Dublin's a Feast for the Literary Pilgrim [Fall in love with Dublin]

Newhouse News ^ | 9/5/2006 | Laura T. Ryan

[Incorrigible]

Wow!  Talk about falling in love with Dublin!

It's been a while since I've flown "Air Fungus" (which is finally being pushed out of the government nest!) so the literary upholstery is a new one on me!

 

[Incorrigible]

Ha! Ha!

Up the Dubs!

You country cultchies don't even rate!

 

[Incorrigible]

I've included the real names of the status in Dublin:

Statues of Wilde (Merrion Square):  Fag on the Crag

Joyce (North Earl Street, across from Spire of Dublin): Prick with the Stick

Thomas Moore (College Street): Meeting of the Waters

and Patrick Kavanagh (along the banks of the Grand Canal): Crank on the Bank

 

[wideawake]

ping

lessness

[aculeus]

Oh, and those four Nobel laureates? Dubliners, all. Beckett, Yeats and George Bernard Shaw were born in the capital city. And poet Seamus Heaney, who won the prize in 1995, hails from Northern Ireland but now lives in Dublin.

Just curious but were any of them Catholic?

[IrishMike]

You can stagger around the Temple Bar section of Dublin and not remember the week -(adjasent to Trinity College & the Liffey).
The Brazen Head - claims to be Dublins and Irelands oldest elbow bending establishment.

But don't forget Limerick City (stab city and 'Limerick you're a lady') the home of two of our most famous heavy hitting elbow benders .... Peter O' Toole and Rich Harris.
(I really don't want to but in fairness have to mention, those two stains on our culture... The M'Court Brothers.

[Incorrigible]

Beckett: Church of Ireland

Yeats: Church of Ireland

George Bernard Shaw: Church of Ireland

Seamus Heaney: Roman Catholic

 

[TEXASPROUD]

Leaving for Ireland Oct.19 looking forward to visiting the Mrs. family. Also got pheasent, duck, and red deer hunting planned. I'll have to stop by Fox's in Dublin for a good cigar. The countdown has started.

[Incorrigible]

"Stab City" always cracks me up!

My grandmother came from Limerick and never talked about her family and never returned despite a few opportunities to do so!

She would have been the same age as Frank McCourt's mother so who knows!

[Borges]

Thanks for the ping. I've always thought that Wilde is tiresome and overrated.

[Incorrigible]

My in-laws prefer to come visit us. Warm, sunny beaches and big amusement parks are of significant interest to my teenage nieces and nephews.

Ireland has changed quite a bit over the past 20 years. Even the west of Ireland.

[Xenalyte]

Okay, so I'm a philistine in one respect . . . I find James Joyce unreadable.

I would rather read Moby-Dick aloud to prisoners than read Ulysses in the privacy and comfort of my home.

[wideawake]

I've always thought that Wilde is tiresome and overrated.

Snarkiness for snarkiness' sake will not put you in the first tier of authors, especially not in Ireland, where every author is witty.

As tiresome as Wilde can be, he cannot rival his fanbase for the title.

[Borges]

I'd take MD over Ulysses anyday. It's hilarious! If you read it without the whaling chapters its quite awesome.

[wideawake]

Joyce is my favorite author of fiction, hands down.

But you have to "get" him - and it's not a matter of being intelligent or being unintelligent - it's a matter of finding his sense of humor amusing.

[IrishMike]

Frank McCourt's mother (poor woman)

A lot of your grandmothers generation never returned, had no desire, they left hunger and poverty. Families were split, Australia, Europe, England and the States.
At one time 10% of the American population was Irish emigrants.

Back to the McCourts, born in America, during the great depression, alcoholic Protestant father, originally from the North (during the era of the black n Tans), and he leaves America to raise a family in catholic Limerick city.


WTF was in his mind !!

[Borges]

He's more a symbol then a great literary figure. H.L. Mencken had him pegged when he said that his inverted sayings and epigrams eventually become just as mechanical as a preacher spouting platitudes.

[Xenalyte]

Maybe that's it . . . I should add that it's been almost 15 years since I even attempted Joyce, so it's entirely possible that my literary palate has matured, so to speak.

Yes, Borges, I'm gonna go give MD another try, mostly because of the aforementioned palate issue. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out I like it.

(But I bet them prisoners wouldn't cotton to 45 minutes of me going on and on and ON about the whiteness of the whale.)

[Borges]

The whiteness chapter is of course one of the whaling chapters. I want to reread it and skip those (though they are of course metaphorical and are filled with jokes). It's the same with 'War and Peace'. Tolstoy's endless philosophical essays on history are easily skipped.

[aculeus]

Thanks. Joyce, I know, was ex-RC.