Autobiographies II: Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well, Rose and Crown, Sunset and Evening Star Star

By Seán O'Casey

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0881840750
• ISBN13: 9780881840759
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 2.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

LIFT NOT THIS BOOK IN HASTE: as it will not soon return to rest

Had not Master James Joyce sought "silence, cunning and exile" abroad as an escape from paralysis, but had stayed home to do full battle for his own family's full well-being, had small James Joyce never suffered the profound intellectual, psychological and spiritual trauma of a good Jesuit education from a very tender, impressionable and an early age, he might one day have aspired to write an autobiography as well as this. He might one day have achieved the skill of this record of Dublin life. When you pick up this book you will not swiftly set it back down. Too hastily it records, quick as the rushing River Liffey, the most brilliant observations, leaving you breathless for more precise information, yet grateful for the wonderful song, as does this writing sing gloriously, sorrowfully, gaily, deeply, full throated, a lusty and a keening song. This book reads like the RIver Liffey washing its way through dear, dirty Dublin city, flashing brilliant, reflecting all without scorn, carrying her commerce, her sewage, her refuse and the occasional dead body, ever fascinating to regard from over the bridge. Had Stephan Dedalus himself not sought his lonesome refuge in silence and exile and quiet cunning and inscrutable humor, but thrown himself whole heartedly with all of his might and mind and body and soul into Dublin's life, without paralysis but throbbing with life, he might have hoped to have recorded this present work. Had Dedalus loved, he might have written this book. Allow this work wash over you like the shining, singing black waters of the River Liffey. Let these waters pass impenetrably, hypnotically, beneath the bridge as you toss bread to the calling gulls below. Watch fascinated these laughing, sobbing, roaring waters pass beneath your bridge as you learn and meditate and reflect, unmoving and still in their wonderful grasp. You will not quickly let down this book. Certainly we now require dangling commentary for this song of Dublin. We now need historical texts to supplement our reading of allusions to a history that has been censored, erased, never written, ever oral, but whose speakers now have gone on. Much of this history died under the ice blue cruel pencil of the office of the British Censor at that dark enslaved time, a pencil which so callously and calmly vivisected our living history, and cut out its beating heart alive. Bless for ever the dear and learned and wise and courageous scribe, Sean O'Casey, for what magnanimously little of it he has preserved so well for our benefit herein. No, you will not soon set down this historical, this lyrical text. Let us rather pursue his clues and singing slight indicationsand recapture our own mighty history, erased by the British opppressor. Let us hold our own history to our greiving, consoled heart like a hero fallen in war, as a babe that is born too soon and is gone, a holding as vain as stopping for our careful examination roaring waters of our mighty mother the River Liffey p