Midlife Irish

January 20, 2003
Comic essayist Gannon, a first-generation American, serves up a tangy, tasty Irish stew that mixes memories with mythology and facts with fables. Examining Ireland from an American perspective, Gannon begins with a study of stereotypes ("In the winter, it's still green.... Everyone in Ireland is continually looking for some excuse to drink.... Even though everyone in Ireland can dance, they cannot dance and move their upper body at the same time"). Admitting "the real Ireland, I couldn't tell you," Gannon reflects on Irish aspects of his childhood and his father's New Jersey bar, Gannon's Irish American Refreshment Parlor. Those remembrances, an Irish history lesson and speculations on his parents' past serve as a warmup to an engaging travelogue of the trip to Ireland Gannon made with his wife, who told him, "Years and years of New Jersey have built up around you, like rust. Now it has to be scraped away." There's a lighthearted lilt as he compares places and people to American life and has amusing close encounters with the locals (one tells him, "we can take anything, put a fooking shamrock on it, and you'll buy it"). Intertwining personal observations, insights, free associations, cinematic references and humor, Gannon takes readers on a captivating cultural journey of the identity crisis less traveled. Going from routes to roots, the inventive humorist has written a charming memoir certain to entertain both Irish-American readers and an even wider audience. Map, illus. (Feb. 17)Forecast:The cover illustration, of an old book with a b&w photograph sticking out of it, gives the impression that this is a literary memoir, not a commercially oriented meditation on being Irish-American. But this possibly break-out book for Gannon may lead to renewed interest in his out-of-print titles.

May 1, 2003
Humorist Gannon (Vanna Karenina), a 49-year-old "three-quarters-age," first-generation Irish American, offers this amiable, lighthearted, yet ultimately lightweight examination of his search for spirituality and Celtic roots. Much of the book is presented as a kind of travelog during which Gannon and his wife aimlessly wander through many of the tourist highlights of Ireland on their way to the birthplaces of his deceased parents. Along the way, we are treated to some genuinely funny observations, such as a description of "The Quiet Man Experience," a tourist trap where visitors are encouraged to be photographed while dressed like characters from the film. But the narrative belabors the obvious point that Ireland isn't populated by river-dancing leprechauns while too often lapsing unnecessarily into history lessons on the famine and English politics. This is unfortunate, because the true stars of the book-Frank's father, Bernard (the tough, laconic proprietor of Gannon's Irish American Refreshment Parlor who lies about his birthday so that he won't appear to be younger than his wife), and mother, Anne (a Phillies fanatic who habitually mangles jokes)-receive too little coverage. This work should appeal to those interested in witty outsider takes on modern Ireland, but libraries that haven't already done so might instead consider Pete McCarthy's McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in the West of Ireland or Terry Eagleton's The Truth About the Irish.-William D. Walsh, Chester Coll. of New England Lib., NH

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