Customer Reviews

Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans

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When three of the sections have these headings: Bits & Pieces, Odds & Ends, Fits & Starts, you get the idea: lots of thoughts mainly about but not always about Irish in America and in the US. Lynch writes well, perhaps too self-consciously (but you could say the same about Beckett, Joyce, McGahern, or Banville) about his place within the past & present Irish identity increasingly available to trans-Atlantic "passengers" reversing the emigration of their ancestors. The strength of this book comes from Lynch's determination to act out a point attributed to one of Brian O Nolan's many literary guises: to be Irish you need not have been born there, merely to claim allegiance.

Comparisons to James Charles Roy's more acerbic accounts of restoring a "castle" in Co Galway and herding about Yanks on a tour, respectively "The Fields of Athenry" and "The Back of Beyond," provide a fine counterpoint to the themes Lynch takes on--a rejoinder in turn to the Niall Williams "back to nature" tendency to romanticize rural Irish life for second-home owners.

The most fluent and unified part of Lynch's collection, apparently knocked about for a while in gestation since about 1970 and added to as life added to Lynch's accumulated experiences revolving around Ireland, mortality, and his place within both realms, the section "Death Comes for the Curate" tracks his priest relative who died early back three-quarters of a century ago in New Mexico, and from this Lynch frames a meditation examining Irish Catholicism from many angles, both in Ireland and its remnants in America. This portion of the book hit home, and worked in its concentration around a central theme.

What worked less effectively was, as the opening paragraph about the chapter headings foreshadows, the scattered organization of much of Lynch's other musings. To his credit he steers clear of "The Troubles" and largely bypasses the cute anecdotes and clever pub banter that sinks many a travelogue about the oul' sod. Yet, in his putting thoughts to paper, he tends--like Montaigne whom he cites--to drift before coming back to where he started, at best. In sections about relatives, the old house he restores, poetry that mattered to his younger and present self, and the irritation aroused by travel and its delays in a post 9/11 world, he is often sharp and worthwhile to learn from.

But in many of these same chapters, the control lessens and you feel as if too many undigested and unrevised ideas crowd out the better prose. The book wanders about mightily, and too much to reward a long sitting or two, although in parts it can be dipped into for a few pages with pleasure. Perhaps I need to re-read Montaigne to acclimate myself to Lynch, but the latter seems to treat the Irish concerns as ultimately as disorganized and fractious as any other Lynch may have. While true for him no doubt, this disorganization makes for less than fluid streams of consciousness on these finely wrought but rather too crammed and caroming essays that leave a reader as often stranded as enlightened. Yet, again, that chapter on Catholicism's superb!

I'd been waiting for what seemed like too long for a third book of stories from Thomas Lynch, but wondered if his Irish-based tales could possibility be as compelling as his earlier works, which were stories about life based on his career in dealing with the dead (in addition to being a writer, Lynch is an undertaker). But again, just as he used the funeral home as a backdrop for stories not about death but about life, Lynch uses Ireland, land of his ancestory and his frequent visits, as the canvas for telling poignant stories about life. Now I'll give friends copies of "Booking Passage" while i wait for a fourth book from Thomas Lynch.

Ah yes, the grand saga of the Lynch clan as told by their own poet and fireside seanachi, Milford's favorite son undertaker and Rotarian, Thomas Lynch. Make no mistake, he has labored mightily to produce a history of his people that will endure to enlighten and instruct Lynch progeny for generations to come. His scholarship is impressive in its casual presentation. His ear is perfectly pitched for the colorful colloquial turn of phase.

While the essay subjects ostensibly provide historical context, it is his dissection and examination of the minutia found in daily life that draws forth the foibles, contradictions, and eternal mysteries of existence. Deeply spiritual, he nonetheless is unflinching in presenting a litany of grievances against The Church of his ancestors. His lengthy petition to the Irish Arts Minister for intercession with the bureaucracy of land management is a masterpiece of unrelenting, yet humanistic logic. Global tribal conflicts are almost rendered banal by his catalog of international conflicts.

Were it not for their heroic stoicism and deep mysticism, the sparse inhabitants of Mr. Lynch's West Clare coast could all be characters in a play by Samuel Beckett. These hardscrabble subsistence farmers, often reduced to dodging freak man-eating waves to gather seaweed for sustenance, would be astounded by the agricultural wealth of John B. Keane's "Kerry Gold" farmers just across the Shannon River.

This book should be required reading before embarking on a Celtic genealogical journey or a pilgrimage to the old sod.

Thomas Lynch is a man inebriated with words, "One could come and go, traveling light in the portable universe of words, counting on images for transport" (Lynch 2005:239). I've read this book wishing Lynch's passages about Ireland had been more lengthy and cohesive. "Booking Passage" is a cobbled-together plethora of piecemeal impressions, scattered ruminations mixed with the occasional narrative. The chapter "Death Comes for the Young Curate" contains Lynch's inimitable encounter with a priest on Iona's beach. Later, his spleen about a neighbor with the designer pooches and their infinitesimal waste is hilarious, as is his horror at the story of a man, being "taken short," is finally found, having died on an Irish pub's toilet: "Every time I read this I am chilled. Killed in a loo in Killaloe - Bejaysus if it doesn't prove Himself is an almighty joker after all" (2005:227).

Lynch is best describing his heritage and narrating actual events. Canny old Nora Lynch wisely used this well-off American cousin, and in return Lynch earned his Irish stripes. He talks of being broke, yet traveling through Europe; truly broke folks don't get to rent a car, drive to Milan, fly to London, then Detroit, moving "rapidly between the worlds" (242). Lynch is tone-deaf to physical and spiritual realities around him, true of many Boomers of his economic niche, too detached from what is truly uncomfortable. "Strangeness and distance made every utterance precious" (259). To call Lynch's exploitation of being "Irish" and "Catholic" inauthentic is too easy. Lynch's tunnel vision is self-focused, his all-seeing eye blurrily fixated on himself. Something essential is missing, whether in Ireland or Michigan. One derives no real sense of the actual land and dirt of Ireland, the faces of his neighbors and relatives, the way they move, their life. You won't savor what the food tastes like, the smells, colors, sensations, touch, but there's a scattering of architectural descriptions. What you get is what people sound like, and of course they do sound interesting. "Everything is tributary, every image and experience capable of turning in on itself a hundred different ways" (270-271). As in navel gazing, Godhelpus. To Lynch, life is language: words, lyrics, strings of nouns and vowels, meanings imposed by playing with them and scattering them. Tossing `em up in the air to see what interesting wordy detritus results.

Oddly, Lynch includes a poem about drifting like a snowdrift over his ex-wife, "O...O... O..." Over the top, typical boomer-style, pun intended. After his divorce, he rants about extreme feminism in witty manner, but he goes too far bemoaning equality and the abuse of women, as forced mutilation still occurs. His bits on 911 are dated and out of place, too self-conscious. The last chapter is one of the most self-indulgent, narcissistic exercises in the grandiosity of poets and poetry I've ever stumbled upon, worse than wading through a bog. The genuflecting name-dropping of famous poets, and the unfortunate actor, is beyond dull. And his pal Heffernan's poem with "gangs of rowdy robes of fur," and "where animals devoid of any anger/lifting up bits of landscape in their teeth" maddens (248). There's no notion of the country from Canada to the Rocky Mountain West, where grizzly bears roam and chomp up human-made road signs and the occasional human. Many of the book's poems read as head games, politics, boomer-theology, and melancholy narcissism. A wash of words is Lynch's medicine, all hollow sound, no depth, but clever turns of phrase recycled in articles and essays, betokening a shortage of creativity. Thus the ultimate flatness when the reader finally closes this unsatisfying book.

Lynch's descriptions of his sisters and Irish women are a kick: "they are strikingly beautiful, immoveable, and possessed of powers we know nothing of . . . the source of all that is holy and hazardous . . . a matrilineage that finds its way back to the kitchen and cauldron in a boggy parish in the old country . . . devotees of the votive and vigil, rosary and novena, perpetual adorations, lives of the saints, imitations of Christ, statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Sacred Heart, Stations of the Cross, relics, waters, ribbons and badges, prayerbooks and scapulars - all of which makes them morally superior and spiritually dangerous" (209-210). Indeed.

Hilarious in parts, I found his diatribe on 9/11, the airport wait between flights, his "rise" to stardom etc. to be egotistical and boring. If he had stuck to Ireland, relatives there, the cottage there, his life in the States and the back and forth between the two, it would have made a better book. I loved it for the brogue and dialogue therein; reminded me of my father who spoke with a brogue imitating my grandparents from Roscommon but it does wander and that's a shame because he seems to have a niche with his close tie to Ireland that could be used again and again in more books perhaps.

I was put in mind of a particularly pretty antique crazy quilt I have: Lynch's descriptions, memories, observations, thoughts and philosophies are pieced together thus. He has an eye for the poetic, the ironic, the comic. I wonder whether this tome allowed him to stitch together numerous shorter essays. This is not a complaint. I enjoyed every word and know this is one of the few books I will keep for re-reading. That's high praise.

The description of Lynch's many returns to Ireland from Michigan, his elderly cousins and their neighbors, their voices, the land and whatever skulduggery led to the Land Commission's attempt to take it, the fascination with the past, how the sea has an appetite for Lynches, all ring clear and true and honest. He doesn't stop with reminiscences; he climbs upon a soapbox. Catholicism, feminism, alcoholism, tribalism. He has his say. Again, clear and true, at least to me. His personal skirmish with The Irish Problem, "the drink taken". A chuckle I had with his dealings with the women's movement and its undeniable pendulum effect... whereupon he reports calling his three handsome mystery sisters "The Furies". Kinda sexist put-down, doncha think? Well, he didn't hide it. (Lynch reports his sisters saying that he "doesn't get it" and I wonder whether he really doesn't.) A lot said about xenophobia, how we supposedly Homo sapiens treat the "other". Yeah. Sigh.

Lynch weaves in literary references. And works of poetry from quite a few sources. I like these. They are suggestions for further reading. The, um, other thought I had about that:

~ how extraordinary is my knowledge
tho' I never finished college ~

*******

...Lynch peels back his Celtic heritage, slices and dices his Catholic roots, and seasons it all with life, death and transatlantic experience. Booking Passage is a great flavorful Irish stew - mind, there's a bit of gristle in it, too!

Jack Maloney, author, THE WEE MAD ROAD

It's hard to define this book. Mostly, it's about the experience of Thomas Lynch and his extended Irish-American family living in Michigan and his going back home to Clare to the relatives still living in the home of his ancestors. That part alone is well worth the read but Mr. Lynch goes much further, delving into his personal, spiritual faith and the schizophrenia of The Church as well as the residue of 9/11 and the chaos, fear and war that has followed, adding a depth I hadn't expected. The writing is lyrical and flows from topic to topic with ease, like an often beautiful, sometimes heart-wrenching journey.

"Booking Passage, We Irish and Americans" is a delight. Thomas Lynch's use of language is inspiring. Lynch's observations on Irish and American life in the last three decades are full of wit and insight. This is a great book by a great author.

I found this book very interesting. I am also a Lynch whose ancestors (a couple of them named Thomas Lynch) came from Carrigaholt, County Clare. This book was very enlightening to me and although I have been to Ireland many times, I never stopped in Carrigaholt, but I definitly will on my next trip. Because of Thomas Lynch, I feel as though I have already been there. I plan to email Mr. Lynch. Four of my great-grandparents are from that area and his story sounds so much like the one my sisters and I have heard all of our lives, we must be related.