Irish America
Irish America
For the last 150 years poor mother Ireland has been casting out her young to the four corners of the world. The country, it could be said, is no more than a spawning pool, a place to be born but not a place to live a life through or die in. Over two million left between 1845 and 1855 leaving behind the Famine in which one million died. During the nineteenth and into the … [Read more...] about An American Wake
The Irish of Albany, New York, have proved to be rich and fertile literary material for native son William Kennedy as is evident in Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, Ironweed, and Quinn's Book. Now a fifth novel, Very Old Bones joins the distinguished Albany Cycle. Patrick Farrelly talked to the Pulitizer Prize-winning author at his home. In his white clapboard house in … [Read more...] about Dark Secrets of the Heart: William Kennedy’s Irish Chronicles
For one week in August the small town of Tralee in the wilds of The Kingdom of Kerry is host to a multi-million dollar International Festival that attracts tens of thousands of expatriate visitors from every corner of the world. They are all drawn by an inalienable, sometimes extremely tenuous, link to the land of their ancestors. Pride, emotionalism and a sense of belonging … [Read more...] about The Rose of Tralee
A "carbuncled faced old drunkard," a "howling atheist," a "syphilitic lecher," a "pickpocket thief and murderer," a "crook and an anarchist." Hardly terms of denigration, but those are just some of the terms 19th century presidential candidates used against each other during their campaigns. It certainly puts terms from 1992 such as "draft dodger" and "wimp" in the kinder, … [Read more...] about First Word: Past and Future Presidents
