New Books

By KEVIN P. CONNOR

Contributing writer

Every year, the infamous St. Patrick’s Day parades in New York and South Boston, known for drawing conservative white males and excluding gays and lesbians, meet the glare of the national media spotlight. It’s no surprise that this annual focus on a narrow sample of Irish-Americans produces many misconceptions about a much-maligned people.

Maureen Dezell’s Irish America: Coming into Clover is an unsentimental exploration of the cultural identity that the media often miss. The sweeping scope of her coverage ranges from a treatment of Irish-American enclaves outside of the Northeast, like Butte, Montana, to a penetrating look at the dynamic role women have played in shaping the Irish America of today.

At times, Dezell’s chapters degenerate into long catalogues of distinguished Irish-Americans. But Dezell is at her best when identifying the common cultural traits of the oldest ethnic group in America. A sparkling wit, a gregarious nature and a charitable spirit are some of the shared traits she finds, but the book does more than extol the virtues of Irish-Americans. Dezell delves into “the very crowded category of things the Irish don’t like to discuss” to uncover their problematic characteristics: a caustic sarcasm, a talent for holding grudges, a dark cynicism and, most significantly, a crippling weakness for the sauce.

Fortunately, the author is not handicapped by any of these traits. Irish America is an unflinching examination of an important American ethnic group that is too often misrepresented.

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Irish America: Coming Into Clover

By Maureen Dezell

Anchor

261 pp., $13

By KEVIN P. CONNOR

Contributing writer

As a young lad in Tipperary, Liam Clancy, of the legendary Irish band The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, believed that “everyone sang all the time,“ that all families had the rollicking “singsongs” that made his family’s car trips and get-togethers so enjoyable. The realization that this was not the case, and that he and his brothers had been blessed with unique musical abilities, came with age.

The Mountain of the Women: Memories of an Irish Troubadour is Clancy’s account of the youthful meanderings that eventually brought him to the threshold of a famed musical career. The book is a collection of the vivid memories of an aging man attempting to recapture the glory of his youth, and there is no lack of compelling stories, both humorous and sad. In the first half of the memoir, Clancy grows up in the shadow of the Slievenamon (“Mountain of the Women” in English), so named for the nipple-like cairn on top of its breast-like form. The memoir’s second half focuses on his early experiences as a struggling actor in Cambridge, England and New York.

Surprisingly, it was Clancy’s passion for theater, not music, that spurred him to cross the pond to America, where the band was eventually formed. On the way, Clancy’s misadventures include being wooed by a Guggenheim heiress and keeping house with a psychic Radcliffe dropout in New York City. The book is almost too dense with such vignettes, but the sharp wit and storytelling ability of the “troubador” rescue it from the shallowness that comes with broad coverage. It may not be Angela’s Ashes, but, like the nipple cairn on Slievenamon, The Mountain of the Women stands out.

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The Mountain of the Women:

Memories of an Irish Troubador

By Liam Clancy

Doubleday

294 pp., $24.95