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.