Word: irishman
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Ostensibly, this pilgrimage to pay respects to and then bury the dead is Exley's story. In practice, the narrative evolves into a surrealistic odyssey. On his flight, Exley bumps into James Seamus Finbarr O'Twoomey, a preposterously gross Irishman with an equally incredible brogue ("Frederick, me lurverly, there you go again") who will later hold the hapless author hostage in a Pacific paradise. Also aboard is the future Mrs. Exley, a murderously sexy flight attendant named Robin...
JAMES MICHAEL CURLEY--Four times elected mayor, four times elected to Congress, once elected Governor and twice imprisoned, this upstart Irishman was the model for the protagonist of Edwin O'Connor's political novel, The Last Hurrah. But Curley's career was as checkered as it was successful. During his 1945 mayoral campaign, Curley was under indictment for mail fraud, based on a $60,000 favor he had done while in Congress. Curley won the election, was convicted of the charges and drew his mayoral salary for five months while in jail. When he was released in 1947, the people...
...illegitimate child, product of a liaison with a Catholic maid, survives him. When the guilt-haunted cousins die without issue, the boy inherits their estate. Throughout his distinguished career, Trevor, 60, has made the symbolic tale his specialty, and now, with a small cast and piercing ironies, the Anglo-Irishman illuminates an entire people afflicted by history. "No matter how it was," Sarah tells an old woman, "it belongs to the past now." Her listener disagrees: "The past has no belongings. The past does not obligingly absorb what is not wanted." There, encapsulated, is the story of Ireland...
...reprisals back home. Five minutes before curtain, a hush falls over the backstage. They gather for a nightly ritual, heads bent in prayer. Soft voices rise and fall in a Zulu chant. In the corridor, band members stop short and bow their heads. The doorman, a flush-cheeked Irishman, respectfully removes his cap. "I've never seen this kind of dedication," he murmurs...
...surface the two writers, separated by time and culture, seem wholly unrelated. The American is a sensual naif; the Anglo-Irishman is a sophisticated puritan. Twain is happy for small favors; Shaw is ungrateful for major rewards. Presented with the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, Shaw informs the Royal Swedish Academy that their award is a "lifebelt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore in safety." Shaw's dramas brim with advocates of free thought and liberal policy, but his correspondence reveals him as a fool of the new totalitarians. Adolf Hitler is a "wonderful preacher...