No time to think, let alone post

Hello Blog.
I am working on a homepage with the intent of aiding my musical pursuits. Namely, the finishing of the home studio, the creation of Arise! Records and the banging out of a quick but decent demo of songs (maybe a 5 song EP) to generate some gigs on the coffee house set.

Soon I hope to provide the link to that page and get a few free MP3 files uploaded there. The five songs will be thematically tied together.

I also want to comment here on a book review in last Sunday's Boston Globe, but there are only so many hours blah blah.

Should'a would'a could'a

Veblen and Theory of the Displaced Class

From The Leisure Class and I, by George Blecher, at Eurozine.

Recently I inherited a little pile of money. Not enough to gain me entrance into what Norwegian-American economist Thorstein Veblen once called "the leisure class," although in his day it might have sufficed. (Maybe the fact that I'm being coy about the amount I inherited already puts me into the mind-set of the leisure class, who, according to Veblen, had its origins in an aggressive, competitive warrior class. For isn't my secretiveness - in fact, everybody's secretiveness about their "worth" - a provocation, a primitive challenge calculated to make you wonder if you measure up to me?)

When I inherited the money, the first thing I felt like doing was burying it. It was my insurance against fate, and I had to make sure that no one would take it away. In a country like the U.S., where each citizen struggles along without the benefit of a safety net - and where these days everyone is burdened by credit-card debts, college loans, health insurance costs, and the loneliness of rarely seeing each other because of long hours at the office - maybe it's nothing more than sensible to bury one's nest-egg. If this money won't buy me happiness, at least it can give me some peace of mind.

But other feelings entered. Temptation. Desire. The wish for power. I felt like showing my money off, spending it on things that would prove to others how rich and strong I am. I wanted to acquire, to exercise the "predatoriness" that Veblen asserts is the main characteristic of the leisure class.

One of the things I decided to buy was a tweed jacket. Now, I have a favorite tweed jacket that I've been wearing for years, part of the uniform of Veblen's "scholarly/servant" class of which I'm undoubtedly a part. My old jacket isn't even real tweed but only a passable imitation. Now that I had the money, I wanted a real Harris tweed jacket, and not just any Harris tweed jacket but a thick one, one with more tweed in it than other tweed jackets. I wanted an ostentatious tweed jacket that would demonstrate by its utter tweediness that it was better (i.e., more expensive) than any other - and maybe suggest by its elegance that I'd ascended out of my class into a better one.

In his first and most famous book, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen skewers this thinking with deadly accuracy. He talks about the need of the leisure class to spend money in a way that "serves the purpose of a favorable invidious comparison with other consumers" - that is, to spend money in a way that makes other people feel poor. For one thing, this may mean buying items that are "hand-wrought" rather than "machine-made." Why? Because the consumer is revolted by the "common," the "machine-made" - even though the machine-made is often better made than the hand-made, and indeed the "superiority of hand-wrought goods [...] is a certain margin of crudeness." (159)(1) The reason is simple: the machine-made is cheap, the hand-made expensive, and "without reflection or analysis, we feel that what is inexpensive is unworthy." (169 ) And not only that: according to the rule of "conspicuous consumption," Veblen's most enduring concept, all of us, even if we're not members of the leisure class, emulate our superiors and spend almost to our limits, more than we need to spend, just to flex our muscles.

As I shopped for the perfect Harris tweed jacket (Veblen might say that my interest in Harris tweed as opposed to other fabrics was a manifestation of "fashion," yet another way to compete with others), I found that prices varied wildly, with custom-made jackets costing up to 15 times that of machine-made ones. At one point, I considered flying to Scotland, the home of Harris tweed, and getting a jacket made at a lower price than what it would cost in New York City. But my wish to acquire was in conflict with my instinct to protect my money, and I finally settled on a machine-made jacket. But I was ashamed! I'd been a coward, afraid to spend the money that would have made me a Master of the Universe. So after I left the store with my "cheap" jacket, I turned around, went back in and bought a second tweed jacket. And promised myself that if I ever got near Scotland, I'd have a jacket made.

Apparently one doesn't join the leisure class overnight, not even in one's head.

Ouch. I've been thinking about my own shopping habits. I should say, prejudices. Hardly a fashion plate, and not stricken by the urge to follow all that Queer Eye for the Straight Guy commands, I nevertheless am a complete snob when it comes to clothing.

Since I cannot afford to practice my snobbery as I would wish, I adhere to the 'remainders' and 'outlets' brand of consumption. Yes, I admit it. I will purchase a pair of pants because they are Italian-made. Even if they are a size too big, or small. I will not go this far with shoes, of course, but with shirts or coats, absolutely. The more obscure and European the brand, the more I am interested.

As a result, I have a closet full of odd-sized apparel: a very cool suede jacket that fits if I wear a light shirt underneath, and make sure it sits just so across my shoulders ; another suede jacket that really won't sit across my shoulders at all because truth be known it is too big on me; several pairs of pants that are just too tight, or too long, and I haven't had time to get them to the tailor, so there they sit, season in and out; one shirt rather too large and one too snug. But at the moment of purchase, the thrill of owning Two Flowers or Lorenzini is too great to deny.

I am different from the woman (horrible sexism!) who buys two sizes too small, in perpetual anticipation of that successful diet. I will admit to conspicuous consumption, but it's a very particular kind of social aggressiveness I am practicing: Displacement Consumption, Or the Angst for Faraway Place. Yes, the crudest of all consumptions, the consumption of Romance. The Romance of Someplace Else, of travel, of experience.

I buys these items from the suppressed desire to escape. Specifically, to escape to Ireland, and even more specifically, to a small white bench in a neat garden in Westmeath.

One might ask what has Westmeath to do with Romance, culture, or Europe? Please! Reserve slagging for another day.

For the past five years I have displaced my longing to return with a penchant for buying excellent but marginally fitting clothes. And I have done so to stand apart from the crowd not merely from the usual horrible shallowness, but a particularly hostile distancing from these awful, provincial, American bourgeois knuckleheads who surround me. Aaahahahaha! Amn't I sooo not like you with my $120 Barba Napoli 2ply shirt?

Of course the whole project is self-defeating. Distancing fulfills itself. I dress to be different, and then feel, well, different. Ugh! Just the physical discomfort! The worry over an inopportune bursting out of the shoulder seams of my undersized shirt as I reach incautiously for a Stella Artois beer at trendy and ohsoEuro Paragon?!

And the mango pants by Masons. . .a tad excessively successful in standing out. These are remainders for a reason. The more subdued pants I do wear cling to my thighs pleatlessly, and I celebrate (at 5' 9") that they don't 'cut me down' with that gauche American hip hop bagginess. Still, as they remain narrow to the ankle, designed for uberskinny Euroboys, and have interesting little slash pockets, I most resemble an extra on the set of Starsky and Hutch.

Viva le difference (but spare me the Derrida.)

In defense of myself, I hope the rather sad pathos of displacement comes through this behavior at least as much as the nasty awful shallowness of it all.

Salut!

Stephen Daedalus

Yesterday was Bloomsday and I didn’t get a post in about it. Below is an excerpt from chapter 2 of "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." Borrowed with appreciation from the link in the title.

(Please forgive the awkward thought and prose. Draft!)
Quote:

This spirit of quarrelsome comradeship which he had observed lately in his rival had not seduced Stephen from his habits of quiet obedience. He mistrusted the turbulence and doubted the sincerity of such comradeship which seemed to him a sorry anticipation of manhood. The question of honour here raised was, like all such questions, trivial to him. While his mind had been pursuing its intangible phantoms and turning in irresolution from such pursuit he had heard about him the constant voices of his father and of his masters, urging him to be a gentleman above all things and urging him to be a good catholic above all things. These voices had now come to be hollow-sounding in his ears. When the gymnasium had been opened he had heard another voice urging him to be strong and manly and healthy and when the movement towards national revival had begun to be felt in the college yet another voice had bidden him be true to his country and help to raise up her language and tradition. In the profane world, as he foresaw, a worldly voice would bid him raise up his father's fallen state by his labours and, meanwhile, the voice of his school comrades urged him to be a decent fellow, to shield others from blame or to beg them off and to do his best to get free days for the school. And it was the din of all these hollow-sounding voices that made him halt irresolutely in the pursuit of phantoms. He gave them ear only for a time but he was happy only when he was far from them, beyond their call, alone or in the company of phantasmal comrades.

A common premise: Irish lit can be read in a post-colonial light. Irish writing and culture are in part a reaction to colonialism. The language of reaction is one of resistance, irony, and defining oneself in difference to the colonizer. It is a language of the Other.

Exile, silence, and cunning . . . enough said in relation to Joyce.

A further premise: The language or insight of post-colonial theory can accurately describe “Othered” individuals generally. Immigrants, first and second-generation individuals, all types of social marginals, liminal professions like priest or police officer.

Still a further premise:
Liminal, marginal, and colonized individuals are observers. The detached observer is relatable to the writer, in fact a very liminal vocation.

Joyce’s narrator, Stephen Daedalus, displays an alienating power of observation. This sense of alienation is related to competing cultures: the British colonizer and more importantly the Irish colonized. This “cultural hybridity” often leads to a confusion or skepticism about either culture, and its values. As a result of his cultural situation, and as a very intelligent individual able to analyze his experience, Stephen witnesses sometimes competing admonitions of his culture and interprets them in relative terms. The social code and behavior within it, the expectations--all are relative, indeed, even pretense. Stephen has a critical perspective and distance from himself, and others, and his (dual) culture. As a result, he displays that mistrust of genuineness that many colonials and biculturals suffer. Purportedly, relativism can be empowering: One has the opportunity and perspective to make informed and independent choices. In reality, relativism often just means viewing any code or value or behavior as convention, and pretense.

For example, Stephen’s rival displays a “quarrelsome comradeship”, which describes a form of common social interaction, a convention of interacting, the template of playful quarreling to indicate friendship. Stephen sees the form of the interaction, or rather sees through it, and can therefore not inhabit it. Instead, he is left with the defense of “quiet obedience.” Quietude is a rejection of convention, a defense of personal truth against ingenuineness, and a defense against pretense. Quietude also is often hostile, the unwillingness to humor someone or something, or to commit oneself. It can be an act of personal arrogance.

The pretense can be manifold—form itself as pretense, and content surely. These two are not comrades, but “rivals,” and this episode resonates with Stephen’s larger battle with the pretenses of Irish culture and history itself: the religion, nationalism, and class consciousness that he is famously trying to escape. In fact, they are not really even rivals, because Stephen isn’t committed. He finds the “question of honour here raised was, like all such questions, trivial.”

To show this idea in a related way: Joseph Conrad has had similar if more overt explorations of pretense and the Other. Marlow’s fascination with Lord Jim, and Kurtz, in large part has to do with the realization of the pretense and arbitrary conventionality behind belief systems and social codes. Those who stupidly or willfully participate in pretenses—moral, social, political, religious—arouse the sensation of rejection and disgust in the Other, who has been forced, either through shortcoming (Jim), or through intelligence and honesty (Marlow), “to look into the heart of things.” Ultimately what we are talking about of course is the loss of center. As Conrad concludes, without any absolutes, what is left is the virtue of honesty, specifically emotional honesty. “Those who do not feel do not count.” We are at sea, and emotional engagement with the truth of this is better than the affront of pretense, especially willfully embraced and perhaps inflicted on others.

It may be ironic to emphasize feelingin Stephen, but he is displaying emotional intransigence in the creation of his own identity. And in his “identity creation and maintenance” he is using strategies that are at once very Irish and post-colonial in nature: standing apart, and especially defining oneself by what one is not: Defining oneself in terms opposites, in this case both from Irishness and, in reality, from interaction.
The appeals made to Stephen, “the constant voices of his father and of his masters, urging him to be a gentleman above all things and urging him to be a good catholic above all things,” are clearly presented in an ironic way to undermine them.

Stephen’s true pursuit involves avoidance of interaction, and cultivating his personal “phantoms” in his quest to define his identity. “He gave them ear only for a time but he was happy only when he was far from them, beyond their call, alone or in the company of phantasmal comrades.” Cultural voices in various forms are “hollowsounding” and produce only a “din.”

In summary, a rejectionist attitude, and a critical faculty, possibly result from a (post)-colonial situation, and describe the experience other types of outsiders, like writers. An Irish writer like Joyce is therefore twice the outsider.

Perspective and bicultural experience can produce a sensation of “ingenuineness” (or hollowness) or the sensation of fakery in interactions, or in embracing a set of values or behaviors.

Ingenuineness can lead to the consideration of the relative and arbitrary nature of any behavior, or social or moral code.

The Other (in this case, Stephen) is left with little alternative other than silence and aloneness in order to escape this sensation of ingenuineness. Isolation is preferable to hypocrisy. The logical next step is of course, exile.

Irony: American, British, Irish

Yesterday afternoon we had our annual English Dept. end of year party. This year was pretty low-key. We usually wait until the very end of the year and go to someone’s house, preferably with a pool, for a long, usually funny evening.

Yesterday we went to a local restaurant: Napper Tandy’s. Yes, another Irish bar in the Boston area. But hey, they had curry fries. And, oh yes, Smithwicks.

I couldn’t stay too long, for fear of driving with one too many in me, and also because I had to hustle over to the Blackthorne and see Amy in her first-ever solo concert. (Where that one over the eight caught up with me.)

I spent most of the time at the party speaking with Jim, a new addition to the department who teaches ESL and frosh classes. Jim is from Birmingham, of Irish parents. He was still smarting from England’s debacle against France this weekend (harharhar.)


I brought up my interest in bicultural people, and Jim certainly fits the bill. Irish in England. And now English in America. AND he just adopted a Chinese baby. I was trying to explain my ideas about Irish culture to see if he would agree. Specifically, the Irish are black-humored, ironic, self-effacing, and especially: slaggers. He agreed but didn’t get my larger point,that slagging isn’t just an admirable, not-taking-yourself-or-others-too-seriously trait, but rather is also an expression of a genuine hostility: the usual old hostility of begrudgery, or making sure one is not getting ahead of himself or herself. And that this trait fits in with other cultural issues that stem from a reaction to British colonial rule, although I’d be willing to consider that they are also in the long-term, historical “Irish character”. I don’t really want to say Celtic.

Slagging and irony are ways of ripping down, whatever face you put on it. Irony of course is also subversive, sly and distancing. The oft-made insight in Ireland that Americans “have no sense of irony” isn’t really accurate. Americans have an acute sense of irony, and lots of them don’t like it.

Irony distances, irony undermines, irony is perhaps, sneaky. Slyness is not valued in the American character, and I think it is valued in some way, at least historically, in the Irish. Verbal slyness, a delight in putting one over on someone, playing up and playing upon the expectations of others, are all means of resistance and subversion.

Sarcasm, what most people mean when discussing this issue of irony appreciation, is of course a harsh attack on someone or something. It tends, in the guise of irony, to be lionized in the Irish and British cultures I think as a means to modesty.

Ultimately, Americans don’t like it because self-deprecation isn’t that far from self-defeatism, and Americans, however naïve, giddy, or wankerish, are optimistic. Irony/sarcasm really is a last defense of the weak (historically and culturally speaking). Americans may not consciously verbalize this, but they get it.

Jim told me a story:

He was with a group of friends, English and American, at a buffet-style restaurant. His American friend, Chris, finished his meal, stood up, and said, “That was delicious. I’m going for another plate.”

Without thinking, Jim said, “You fat bastard.” And instantly knew he had made a mistake. This was in the first instance ironic because Chris was not a heavy person. Chris, a long-term friend and good one, confronted him on what he meant. According to Jim, there was no subtext of any kind in his comment. It was a playful dig. His actual words to me were “an expression of endearment.” Completely understood by his British friends, and immediately suspected by his American.

Was Jim honest? Was there no “cultural stereotype” dig at the American going for seconds?

If there wasn’t, is there something wrong with British/Irish sense of humor? Is the valuing of sarcasm immature or problematical?

Also, since Jim expressed this as part of British character, it doesn’t exactly fit in with the take that colonial and post-colonial experience is responsible for its manifestation.

Irish Connections Festival

So I spent this weekend sneaking over to the Irish Connections Irish Festival at its new site: The Irish Cultural Centre In Canton, MA.

This annual festival had been held at nearby Stonehill College, for ohIdon'tknow, maybe ten years. I thought, and wasn't the only one to think so, that in recent years the quality of the festival was declining. There is something depressing in thinking that Boston of all places does not play host to a decent, even world class, Irish festival. You have to go to Milwaukee?!

I love Stonehill College, but the festival, which has no direct relation to the college, was growing a bit light on decent musical offerings, and in fact, on any substantive Irish culture offerings, aside from draft Guinness in plastic cups and curry fries, wha?

The ICC in Canton is a beautiful site in its own right, and I have enjoyed several Gaelic Games and related events there in recent years. Not to mention concerts: saw the Saw Doctors there just recently. I thought the move to Canton would be super for a revival of the festival, and I was right. ;)

The weather was beautiful, sunny, dry and 70ish for the whole weekend. Friday night I had to go to see the most interesting tradish band playing right now: Lunasa. It grew fairly cold by their closing number, around 11:30, but they were brilliant as usual. (And I will add, it was nice to see acts go on at the correct time. Stage management has been a disaster in recent years. Last year, I thought Gaelic Storm was either going to be arrested or get into a brouhaha with Seven Nations, due to the fact that they were forced to go 40 minutes late, and then were told they'd have to get off at the scheduled time. What's that, a five minute set?

Saturday I brought the kids and we spent most of the time in the carnival area. And John Doyle was playing all over the place that day! Arrg.
[I only know how to play session guitar because of John Doyle, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Yes, another drop D convert. Several months back he came to the Blackthorne Tavern, where I've run the session for the past five years. He played with Liz Carroll, and it was a great show. I never do this sort of thing, but I got him to sign my Martin. What a giddy thing to do. How unfortunate. . . ]

I did manage to pry the girls away from the Berry Whirl and the Super Slide long enough to catch a bit of John playing. Then it was back to Kidsville. BUT-

I had my guitar across my back, thanks to a last minute gig bag purchase. Felt a little funny with it on, since I wasn't actually playing at the festival, but I knew Amy would have her fiddle with her, and the email invite to the festival told musicians to bring their instruments, so . . . I ended up meeting with Amy and her family, and we decided what the hey, we would just sit on a bench and play a few tunes, and see what happens. And we did.

The first two guys to approach with name tags made us nervous, but they passed by without comment, so we relaxed and played a half hour set, much to the delight of passersby.

It was liberating just not to worry about it, but do it. I did feel kind of queasy at the thought of having Brian O'Donovan, the organizer, and host of Celtic Sojourn on WGBH, come by and observe us. Or one of our musician friends that were playing there see us.

Queasy because maybe they'd think we were slumming: Couldn't get a gig this year, so you're resorting to illegal busking, huh?

But, instead, a camera crew chanced by and filmed the better part of two sets and a song. I don't know if it was a documentary for the festival, or a local cable station. Surprise, here's us, playing the festival!

American Cultures: Self Descriptions of Cultural Identity

Ever wonder what students actually answer when asked about their ethnicity on those college forms?

Here are answers from 1609 students enrolled at Berkeley in American Cultures courses.

The questions was:

"Who are you? Please describe your cultural identity."

The list is from 1994.

The first response listed is one of my favorites:

I am American. My parents' ancestral background has no direct influence on me because I am an individual. Unfortunately, the UC doesn't want us to be individuals, just members of a certain "cultural identity."

Some others:

I am alone. Born in California to Chinese parents.

I am me. I like Wheaties. I like kittens and movies and rollerblading. That's all you need to know about me. Who are you?

I refuse to reveal my culture identity, ethnicity. I am American. That should be enough. My race is irrelevant. This question should be eliminated from all administrative forms.

I arrived on this planet in 1973 from a small blue planet bordering the outer limits of this galaxy. When not masquerading as a human I have blue skin and consider myself to be a Schmorg. I am quite proud of my Schmorgness and feel that the dominant white society is suppressing my true identity.

AS you could anticipate, the bullshit meter of the average college student is quite sensitive. I look at these responses and realize I am not interested in identity and bicultutralism where they intersect with politics, or political correctness.

I am interested in understanding myself better, but doing it through understanding that real community of the bi- or multicultural.

I am definitely interested in the psychological, emotional, artistic, historical, personal aspects of individuals on borderlands. Particularly where this all intersects with critical theory and literature. . .

N*gger - Wetb*ck - Ch*nk

Just thinking about the day, and surfing: came across this.
Excerpt from Whitmore's Wisdom blog:

When I read about the lives of these young theater students, it really drives home the point we hear repeatedly when we talk to young (multicultural) kids in focus group facilities, out on the streets, or in their homes. Yes, they embrace diversity like no other generation, and they are damn proud of their ethnic roots! But, they all talk about how much harder they have to work at everything, and how they have to prove themselves to mainstream America to get ahead.

Of Mice and Men, the N-word, Cultural Otherness, and other Craziness

Any serious trouble that has ever threatened me in my employment as a high school English teacher has always come out of the blue. Just today, on the 10th of June, with nine days left in the school year, I had one of those episodes that always make me question this job. I am not a perfect teacher or employee, but the dangerous stuff is always the wildest, and initially the most ridiculous nonsense, that nevertheless grows in magnitude due to the nuttiness of our times.

To whit (already!)

I walked into my period 5 soph class today to find a former student, a junior, in my room, with one of my personal books in my hand. The student is a repeating junior, black male. That he is black is important.

The book is “Nigger”, by Randall Kennedy. Praise for the book on the back cover includes:

The best way to get rid of a problem is to hold it up to the bright light and look at all sides of it. . .[Andy Rooney]

and

Calm, correct, informative. [The New York Observer]

I include the quotes because I couldn't tell you what the book is like. It was loaned me a year ago by a colleague while we were discussing teaching race and racial epithets in conjunction with "To Kill a Mockingbird."

(Isn't this interesting: This explanation already sounds like an apologia.)

I was not very accomodating to the student, because any accusation of racism is laughable, and because despite this that is exactly what was on his agitated mind. Unfortunately, I have had one other serious instance of a student projecting her own issues on me (not race related), and I have lost all patience with it.

I was more upset about a student taking a personal book off a shelf containing personal books. (It was not prominently displayed, but mixed in with various books.)

Since this all happened in front of class, a diverse group, and since we had just finished Of Mice and Men, and since I was mad and didn't want to be a phony by going back to the "regularly scheduled lecture", I brought it up by way of discussing the race issue in the novel. Crooks, the black stable hand who is an Outsider on the Soledad ranch because of his race.

These issues are close to impossible. Am I a fake hero for addressing it? How loud is the silence if you don't discuss race and the N-word?

I have several immigrant students in class, and when we discussed the sensation of being an outsider, but also about being an insider/outsider and the emotional confusion that can cause, I feel like it really rang true for them. Especially the idea that becoming fluent in a culture is a success, but also possibly creates that ingenuine sensation, where you feel like you are putting on a self.

Mostly, though, I can't help but really resent being 'projected on' by a student I've been cordial with for four years. This issue, the unexpected bomshell, is what most scares me about this profession. As a favorite author, Tony Hillerman, has written "Coyote waits".

Right now I am watching the Boston Public episode that deals with a teacher discussing the N-word in his class, through use of the Randall Kennedy book.

I don't know what to expect tomorrow.

Probably more later, when I am less or more pissed off.

On the border of cultures

Many of the insights into primarily the first generation individual's cultural experience that are summarized here by author Chrysoula Econompoulos rang true for me.

Generally, 'marginality', or being both of and not of a culture, can be both a good and bad thing. An individual can be in a state of multiplicity[Bennet], a state of confusion over values, ideals, cultural frame of reference.

But an individual can also use insider/outsider status to become an able social critic. In this type of marginality, the individual can shift between values and cultural frames of reference, to make informed and independent decisions and choices. He or she feels at home with ambiguity and makes a commitment to relativism. This type of individual can become very important in this modern, interculutral, nomadic world, because they can provide a bridge between cultures, and are at home with ethnorelativism.

While I sometimes continue to struggle with a coherent sense of self, and values, I intellectually appreciate the power of ethnorelativism to avoid provincialism, provide perspective, etc. However, I don't really feel the truth of the argument. That is, I am not so much making a commitment to relativism, and ambiguity, as drowning in it. Rather, to be really honest, I am in a rejectionist position in that I much prefer, empathize with, etc., my Irish life: summers spent there, and having lived in Dublin twice as an adult. I find it hard to practice the sense of self, security, and confidence here in the US that I can there.

In other words, I want to explore more readings about those who are not stuck between two places per se, but stuck in one and longing for the other.

Tangentially, I wonder about this concept of the power of relativism. Relativism in terms of values, morals, philosophy, is usually a suspect thing. Relativism flies in the face of conviction. The marginal man or woman in this way suffers symptoms interestingly related to modernity's, loss of center, malaise [prof. John Lye, Fiction and the Immigrant Experience]:

the plight of the immigrant, and the twentieth-century sense of dislocation and loss in a world without ontological ground, are very similar.

Of course, my situation does not exactly match a discussion of first generationals, since I was born and raised in US with a US father. I would love to get stats on:

1. the children of one US parent, one foreign, living in the US
2. that have had extensive experience in travelling in/living in the 'old country'
3. what type of jobs do they take?
4. Are they suffering from multiplicity?
5. Or are they successful relativists, constructively choosing their values and identity?
6. Do they disproportionately suffer any emotional illnesses?
7. Are they liminalist in their pursuits? IE, Professions both insider/outsider, like priest, reporter, artist, writer, politician?

More on all of this and other related readings later.

Slan

Irish America: Coming Into Clover

Resonant quotes from “Irish America: Coming Into Clover” by Maureen Dezell.

p. 1
“Who do you think you are?”
The question also echoes in the searing, sneering demand that reverberates in many an Irish Catholic psyche. “Who do you think you are?” is a rhetorical question, asked incessantly by people whose intent it is to humble. It demands a mute response, a swallowing of the dread sin of pride.

p. 3
Self-deprecation, I learned, is the sine qua non in the Irish Catholic subculture. It is as ubiquitous as humor, fine talk, loyalty, and sympathy for the underdog, as characteristic as a tendency to drink too much, and to harbor trepidation that the light at the end of the tunnel is a train.

p. 5
the recent surge of enthusiasm for all things green has spawned a spate of Celtophilia in the United States in the past few years.

p. 8
Observing the nuances of different cold war Catholic youth cultures in the 1960’s made me an observant outsider-insider of Irish America’s unwritten assumptions and unspoken rules.

p. 8
I think I sensed then what I know now, which is that education and accomplishment were respected, though creativity and introspection were not to be encouraged; a belligerent anti-intellectualism often coexisted with a deference toward the “well-read” in Irish American settings.

p. 10
For all the faux blarney and bravado of institutional Irishness, most of us know next to nothing about our collective past, don’t recognize our strengths (that would be showing off) or analyze our weaknesses (that would mean revealing ourselves.)

p. 20
a consummate Irish American persona: the self-effacing regular guy.

p. 21
the move into middle class suggested selling out or getting “above yourself”—and that is a hell-bent place in Irish culture.

p. 25
In the 1920s and 1930s, the traits associated with Irish American character—street-smart, tough-talking, funny, irreverent—increasingly became identified as urban American characteristics, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Peter Quinn have pointed out.

The Irish in movies gradually came to be identified with what were seen as American virtues: humor, bravery, loyalty, dedication to the greater good.

[A sense of inferiority] has encouraged a defensiveness about the way Irish life is portrayed in literature . . . . and to pass judgment on the basis of its “sympathy” for Irish subjects.

P 67
“Don’t get a swelled head” is a quintessential Irish maxim; the fear that “this is not entirely a good thing” is an invocation of the Irish worldview that “this could all be gone tomorrow.”

P 68
The Irish have assimilated less than some other American ethnics, because it was easier for them to blend in.

P 69
The notion that disappointment and disaster are sure to follow life’s fleeting fortunes is part and parcel of a distinct Irish American culture. So is obsession with human tragedy.

P 71
The late historian Dennis Clark observed, “Almost anything you can say about [Irish Americans] is both true and false.”

P 71
“Hail fellows well met without being met at all” is how Anna Quindlen described the American Irish. “The unknowable extroverts. It is no accident that some have taken to professions that give the illusion of being among the people while remaining essentially separate. Newspapermen, who are of the crowd but outside them. Politicos, who always stand apart in the crowd. Priests.”

P 72
Emotional reserve and humility are virtues in Ireland; it is in the Irish tradition to wait to take one’s turn . . . . The Irish are drawn to the spiritual, the dark side; Americans are materialistic and giddily optimistic. The Irish are ironic, black-humored; they write poetry and tragicomedy. Americans are innocent and exuberant; one of their key contributions to world culture is the musical.

P 72
Don’t let your pretensions become a focus of Yank merriment and mockery.

P 76
Many Irish possess an emotional intelligence about human interaction.

P 76
It is a supreme compliment to call someone a “regular guy.” The more accomplished one is, the more admired he or she will be for “playing it down.” In the secular trinity of Irish American values, loyalty and humor are father and son. Self-deprecation is the spirit that works in mysterious ways.

P 119
The historian William Shannon once observed an Irish predilection for “satire and self burlesque”—a tendency to play the court jester who “poked fun at king, commoner, and himself” at every opportunity. Sodden self-effacement that devolves into self-loathing is everywhere.

P 127
[summary of a scene from Alice McDermott’s “Charming Billy” :

There is a rhythm and internal rhetoric to this incantation: First, the premise that life is hard is established . . . . Next, it is bolstered with examples of loss that make living all the harder . . . . Finally, it is agreed that one woman’s tragedy has been gracefully, stoically endured.

P 127
There is a deep admiration for stoicism.
“It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” substance abuse counselor Bill Regan’s mother used to tell him. “This is a culture,” he said, “where people think the light at the end of the tunnel is a train. Life is a painful experience, and catastrophe is to be expected. If I’m Irish and I lose my arm, someone is going to tell me, ‘It’s a good thing you didn’t lose them both.’”

P 134
The collective Irish experience has left many individuals with “a deep fear of negative judgment and a constant need for approval by others,” according to Garrett O’Connor.

Ridicule is as much a part of Irish discourse as humor . . .

P 136
Irish ridicule—which the native Irish, who have turned it into an art form, call “slogging”—is deliberately hurtful. It is also meant to tame ambition and render the grand mundane.

P 190
The Irish in Ireland and Irish America might be described as two grand people separated by notions of a singular culture. But that would assume that the former think the latter can lay claim to a common heritage at all. The premise in Eire, as Madb Ruane wrote in the Irish Times, has long been that “we owned Irishness, not them.” Irish Americans aren’t Irish; they’re Yanks, “no more than tourists” in what the native Irish know “to be ‘our’ culture, never mind having one of their own.”

P 207
“The Americans wanted to go ‘home’ to Ireland and find the simple, happy bog-trotters of their dreams, and we saw them as fat-wallet here-they-come Yanks that we could make some money off!”

p 209
As a father of “kids who are going to be Irish American,” [Kevin] Treanor said he grows impatient with native Irish chauvinism about heritage to which Americans also lay claim. “Irish Americans try really hard to be Irish . . . . And Irish people are always telling them they’re not Irish.