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"Backbeat: Earl Palmer's Story"
An account of one of rock 'n' roll's legendary drummers doesn't go deep enough.
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[08/31/99]

Book Bag
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By Ian McEwan
[08/30/99]

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"Days of Infamy: Great Military Blunders of the 20th Century"
One of those mistakes was this book.
By Mark Schone
[08/30/99]

Ivory Tower
Misadventures in Marxism
How can well-meaning American academics continue their romance with Karl Marx? European scholars can only guess.
By Lawrence Osborne
[08/30/99]

Interview
Spiritual Chapter 11
Novelist David Gates talks about his overeducated, self-tormenting characters, the genius of Dickens and the seductive pursuit of perfect taste.
By Michele Scarff
[08/27/99]

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Also Today America the brutal In his follow-up to his bestselling memoir, "Angela's Ashes," Frank McCourt confronts the indignities of immigrant life.

Having read McCourt's book and steeped myself in the rich tradition of 20th century Irish literature from John Millington Synge to James Joyce to Edna O'Brien and beyond, I was taken aback by the high life I saw in Dublin when I visited there last winter. The city seemed so sharply opposed to its representation in literature, even to the way it's portrayed in much of recent Irish fiction. The joint was positively jumping -- you could almost mistake it for certain sections of New York or London. (To me, nothing signifies yuppiedom more than fussy cappuccino bars, and I was surprised at how many of those I saw.) What I witnessed is the Ireland of today: confident, with a flush economy and newfound wealth. The Young Turks cruising the Temple Bar district on their cell phones, driving Jags and pumping the city's co-op markets into the stratosphere are light-years away from the traditional image of Irish men and women as the downtrodden victims of British imperialism. Granted, this was Dublin, not Limerick. But the same held true for the less "sophisticated" cities I visited, like Cork and Galway. Modernity had come home to roost all over Ireland, bringing a new can-do image to brush up against the old, put-upon one. Ireland is now a land of players.

Nevertheless, the classic image of Irish suffering persists, supported by a solid basis in history. The Irish have suffered, as few other peoples have, from famine, civil war and occupation. You could even say that pain is the Irish way of life. They don't really need a reason to suffer, but they do have an explanation for why so many of them endure it: God. For Irish Catholics -- the fold that brought forth James Joyce, Edna O'Brien and Frank McCourt -- suffering has always been presented as something offered up to God, a sort of insurance policy to increase your likelihood of getting into heaven. Naturally, Irish Catholic writers, no matter how lapsed, have worked this notion into their art, and for good reason: It's great material, even when an artist chooses to reject it. Joyce bridled at the way his countrymen made a religious fetish out of pain; for him, the ultimate act of betrayal and self-preservation, both artistic and psychological, was to leave.

Next page | From scandalous O'Brien heroine to smug career girl