student body "the average Catholic high school graduate."

Historians now aver, following Emmet Larkin's devotional revolution thesis, that often earlier Irish displayed less piety, more "laissez-faire" let it play as it lays sort of attitude towards sex until the Famine combined with Jansenism to punish whatever hangover remained from the previous millennium and a half of a detente between priestcraft and paganism. The monks in the Glen and their successors at Jesuit colleges, enamored with an ideal human form which had ascended from the bonds of appetite rather than the atavistic urges into which we descend, made us fear our own pulse, and that reverberating in those closest to us.

I shared with Layne one night an entry in my Irish dictionary where I stumbled across "cousin." This means "col ceathar," or prohibition/ impediment to the fourth degree. It's a strong word, related meanings denoting aversion, repugnance, distaste, broken vows, and forbidden degrees of relationship. The cognate "ciorrú coil" defines incest; "An cholainn choil"= "the sinful flesh." She replied how sad it was that what could be a relationship of love turned into one of fear. You saw cousin Aidan or Aoife and all you'd think about was "warning: keep off the ass"?

By so many stages, such a shift of mentality alienated the Irish from each other. The tenuous ties back to Indo-European and indeed Indic structures of sex and family and culture eroded. The Church, dragging us away from kisses and grappling into fasts and grumbling, helped eradicate a brutal, yet frank and direct and fleshly celebration of the spiritual within the coupling and the lust and the passion that unites us all in our secret moments. Not just, as Eliot Spitzer and his wife Silda and their three nameless teenaged children and "Kristen" aka Emperor Club $1,000 a rendezvous (so Eliot paid; he's rumored to have spent $80k total) escort all testify, our sordid exposure in purportedly Christian times. Makes you long for a Buddhist counter-Reformation, or a Hindu revival. Not to mention a truly Celtic reconstruction of the fables.

Image: "To Ease the Passage of the Soul into Paradise" Ink on silk, China, 10c CE. Read more at: Avalokiteshvara as Guide of Souls

My Wife's Blog Entry Today

Alexander Waugh's "Fathers & Sons": Book Review

This collective biography spans about six generations responsible for, one from the fifth generation tells us, about 180 books-- quite an average. Alexander's narrative depicts The Brute, muttonchopped patriarch from the 1860s; Arthur, Pickwickian declaimer; Evelyn & Alec, one funny, one feckless, both novelists, bon vivants, and diligent scribblers; Auberon ("Bron"), satirist whose entries for the Daily Telegraph & Private Eye I'd always heard of but never before (given their London provenance) had the chance to sample-- in his son's excerpts here; Alexander, who never seems to have been called as such ever by Bron. "For the first eight or ten years of my life I was addressed simply as 'Fat Fool'." (422) It's that kind of relationship; the book concludes gracefully if ruefully with the newest father's glance at his next generation. Alexander, as I must call him for clarity's sake in a book with three Brons and a He-Evelyn & She-Evelyn, delves into the correspondence, rumors, anecdotes, novels, journalism, and gossip that makes up about a century and a half of alternately engrossing and trivial material.

Rather than the Delphic oracular injunction to "know thyself," Alexander avers this on the lowered level of the teenaged "I need to discover the real me." He counters: "Perhaps 'O Man, know thine ancestors' would be a more useful motto for the modern egotist to pin on his puffed lapel. For the key to his identity, if such a thing even exists, will be found to lie not where he instinctively looks for it in the mirror-glass in front, but furtively concealed all about the hedgerows and borders of the long, twisting, dusty road behind." (19)

Why focus on the fathers and sons? That's where the bulk of the literary material lies, and the reason for "Wavian" renown, envy, backlash, and retribution. Michael Dirnda's review posted on Amazon recounts the episode of Bron's Cypriot machine gun gone awry, and this could have been lifted from a novel by Evelyn, his father. Alexander's best when he shows precisely how real life overlapped with Evelyn, Alec, Arthur, and Bron's own writing, and how they all used extraordinary wit (at their best at least; all wrote so much that inevitably standards slipped) to illuminate in fiction and essays their own foibles and those of their fathers. This pattern, as the son reflects late on in this family history, presents fascination and difficulty.

"A father may have many children to add to his many concerns but a son has only one father, the 'august creator of his being', who chooses where he lives, where he goes to school, what he might find funny and, to a certain extent, what he thinks. Fathers are more important than sons, and therein lies the problem." (418) The gist of this lengthy book, filled with letters back and forth between the generations as they snipe, nudge, and snicker with each other, is that in such a chain of progenitors and offspring may not lie conventionally false notions of affection for children-- in all their boredom, annoying habits, and demands to Be Taken Seriously. Instead, refreshingly, each father W. appears to-- as documented closely here-- have detested and escaped from his snivelling progeny whenever possible, and for this, in time if decades later, the son loved the father. Such honesty, as Alexander and his father show, eviscerates sentiment. It attacks maudlin convention of how parenthood should be celebrated, and this remains the lasting message I take from this book.

But I'd be remiss to say, without giving away the best parts of this narrative, that for all the longueurs, for all the endless moaning about headmasters and contracts and affairs and alcohol that occupy so much of the content of the letters and the recollections-- that considerable learning, outrageous incidents, and genuine humor at the foibles of our fallen human condition provide the essence of this study. Evelyn and Bron sigh eloquently, in frustration at the pablum that the nanny state thinks we need for nourishment in ever more philistine times.

Not all is either stultifying correspondence, insider family lore, or dutiful corroboration or refutation of allegations whispered or thundered for decades against the Waughs. The contents are stuffed full of epistolary invective, and it's probably difficult for Alexander, having to set the record straight and add his many askew angles to what's been printed and promulgated about his family, to edit the wealth of primary sources he presents, sifts, and challenges. The book may suffer in readability for those of us not as enamored of or as intimately related to Waviana. Still, this is a forgivable fault and a welcome one, given the access Alexander offers for those who immerse themselves in his in-depth presentation of Alec, Arthur, and his own father.

By contrast, the more familiar Evelyn recedes, and we see him more as one integrating his father, Arthur, into such works as "A Handful of Dust" so memorably. Evelyn's more personally presented to us, and less of his works or public life, such as it was, gains scrutiny here. The book, for me, gains poignancy in the later years of Evelyn and the maturity of Bron; this allows Alexander more space to consider his own entry then onto this crowded dais of literary predecessors. His emphasis is on the personal side of Evelyn, his grandfather, as he signed to Bron "yours affec. E.W."

Bron comments on Evelyn after his death that "politics bored him. His interest was confined to resentment at seeing his earnings redistributed among people who were judged more worthy to spend them than he." (qtd. 424) This typifies an ethical, yet bitter, sense of withheld fairness amidst what Evelyn lamented as the "abominable difficulty of human relations." Bron credited Evelyn's removal of all his teeth without anesthetic as improving his disposition in old age; Evelyn in turn had followed Arthur's venerable example. Such relationships, then obliquely reflected by Bron with Alexander, as had Evelyn & Alec's with Arthur, sets up a hall of mirrors. The later father and son characterize themselves as "liberal anarchists," fed up with a notion of prosperity that insists only on materialism and gadgets. (Although I did marvel at Bron's ability "without gainful employment" at 24 when fathering Alexander "near Treviso in Italy at the house of a one-eared Arabist called Dame Freya Stark" to "employ a daily help, a French maid and a maternity nurse." (422-23) Money did seem to afford handsome estates, lengthy trips abroad, boarding schools and Oxford, and lots of fine wine on what appeared to me vanishingly little visible means of income. This may be my American sensibility, unaccustomed to how the other half lives.

Alexander on Bron: "He, too, used his writing to free himself from the irritations of life and the problems of human existence." (430) The whole refusal to kow-tow to the demands of children, while delighting in the pursuit of one's own selfish pursuits, certainly runs against the prevailing philosophy of our age. Somehow, the Waughs managed to produce the children they deserved, I suppose. This all reminds me of an observation by Borges: both mirrors and procreation are abominable, for they reproduce the human figure without reason.

Bron emerges as a match for Evelyn when it comes to insight beyond the family's eccentricities and social shenanigans. As Evelyn became discouraged by the post-Vatican II Church, so did his son. After attending services that Bron realized "would be completely unrecognisable to him, that the new religion had nothing whatever to do with the church to which he had pledged his loyalty," Bron "felt I could distance myself." Wisdom follows: "Whatever central trut survives lies outside the modern church, buried in the historical awareness of individual members. Or so it seems to me. But whenever I have doubts, it is my father's fury rather than divine retribution which I dread." (435)

Bron's son follows suit. He titles a recent book "God," yet asserts that the loss of a True Faith (as Evelyn famously displayed) may be simply proof that the zeal of the convert's rarely hereditary. Decline & Fall repeats each generation on the Waugh's domestic stage. "The English show their hatred for children by dressing them in anoraks and romper suits, stuffing them with sweets, refusing to talk to them and sending them out of doors whenever possible in the pathetic hope that someone will murder them." (qtd. 437) The clumsy love of father for son, and the half-shameful, half-affectionate fumble of emotions, moves through many letters quoted here, if to often unintentionally comic rather than the usually desired risible or denunciatory effects.

A couple of examples must suffice. Arthur wrote to teenaged Alec off at school, in May, 1914 about the sin of self-abuse. "It is an awful thought that someday you might take to a poor girl's arms a body that will avenge its own indulgences upon children yet unborn." The letter goes on, by the way, for probably over fifteen hundred words, and is printed in its entirety. I do doubt the assertions in one footnote Alexander adds, however, so I must append it too for the sake of transparency: "Masturbation was not considered unhealthy until 1710 when John Martens, a quack doctor and pornographer, proclaimed it as such in a book called Onania. Marten's fortune derived from the medicine sold in conjunction with his book. The Church did not consider masturbation a sin, or indeed link it to Onan's behaviour in Genesis, until after the publication of Onania." (63) Certainly a topic needing hands-on research?

There's much of this sort of skewed erudition here from all Wavian contributors. I leave to you to burrow out the derivation of Crutwellism, to hearsay regarding Oxonian "dog sodomy," Evelyn's providing rabbits with a deadly glass of Christmas cheer, and his wife Laura's fate when she fails to get rid of rotten fruit. You'll find which Waugh died with a turd near his corpse, which one provided inspiration for both Island Records and the cocktail party, which one became Colonel Gaddafi's favorite author, and which one was depicted in a moralizing portrait, "Dr Waugh and the Perverse Pupil." Not to forget such sentences as this, concerning "an ethnic guitar" which Alexander's brother Nat brings back from South America "as a present for his mother-in-law" that "contained chagas larvae, which hatched unto beetles, crawled out of the instrument, killed the dog and rendered his mother-in-law insane." (443)

(Posted to Amazon US today.)

Carlsberg, Gaeilge, Cats, Nymphs:

Anthony Munnelly, who blogs as An Spailpin Fánach, contributed this article to the Irish Times....I guess the ad speaks for itself unseen. Why Irish lads'd prefer Carlsberg, on the other hand, remains an unaddressed and nearly as grave a problem for 21st century cultural heritage and pearls before swine.

Contradictory view on native tongue leaves a sour taste

The Carlsberg ad with Irish-speaking lads in a foreign bar neatly captures the essence of our attitude towards the language

The 2006 census tells us that there are 53,471 people who speak Irish daily, outside the education system, 97,089 who do so weekly, and a rather stunning 581,574 who do so sometimes. Only 412,846 said they never speak Irish out of the 1,656,790 surveyed, which means we have a population of one million Irish speakers.

One million! Odd that even though the Polish population here is smaller than 100,000, it is not at all uncommon to hear Polish spoken on the streets, while hearing Irish spoken in public remains a rarity.

It's reasonably clear that most people who claim to be Irish speakers in the census are talking through their hats, and doing so in English. In a review in Foinse, the Irish language newspaper, of the recently published A New View of the Irish Language, edited by Caoilfhionn Nic Pháidín and Seán Ó Cearnaigh, Seán Tadhg Ó Gairbhí makes the point that if that 100,000 Irish speakers existed, there would be no point in discussing views of the Irish language in a language other than Irish. His point is well made.

David McWilliams made the point in The Pope's Children that the Gaelscoil movement was indicative of the new role that the language will lead in the Ireland of the 21st Century, that paradise run by Hiberno-whatsits, where the Budland of today is but a distressing memory. One of the signature moments of the TV show of the book of the newspaper column was McWilliams breaking into Irish himself while interviewing a rather startled Gaelscoil principal.

I have grave doubts about the whole Gaelscoil movement, especially in the capital; I note simply how many columns McWilliams himself writes in Irish, and I move on.

The search for the true status of Irish in the nation in 2008 is a little like the search for Schrödinger's cat. You may remember that, in creating his famous metaphor illustrating the sometimes counter-intuitive nature of quantum physics, Schrödinger posited of a certain cat that may or may not be in a certain box, and the nature of the box is such that we can only tell by opening the box whether or not the cat is inside.

Only thing is, opening the box kills off the moggy. How then do we open the box without killing kitty? So it is with Irish; once we start asking the question people start lying to the questioner. It's simple human nature.

Therefore, to find out the true status of the language in Ireland we have to surprise the nymph while bathing. We need to take a snapshot of the nation and the language while the nation isn't looking, and thus find out how we really feel about the language.

And Carlsberg have done just that, with their Irish-in-the-nightclub ad that's currently on the telly. It isn't so much the ad, but the reaction to it, which seems - anecdotally - to be quite positive. We throw the shoulders back when we see it, and bask in a certain glow.

The ad, for those that haven't see it, goes like this. Three young Irishmen are on holidays in some foreign city. They go into a nightclub, and shout three Carlsberg. The barman asks them where they are from, and they reply Ireland.

The three boys are then asked to do something Irish. Our three heroes put their heads together and they decide to speak Irish. So the leader turns around and says falteringly 'An bhfuil cead agam dul amach go dtí an leithreas?' His confidence builds then and he begins orating wildly to an eager crowd. 'Agus madra rua. Is maith liom caca milis. Agus Sharon Ní Bheoláin! Tá geansaí orm. Tá scamall sa spéir. Tabhair dom an caca milis!'

The scene ends with our hero cutting a rug with the local talent. 'Speak more Irish,' she asks him. 'Ciúnas bóthar cailín bainne' he tells her, dancing away. She laughs seductively. Fade to black.

And that ad sums up everything the nation as a whole thinks about the first language right now. We like the idea of Irish, the idea of it being there, but it has no semantic meaning for us. It means nothing.

Such words we have are only those we remember from school, in brief incoherent snatches. We like the language, in the same way we like that old fool of a dog that always chases parked cars, but fundamentally it's a joke, not something to be taken seriously.

'Ciúnas bóthar cailín bainne.' 'Quiet road girl milk.'

Gibberish.

We think Irish is gibberish, and its only purpose is to give us another reason to look down on foreigners, something we love doing all the time.

Somehow, 87 years after independence, it doesn't seem that much to be proud of.

Anthony Munnelly runs an Irish language blog, An Spailpín Fánach, which may be read at http://spailpin.blogspot.com/ This is a slightly edited version of a recent blog.
www.ireland.com

Irish Times - Lthch: Anthony Munnelly. 12ú Márta 2008.
(posted by me via Gaelport.com)

10 Stages of a Punk Band's Career

Lee Templeton forwarded this from The Guireans' correspondence to her from their sun-challenged corner of the Isles off of but part of Scotland. I figured for those of us of a certain age, younger than Hilary, older than Chelsea, it'd ring true. With Obama but five weeks younger than me, I don't know if he was into the new wave craze when attending (for two years before he decamped for Columbia) Occidental-- the little Stanford, and as dappled with the liberal arts PC rainbow-hued hue-- with all those sweatshop-free clad preppies and deserving youth of color from usually privileged backgrounds nonetheless who mingle on that very pricy campus only a few miles away from my house.

[Aside about Barack: I'd been wondering about the absent father, and why nobody in the popular press, at least in the common run-of-the-mill coverage I peruse, details what happened. I found out from John Spain's column in the Irish Voice (to save money, to which I am about to let expire!) what I had not learned in the American puff pieces.

Obama's father married his mother at 18, left her at 20, fathered eight more children, married three more times (without divorcing any of them), lost his legs due to a drunk driving accident, and died when Barack was 21 in another such crash. Obama Sr. left his first child, a baby, along with his first wife when she was 18. He went to Hawaii, where he married Obama's mother. He left her not to due to racism as his son intimates in writing so much as the fact Ann discovered Obama senior already was married. So, back to wife #1; he sired two more children with her before other women beckoned. Even after his legs were amputated, he produced child #8. He died before he could marry that baby's mama. (Thanks to the March 1, 2007 entry on the now presumably defunct website "Evangelicals for Mitt" that helpfully if ironically points out another case of a candidate with a polygamist in the family tree! Apparently paternal hijinks became bowdlerized or omitted from Obama's own autobiographies, unsurprisingly. These have raked in $1.6 million so far for him.)

John Spain, in his typically iconoclastic manner, proposed an intriguing argument, that not Black America but "white" or at least Hawaiian multicultural America truly fathered Obama, who unlike his wife, say, is not a product of the African-American (hyphen intentional) milieu. Only at Columbia did he choose to identify more with it. Or, as a black student explained to us in a class discussion, it's not so much that Barack wants to be seen as black; it's the African-American establishment that will not let him be seen any other way. Intriguing perspective. I wonder what Obama senior would have made of all this, son himself in turn of a goat farmer, he earned a Ph.D. in economics from the Ivy League.]

Back to raucous stereo speakers the size of packing crates. Headphones bulbous. Turntables crackling. Heavy boxes of vinyl. Such were college days for some of us-- if not for the unmatriculated bands who served as our soundtrack. At least 1980 Obama, if not 1970 Hilary, had "access to proper drugs, probably." Leave Bill out of this. He only inhaled, as shrewd then as Barack now, I bet. See below for context.

On 09/03/2008, The Guireans wrote:
Huidh huidh, wait a minute...

What's this nonsense about The Guireans not being the originators of Gaelic Punk???

>a) this '79 video gives the lie to their current claim as inventors of
>Gaelic punk as that Sheep Purple cover is full-on stadium rock

As any fool knows, this video actually dates from 1980. By which time we had "progressed" from our earlier punk roots and sold out, man. This was a fairly typical career arc for top bands of the period - The Jam, The Undertones, The Clash, SLF et al. The key points were:

1) Formation of a band characterised by musical ineptitude but fired with
inspirational punk enthusiasm, originality and a "year zero" attitude to previous groups.
2) Critical acclaim
3) Major label involvement and massive chart success
4) Artistic disorientation caused by pressure of 3) + access to proper drugs, probably.
5) Inability to write any more good songs.
6) Seizure of creative control by producer/manager/record company,
7) Increasingly gratuitous overproduction (usually involving brass sections),
8) Total collapse in creativity and a final ignominious split. Then some crap solo projects, typically poor 80s imitations of material by the earlier bands rubbished at Step 1
9) A gap of many years, during which the band members discover they're no good at anything else.
10) Reformation for the money. Usually about 20 years later.

The genius of the Guireans and our intimidating manager Coinneach "Peat(er) Grant" Livingstone was that we optimised this classic late 70s Punk/New Wave business model by proceeding directly from Step 1 to Step 8. What's more we made the whole process even more efficient by removing the "enthusiasm", "originality" and "money" bits of the remaining steps.

Why don't more bands do it the Guireans' way?

Chearaidh an dradhars
The Guireans

Image I found by googling "punk sell out": CoolZOr, a Marketing Trends blog. 21 Aug. 2005. "The Poor Work Harder & other leads." A London initiative pays off.

Scríobh Pól Ó Muirí faoí "Thar Sáile"

Chuir Ciara orm post nua le Pól Ó Muirí, "Thar Sáile." Deir sé faoí go bhfuil muid ag mairigh thar lear agus ag foghlaim Gaeilge. Chuir iontas air.

Bhí sé ag scríofa leabhair éagsúla. Cheannaigh mé dhá úrscéal don fhoglaimeoir fásta, "Paloma" agus "Dlíthe an Nádúir." Insíonn an drom ar na leabhair seo orainn: "Is é eagathóir Gaeilge an Irish Times é Pól Ó Muirí." Measaim go raibh an triu faoi Paloma Pettigrew faoi lathair, an ban-garda, an cigire. Tá sí ag cónai faoin tuaith, ach níl sí sásta! Déannann rudaí dífrúil agus go dona a bhuaileann uirthi. Ní faigheann sísean féin siochain.

Tá sé ag seoladh altannaí ar an "El Blogador" (le duine eile) faoi polaitiocht na tíre agus leasaitheoireacht sóisialta na hÉireann. Tá an dream na Yahoo "Úrscéalta." Bhí sé ag obríos ag aistriú as Béarla an chéad scéal Mhuíreadh anuraidh. Nuair bhí mé ag imeacht go Ghleann Cholm Cille an samhraidh seo caite ina hOideas Gael, d'fhan le Brian, agus eile, in aice leis an scoil go "An Teach Mór." Tá sé ag tógáil an leagan Béarla na leabhair i nGaeilge shimplí-- bhuel, tá siad furasta dó séisean féin!

Rugadh é agus tógadh é Londáin ann. Anois, tá sé i gcónaí i Bergen. Tá sé cathair na Ioruaidh. Labhair Brian an teanga Ioruais. Tá sé bean a tí agam; tá sí Ioruchaigh freisin. Tá sé cliste. Tuigeann sé Gaeilge go maith. Sílím go bhfuil ag foghlaim ar feadh trí nó a ceithre de bhlianta. Déanfaidh Brian ag fáil scrudái go ard as Foras na Gaeilge. Tá sé duine dea-shamplach leis mac léinn is cosuil sin ag plé Pól Ó Muirí. Maith thú, a Bhrian! Is cuimhne liom go raibh maith leis "Paloma" go mór!

Pól Ó Muirí writes about (Learning) Irish Abroad

Carrie sent me a new post by Pól Ó Muirí, "[Irish] Abroad." He talks about those of us who are living overseas and studying Irish. He wonders why.

He's a writer of various books. I bought two of his novellas for adult learners, "Paloma" and "The Law of Nature." The back of these books tells us: "Pól Ó Muirí's Irish-language editor for the Irish Times." I reckon there's a third book recently about Paloma Pettigrew, the policewoman, the detective. She's living in the countryside, but she's not happy! There's different things going on badly to knock her about. She can find no peace for herself.

He sends articles to "El Blogador," (with others) about national politics and social reform in Ireland. There's a Yahoo group, "Úrscéalta." They worked on translating into English the first Ó Muirí story last year. When I went off to Glencolmcille last summer at Oideas Gael, I stayed with Brian and others in "The Big House" next to the school. He's building up translations into English from the books in simple Irish-- well, they're easy for him!

He was born and raised in London. Now, he's living in Bergen. It's a city in Norway. Brian speaks the Norwegian language. He has a wife; she's Norwegian too. He's smart. He understands Irish well. I think he's been learning for the space of three or four years. He's getting ready to take the advanced examinations from the Irish-language agency. He's a prime example of a student like Pól Ó Muirí discusses. Good for you, Brian! He liked "Paloma" a lot, I remember.
Irish Abroad

Janet Davies' "A Pocket Guide to the Welsh Language": Book Review

This little guide's only 125 pages of text, but packs an impressive amount of material into its compact size. Part of the U. of Wales Press series, it introduces you to the history of the language more than its features. The first chapter on its origins takes but ten pages, while "The Changing Fortunes of the Language" narrates its growth, flourishing, and shifting into modern times over sixty pages. The state of the current (as of 1999) language takes about the same space, and a short chapter comparing Welsh with 'other Non-state Languages in Europe" densely gives lots of facts in less than ten pages. Finally, "A Note on the Characteristics of Welsh" in a few pages gives only a hint of what I would have wished much more about: how the language works, not as a grammatical overview but a look at its distinguishing features.

Still, given the editorial constraints which undoubtably kept this a pocket guide, Davies manages to express her interest in this ancient language with erudition, insight, and control. Illustrations and charts break up the text; I found many of the latter helpful in visualizing the linguistic points. Maps also assist understanding of dialectal features and where speakers lived yesterday and at present.

A couple of examples of her comments demonstrate Davies' ability to transcend a dutiful recital of statistics, names, and locations. In the 1920s, for example, bus routes linked far-off places to tourists, and cars also began to enable Anglophones to enter where none may have gone so distantly before. "Remote villages where no language but Welsh had been heard for fifteen centuries, now resounded in summer for English visitors." (62)

As for Plaid Cymru's campaign to conserve Welsh Wales, she sees contradictions in preserving Welsh-speaking communities that need "economic infrastructure" to survive. If Plaid (judging from her perspective ten years ago) appeals more to the minority constituency, this may strengthen the language at the expense of the party's contraction from a wider national influence, so "it will be unable to become the party of Wales as a whole." (110) Davies guardedly holds optimism in the language's holding pattern, and its growth in schools, but fairly indicates its decline as a communal language in many places where it once dominated. On the other hand, unique to Celtic languages, Cardiff represents an urban enclave of speakers, and in such developments Davies sees hope for the future.

Finally, as her preface and afterword eloquently if briefly describe, Davies knows what it's like to be curious about the language while remaining on the outside looking, or hearing, in. As no book seemed to give an overview for such curious readers, she wrote one. "Wanting to read a book is the best reason for writing one." (viii) As an adult learner of Cymraeg, Davies convinces you of what she concludes is its characteristic as a "life-enhancing" emblem of culture and knowledge.

[Review posted to Amazon US today.]

Image (reproduced on cover): "Y Wyddor" (The Alphabet) ca. 1900, T.C. Evans."Y Wyddor"