Quote of the Day (Diarmuid Russell, on Humor, Irish Writing’s ‘Most Marked Characteristic’)

“Perhaps it was just this severity of existence which brought into Irish writings that sense of comedy which seems to me its most marked characteristic. It seems to matter little whether the subject is one of sadness or marked for tragedy. Everywhere in Irish prose there twinkles and peers the merry eye and laugh of a people who had little to laugh about in real life. Swift’s humour is savage, Stephens’ is impish, Wilde’s sophisticated, and Lever has the schoolboy touch, but they all share the common characteristic of using humour to achieve their ends. The only offset to unhappiness is happiness and it was probably some divine law of compensation that gave to the Irish the ability to squeeze laughter out of an existence from which they could extract little else.”—Irish editor and agent Diarmuid Russell (1902-1973), Introduction to The Portable Irish Reader (1946)

Nowadays, if Russell were to include more contemporary names to demonstrate Irish humor, I think he would put high on his list Roddy Doyle (pictured), most famous for his novel (and screen adaptation), The Commitments. Here, for instance, from the 1991 film, is a choice bit of dialogue between the pianist of “The World's Hardest Working Band" and a priest:

Steven Clifford [in confessional]: “Used to, when I studied I would sing hymns, but now all I can sing is ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’ by Marvin Gaye.”

Father Molloy: “Percy Sledge.”

Steven: “What?”

Father Molloy: “It was Percy Sledge did that particular song. I have the album.”

Steven: “Oh...”

(The image accompanying this post, showing Roddy Doyle in the festival garden at Haus der Berliner Festspiele during his participation in the Children´s and Young Adult Program of the 15th International Literature Festival Berlin, was taken Sept. 14, 2015, by Christoph Rieger.)

Quote of the Day (Roddy Doyle, on the Duty of the Writer)

“I don’t think writing, or the duty of the writer, should be too tightly defined. The duty of the writer is to write—as simple as that. If more comes out of the writing—an image that demands scrutiny, a story that promotes guilt, joy, rage, impatience—good. I’ve been lucky. I’ve written words that have caused controversy here in Ireland, and have provoked people to examine the way we live. But if this is to be the only purpose of writing, we’ll be left with a lot of very worthy, but dull, work. Writers can never anticipate the reaction of a reader. That’s the magic, and the danger, of the experience …. Language has always been abused but the practice seems to have become routine. Deny, deny, deny: only the stupid tell the truth….The duty of the writer is to be stupid—and tell the truth. It’s how we tell the truth, how we tell the story—that’s where the writing, the hard work, comes in.”—Irish novelist-screenwriter Roddy Doyle (The Commitments), in Tom Grimes, “An Interview With Roddy Doyle,” Tin House, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Summer 2006)

(Photo of Roddy Doyle taken by Christoph Rieger in the festival garden at Haus der Berliner Festspiele on September 14th, 2015, during his participation in the Children´s and Young Adult Program of the 15th International Literature Festival, Berlin.)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Commitments,’ on Elvis)

Jimmy Rabbitte, Jr. (played by Robert Arkins): “Elvis is not soul.”

Jimmy Rabbitte, Sr. (played by Colm Meaney): [defensively] “Elvis is God!”

Jimmy Jr.: “I never pictured God with a fat gut and corset singing ‘My Way’ at Caesar's Palace.”—The Commitments (1991), screenplay by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, and Roddy Doyle, adapted from Doyle’s novel, directed by Alan Parker

The Commitments is, at least in my opinion, the funniest movie ever made about rock ‘n’ roll. Even in the film’s most incongruous, hilarious line—Jimmy Jr.’s exhortation to his fellow (white) Irish rockers, “Say it loud—I’m black and I’m proud”—it touches on how the genre exemplified by a country boy from the Deep South crossed a musical color line.

In Indianapolis, on this date in 1977, the man that Jimmy Rabbitte, Sr. identified as God—and that others, only slightly less reverently, termed “the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll”—played his last concert. Unfortunately, I have to admit, with the greatest reluctance, that by this point Elvis Presley was closer to the hideous image summoned by Jimmy Jr. His last song was, in fact, "My Way."

In August 1977, less than two months after the Indianapolis concert, Elvis--by this time, weighing more than 300 pounds--was found dead in his bathroom in his mansion, Graceland. In time, the public would learn just how much drugs had become a part of his daily existence.

The figure burlesqued by Jimmy Jr. would shortly become a worldwide symbol not just of the corruption of the body, but also of the corruption of the American Dream—a man who had achieved everything he could desire, only to expire in a gaudy mansion under the sorriest of circumstances.

Jimmy Sr. is having none of it. Neither did the American people two decades ago, when, given the choice by the U.S. Postal Service if they preferred the “young” or the “old” Elvis, chose the former.

John Lennon once said of the performer he got to meet, “Before Elvis there was nothing.” I don’t think he meant it literally any more than Ernest Hemingway believed literally what he wrote about Huckleberry Finn: “All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." These two were simply testifying to the catalytic influences of two forebears.

The essence of Elvis is of the artist live. I wish there was more of him on YouTube in his early days rather than from the Seventies, but there’s a reasonable approximation: the songs from his 1968 “Comeback Special.”

Check out, for instance, the black leather-clad Elvis of “Heartbreak Hotel” from that landmark TV appearance: funny, loose, spontaneous, sexy. If you want to see someone where the musical DNA of The King runs the strongest, try Bruce Springsteen, especially in this performance of “Fire” fromYouTube. In inducting Bob Dylan into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, The Boss observed that Dylan "freed the mind the way Elvis freed the body." 

In "Fire," you can see the results of liberation of the body on an exultant audience.

Movie Quote of the Day (“The Commitments,” on the Irish as “The Blacks of Europe”)

Jimmy Rabbitte (played by Robert Arkins): “Do you not get it, lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I'm black and I'm proud.”--The Commitments (1991), adapted by Roddy Doyle from his novel, directed by Alan Parker