Charming Billy ~ Alice McDermott ~ 8/99 ~ Prized F Export

**DISCUSSION SCHEDULE**
Dates	Pages (HB)	Pages (PB)
8/22-8/29	Pages 1-72	Pages 1-62
8/30-9/4	Pages 73-145	Pages 63-125
9/5-9/12	Pages 146-225	Pages 126-195
9/13-9/20	Pages 226-end	Pages 196-end

Welcome to our discussion of Charming Billy, the 1998 National Book Award winner. For those of you who aren't sure whether you want to join us, or who don't have the book yet, I thought you might appreciate a preview. (Courtesy of B&N.com):

Excerpt CHAPTER ONE

SOMEWHERE IN THE BRONX, only twenty minutes or so from the cemetery, Maeve found a small bar-and-grill in a wooded alcove set well off the street that was willing to serve the funeral party of forty-seven medium-rare roast beef and boiled potatoes and green beans amandine, with fruit salad to begin and vanilla ice cream to go with the coffee. Pitchers of beer and of iced tea would be placed along the table at intervals and the bar left open--it being a regular business day--for anyone who wanted a drink.

The place was at the end of a sloping driveway that started out as macadam but quickly diminished to dirt and gravel. There was an apron of dirt and gravel in front of the building, potholed, and on the day of the funeral filled with puddles, and the first ten cars parked here, including the black limousine Maeve had ridden in. The others parked up along the drive, first along one side, then the other the members of the funeral party walking in their fourth procession of the day (the first had been out of the church the second and third in and out of the graveyard), down the wet and rutted path to the little restaurant that, lacking only draught Guinness and a peat fire might have been a pub in rural Ireland. Or, lacking dialogue by John Millington Synge the set of a rural Irish play.

How in the world she ever found this place was a mystery despite the question being asked again and again as Billy's friends and family filed in--the women in high heels walking on tiptoe down the sloping path the men holding their wives' arms and umbrellas that had already been well soaked at the side of the grave. All of them in their church clothes giving a formal air to the gray day and the ragged border of city trees and wet weeds. All of them speculating: perhaps the undertaker had suggested the place, or someone from the cemetery. Perhaps a friend friend or relative on her side (few as they were) who knew something about the Bronx, or maybe Mickey Quinn, who had his territory up here. But Mickey Quinn denied it, shaking his head, if you can believe there's a bar in any of the five boroughs that he hasn't been to.

The place smelled slightly of mildew, understandable in this weather and with this thick (even in April) bower of trees but the red-and-green tile floor was immaculate and the wooden bar gleamed under the fluorescent light. One long table draped with white tablecloths and set for forty-nine cut diagonally across the entire length of the room. One large window showed the parking lot full of cars, the other a wood that no doubt ended at a narrow side street or a row of dumpsters behind a row of stores, but seemed from in here to be dark and endlessly deep.

Maeve sat in front of this window, at the head of the table. She wore a navy-blue dress with long, slim sleeves and a round neckline, and anyone in the room who had not thought it earlier thought now--perhaps inspired by the perfect simplicity of what she wore--that there was a kind of beauty in her ordinary looks, in her plainness. Or, if they didn't think to call it beauty, they said courage--more appropriate to the occasion and the day--not meaning necessarily her new-widow's courage (with its attendant new-widow's cliches: bearing up, holding on, doing well), but the courage it took to look out onto life from a face as plain as butter: pale, downy skin and bland blue eyes, faded brown hair cut short as a nun's and dimmed with gray. Only a touch of powder and of lipstick, only a wedding band and a small pearl ring for adornment.

Of course, they'd thought her courageous all along (most of them, anyway, or--most likely--all but my father), living with Billy as she did; but now, seeing her at the head of the table, Billy gone (there would be time enough throughout the afternoon to say it's unbelievable still), her courage, or her beauty, however they chose to refer to it, became something new--which made something new, in turn, of what they might say about Billy's life. Because if she was beautiful, then the story of his life, or the story they would begin to re-create for him this afternoon, would have to take another turn.

My father sat to her right. Although Maeve had made all the arrangements herself--had found the place and chosen the menu and requested the fruit salad he served as soon as all the guests had arrived so there would be no long interval for speeches or toasts, only a quick blessing from one of the priests, he was the one the waitresses spoke to, and the owner of the place asked every now and then if anything was needed. He was the one who would settle the bill at the end of the afternoon and tip the waiters and the girl who took the coats and the umbrellas. He was the one who asked Maeve, after he'd already poured her a glass of iced tea, if she would like a drink, and then got up to fetch it for her, nodding to the undertaker and the driver, who were having their lunch at the bar.

She said, "Thank you, Dennis," when he placed the martini in front of her and then waited just a moment, her pale hand just touching the stem of the glass before she lifted it. "Good luck," he said, raising his own glass of beer. She nodded.

There's not much sense in pointing out the irony here--or even in trying to determine if everyone was either oblivious to it or so keenly aware that it no longer bore mentioning. Billy had died an alcoholic. Last night, in his casket, his face was bloated to twice its size and his skin was dark brown. (Dennis himself, my father, when he had identified the body two days ago at the VA, had said at first, momentarily relieved from the fact that Billy was dead, "But this is a colored man.")

Billy had drunk himself to death. He had, at some point, ripped apart, plowed through as alcoholics tend to do, the great, deep, tightly woven fabric of affection that was some part of the emotional life, the life of love, of everyone in the room.

Everyone loved him. It was Mickey Quinn saying this, down at my end of the table. Mickey Quinn, who also worked for Con Ed, his territory being here in the Bronx, although he'd never heard of this place before. Mickey with a beer in his hand, and the irony either lost on him or too obvious even to bear mentioning. "If you knew Billy at all," he said, "then you loved him. He was just that type of guy."

And if you loved him, we all knew, you pleaded with him at some point. Or you drove him to AA, waited outside the church till the meeting was over, and drove him home again. Or you advanced him whatever you could afford so he could travel to Ireland to take the pledge. If you loved him, you took his car keys away, took his incoherent phone calls after midnight. You banished him from your house until he could show up sober. You saw the bloodied scraps of flesh he coughed up into his drinks. If you loved him, then you told him at some point that he was killing himself and felt the way his indifference ripped through your affection. You left work early to identify his body at the VA, and instead of being grateful that the ordeal was at long last over, you felt a momentary surge of joy as you turned away: This was not Billy, it was some colored man.

"He had the sweetest nature," another cousin, yet another Rosemary, said at my end of the table. "He found a way like everyone, he really did. He always found something good to say, or something funny. I He could always get you laughing."

"He was funny, though." It was agreed. "God, wasn't he funny?"

"Everyone loved him."

Not missing the irony of the drinks in their hands and the drink that had killed him, but redeeming, perhaps, the pleasure of a drink or two, on a sad, wet afternoon, in the company of old friends, from the miserable thing that a drink had become in his life. Redeeming the affection they had felt for him, once torn apart by this willfulness, his indifference, making something worthwhile of it, something valuable that had been well spent, after all.

The fruit salad was canned but served with a little scoop of lime sherbet, which was refreshing, everyone agreed. It cleared the palate. "The rolls were nice. There was some soda bread in one of the bread baskets, someone must have brought it. "Not as good as mine, but then I prefer it with caraway seeds, the way my mother used to make it..."

You could not redeem Billy's life, redeem your own relentless affection for him, without saving at some point, "There was that girl."

"The Irish girl."

"Eva." Of course. Kate, his sister, would remember her name.

"That was a sad thinh, wasn't it? That was a blow to him."

"A girl he met right after the war. Right after he came home. Out on Long Island."

"An Irish girl," Kate said, "visiting her sister, who was a nursemaid for some wealthy family from Park Avenue. He wanted to marry her, even gave her a ring. She had to go back home first, her parents were elderly, I think. But they wrote to each other. Billy was a great letter writer, wasn't he? He was always scribbling notes and mailing them off."

"He'd write a note on anything, wouldn't he? A paper napkin, a train schedule, and mail it off to you."

"I have one," Bridie from the old neighborhood said. She dug into her patent-leather purse and found a greeting-card-sized envelope with two stamps that showed a harp and a fiddle. She looked at the postmark--June 1975--and then extracted a limp paper square of a cocktail napkin that contained Billy's looping hand. "He sent it from Ireland," she said. "From Shannon Airport." And there was the Act Lingus logo in the corner. With a blue ballpoint Billy had written: "Birdie: Just saw your face pass by on a twelve-year-old girl in a navy-blue school uniform. Said her name was Fiona. She was meeting her father's plane from New York. Your smile, your eyes, your very face at that age--second edition. Love, Billy."

The napkin was ciculated, held as delicately as a fledgling, some even reaching into a purse or a breast pocket for reading glasses so as not to miss a word. All the way up the table to Maeve, who read it with a smile and a nod, and all the way back down again. Bridie took it back and read it once more before placing it into its envelope and back into a side, zippered compartment of her Sunday pocketbook.

Other letters from Billy were being mentioned: a note scribbed on a Playbill page, on a business card. The long missives he'd sent home during the war, whole lines blacked out by the censors but the homesickness coming through. He was so homesick. The postcards from the Irish trip, the place mats and napkins from various Long Island restaurants and diners, that summer he and Dennis were out there, fixing up Mr. Holtzman's little house. You rememher Mr. Holtzman. Dennis's mother's second husband. The shoe-store man.

Which was the same summer he met the Irish girl. Eva. The one he had hoped to marry.

"She went back to Ireland at the beginning of the fall." Kate would remember. "And not long after that, Billy took the job with Mr. Holtzman--Saturdays all day and maybe Thursday nights, I think it was. Dennis had arranged it for him. Billy was trying to put together enough money to send for his girl, to bring her back here, and Dennis set it up with Mr. Holtzman that Billy work at the shoe store when he wasn't at Con Ed."

"He was a great salesman," her younger sister, also Rosemary, said.

"Well," Kate explained, "Mr. Holtzman had lost some business during the war--I don't know if it was rationing or his being of German extraction or what. Anyway, he was glad to get Billy, an ex-GI with that handsome face of his. Those blue eyes."

"He was a good-looking young guy," Bridie from the old neighborhood said. "Maybe a little shy."

"And that's where he met Maeve, wasn't it? In the shoe store?"

"Later on," Kate said. "She used to come to the store with her father, and I remember Billy telling me how patient she was with him because, you know, her father was a drinker, too."

"A redheaded W.C. Fields," sister Rosemary said. "I remember him at their wedding." Rolling her eyes.

"Poor Maeve has had her share of it?"

A pause as a waiter reached between them to remove the fruit-salad bowls, every one of them whispering. Thank you, thank you, and then Thank you again as another waiter leaned in to put down the lunch.

"Doesn't this look good?"

"And the plates are nice and warm."

"They're doing a nice job, aren't they? I wonder how she found this place." "The undertaker, I'm sure. He probably gets a commission."

"He sent her the money," Kate continued. "Eva, that is. The Irish girl. He sent her about five hundred dollars. I think."

"Which was a lot of money in those days." Someone was required to say it.

"It certainly was"--and to second.

"He sent her the money in the spring sometime, this would have been in '46. And she wrote back to say she was busy making plans, you know, arrangements for coming back over. Lord, he was like a man waiting for a bus in those days. The sun couldn't rise and set fast enough. He was hoping she would come over before the summer ended, so they could spend their honeymoon together, but on Long Island, in the little house, Holtzman's house, but where they'd first met. I don't know where he thought they were going to live after the honeymoon--remember what it was like, trying to find an apartment then?"

It was remembered. It was also noted that the roast beef was very tender, very moist. Better this splash of juice than a thick gravy.

You may be interested to know of the books Charming Billy beat out in 1998 for the National Book Award. Note that SeniorNet's BC Online has already read one of the also-rans, A Man In Full, by Tom Wolfe, and that Damascus Gate, another Nat'l Book Award nominee, is on our list of choices for the September BC Online selection!

Allegra Goodman, Kaaterskill Falls (The Dial Press)

Gayl Jones, The Healing (Beacon Press)

WINNER! Alice McDermott, Charming Billy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Robert Stone, Damascus Gate (Houghton Mifflin Company)

Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Here's what the National Book Award folks say about themselves:

THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS: A TRADITION SINCE 1950 On March 16, 1950, a consortium of book publishing groups sponsored the first annual National Book Awards Ceremony and Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. Their goal was to enhance the public's awareness of exceptional books written by fellow Americans, and to increase the popularity of reading in general.

Since then, The National Book Awards have become the nation's preeminent literary prizes, and The National Book Awards Ceremony and Dinner the most important event on our literary calendar. Today, the Awards are given to recognize achievements in four genres: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature. The Winners, selected by five-member, independent judging panels for each genre, receive a $10,000 cash award and a crystal sculpture.

Just started the book last night and couldn't put it down. I won't say anything until we officially start, but I hope some of you are out there.

Is anyone there . . . anyone there . . . anyone there . . . there . . .there . . . the . . .t . . . t??

Here - haven't bought my book yet.

Barbara - I suspect there'll be lots of used copies around; it had very wide distribution. Good luck!

Is anyone else there and rarin' to go??

Sarah T, just got the book yesterday at Barnes & Noble - should have something read in time for the discussion - I confess I'm not too good at making meaningful comments - yup, I liked it - nope, I didn't, is more my style (:

Eileen Megan

Eileen - sometimes just a sentence really adds to the discussion. You never know what will set us off on a tear! So join us - and enjoy the book. It's one of those books you pick up and immediately get into.

Sarah-

I read it on vacation....if I can just get all the sand out of it now!!

Perfect read for a vacation at the beach (you weren't in the Hamptons, were you??). I look forward to having you, Charles.

Thanks to our Pat Scott (with the able assistance of Ginny), here are the lyrics to . . . what else??? . . . Charming Billy:

Billy Boy

Oh, where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?
Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?
I have been to seek a wife, she's the joy of my life.
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

Did she bid you to come in, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?
Did she bid you to come in, charming Billy?
Yes, she bid me to come in, there's a dimple on her chin.
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

Did she give you a chair, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?
Did she give you a chair, charming Billy?
Yes, she gave me a chair, but there was no bottom there.
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

Can she make a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?
Can she make a cherry pie, charming Billy?
She can make a cherry pie quick as a cat can wink her eye.
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

Can she cook and can she spin, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?
Can she cook and can she spin, charming Billy?
She can cook and she can spin, she can do most anything.
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

How old is she, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?
How old is she, charming Billy?
Three times six and four times seven, twenty-eight and eleven,
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

I finished this one a few months back but need to start rereading. A good book to discuss, as I remember. Is it already mid August??? Where did this summer go!!!

I, too, have read it but months ago. Look forward to others' comments. Certainly the language is beautiful - that alone made it a pleasure to read.

Readerdoc and Maida - I'll love having your perspectives.

I have so many things to say about this book, but I'll hold my tongue another 5 days. It's hard. I really like this book.

I'll post a reading schedule in the heading. I expect we'll cover through page 72 the first week.

Do others plan to join us?

I read this book several months ago and hope I remember it well enough to be able to join in for a while. I did enjoy it then and I know with everyone's insights I'll enjoy it more now.

Oh yes, do post a schedule.

And I will be joining the discussion. I'm glad all are waiting, holding back on the itch to talk away. As I was reading this evening I was thinking....yes, no, maybe,never.

Oh Eileen......the first jump in the water is the hardest

When we read Amsterdam in July was my first adventure into book groups. It is fun. And I bought the paperback too,and am using a pencil to underline and make comments......you might like to do that as you go along.

---Marj

MarjV,

Thanks for the idea, I appreciate it - I have participated in some other book discussions but NEVER seem have the insights that others seem to have in discussing books. I'll give it the old college try, though (:

I'm a "Boston" Irish Catholic so the expressions, attitudes etc. in this book seem very familiar to me. It ought to be very interesting to see how it affected everyone else.

Eileen Megan

Boy were you right Sarah - sold a bunch of books at half price Books and found Charming Billy there for only $6.48 - would you believe!

Eileen,

I'm Irish too and grew up not too far from Boston and much of this novel seemed familiar to me also. I'm also a state certified alcohol/drug counselor and so have definite opinions about poor Billy's plight - ah, the romance, tragedy and self-absorption of the Irish drunk - married one of 'em long ago.

Maida-

Right on. Self-absorption hits it. My bias is: I, for one, was not Charmed.

Maida, I remember in the movies in the 30s the drunk was always funny or amusing as "The Thin Man". The truth, of course, is totally different. But there are some sad souls that are "more to be pitied than censured". It's not all that easy to get "off the bottle".

Eileen Megan

A drunk is only amusing if you don't have to live with him/her. I did not grow up in a house with an alcoholic but my retired father is on his way to becoming one now, while my mother suffers on. In response to his increase in drinking, her's has decreased, making his over indulgence seem even worse than it is.

Watching someone you love slowly drink themselves into a stupor is a very painful thing and also damaging to the whole family. And the denial...

Not to jump the gun - but there is some very interesting character dialogue in the first chapter regarding the sources, the inevitability, the grip, of alcoholism - I'm sure we'll get into that on the 15th.

Finnegan's Wake

Tim Finnegan lived in Walkin' Street, A gentleman Irish mighty odd; He had a brogue both rich and sweet, And to rise in the world he carried a hod. Now Tim had a sort of a tipplin' way, With a love of the whiskey he was born, And to help him on with his work each day, He'd a drop of the craythur every morn.

Chorus: Whack fol the dah O, dance to your partner, Welt the floor, your trotters shake; Wasn't it the truth I told you, Lots of fun at Finnegan's wake!

One mornin' Tim was feelin' full, His head was heavy which made him shake; He fell from the ladder and broke his skull, And they carried him home his corpse to wake. They rolled him up in a nice clean sheet, And laid him out upon the bed, A gallon of whiskey at his feet, And a barrel of porter at his head.

Chorus

His friends assembled at the wake, And Mrs. Finnegan called for lunch, First they brought in tay and cake, Then pipes, tobacco and whiskey punch. Biddy O'Brien began to bawl, "Such a nice clean corpse, did you ever see? "O Tim, mavourneen, why did you die?" "Arragh, hold your gob," said Paddy McGhee!

Chorus

Then Maggie O'Connor took up the job, "O Biddy," says she, "You're wrong, I'm sure", Biddy she gave her a belt in the gob, And left her sprawlin' on the floor. And then the war did soon engage, 'Twas woman to woman and man to man, Shillelagh law was all the rage, And a row and a ruction soon began.

Chorus

Then Mickey Maloney ducked his head, When a noggin of whiskey flew at him, It missed, and falling on the bed, The liquor scattered over Tim! The corpse revives! See how he raises! Timothy rising from the bed, Says,"Whirl your whiskey around like blazes, Thanum an Dhoul! Do you think I'm dead?"

Chorus

Well we've finally arrived at August 15 (it was hard to hold back) and I hope you're all ready to discuss this marvelous book.

I was out of town a few days and am only now getting the schedule up, but I'd said we'd read through page 72 this week. Are you all about there?

First impressions:

We start with the day of Billy's funeral. The setting is quite dismal: a building with "an apron of dirt and gravel in front" of it, "at the end of a sloping driveway that started out as macadam but quickly diminished to dirt and gravel." This doesn't sound like the Bronx - in fact, the place "might have been a pub in rural Ireland." No one can recall ever having seen this place before: "How in the world she ever found this place was a mystery, despite the question being asked again and again as Billy's friends and family filed in . . . ."

We meet Maeve, with "a face as plain as butter: pale, downy skin and bland blue eyes, faded brown hair cut short as a nun's and dimmed with gray." "There was a kind of beauty in her ordinary looks, in her plainness." What are your impressions of Maeve. Do you pity her? Find her appealing?

And we are presented with the oddity (in my mind) of the narrator - Dennis' daughter. It takes us awhile to figure out who Dennis is, and whether the narrator is male or female. What do you think of McDermott's choice of narrator? (I had trouble with it. I often found myself confused about who was talking, and had to think about it before moving on.)

The most memorable part of this restaurant scene is the clandestine conversation that takes place down the table from Maeve. I found myself mystified that she couldn't hear what they were saying, shocked that they were talking about The Irish Girl in this way practically within earshot of Maeve. I felt very sorry for her at this point.

We learn the entire story of the book during this conversation, don't we? The rest of the book is shading, repetition, deepening, delving. What do you think of this means of telling a story? Of the general "architecture" of the book - it does rather loop around on itself, doesn't it?

What of Billy's propensity to write little notes, his charm in general. Charles wasn't Charmed. Were you?

I'm going to take this post in pieces as my 'puter is acting up.

About Eva. I get an impression in the first chapter of a great romance between her and Billy. As the story is told later, I question this. It seems Billy has attached himself to a pretty thin dream. There isn't much between him and Eva, in the end. The whole dream seems to have been blown vastly out of proportion.

If this is the case, then why is Billy's life ruined by Eva's abandonment? Or is it? I'm never entirely convinced that Billy wouldn't have died precisely as he did even without Eva.

Some of you have talked of knowing alcoholics - even having them in the family. Does alcoholism emerge because of tragedy? Or does it find easier excuses to emerge?

What of Dennis' lie to Billy? Was he wrong to lie about Eva? Would Billy's life have been different if he'd known the truth?

What are your opening thoughts?

I was at Billy’s wedding yesterday. Or, in this case, Bobby’s. I was often reminded of Bobby as I read this book. Somewhat of a dreamer with a rather rigorous moral code – certainly his own value system whose origin is indeterminate, or obscure at best. There are differences, of course: a believer, but not a churchgoer – he keeps his own religious council, unlike Billy who appears to be a devout attendee. One of eight from a large Irish-American clan (whose older sister I have married), there is no tragic loss from his past – only his inability to live up to the image of his parents and his father as revered leader of the clan. But there is the drink. And the apparent ability to function in the world on some tentative level. He holds down a job and never misses work. He’ll do anything for the family – he's loyal - except stop drinking. Everybody loves Bobby – except, as a somewhat mean, rather strange drunk. But he has not married Maeve and the over-under for this marriage is pretty low. We were responsible for the cake – and as late as Wednesday it looked like cake would d be on the menu at my work place for the whole company…….

Maeve? Like many of the characters in the book (including Billy) I read them as rather finely drawn stereotypes I’m afraid. The “courageous” long-suffering widow. She learned this part with her Father, and plays it out with Billy. I don’t accept that this was her only option. Only that it was the most familiar.

I too had trouble keeping all the characters straight – and the devil of a time remembering who the narrator was – even though it’s made clear early – because there is no apparent reason for her choice as narrator. The nameless (?) daughter of Dennis as narrator is, in fact, one of the more intriguing questions of this novel for me. It’s only with a second reading that this is all easier. I’m not a big fan of novels that require a second reading to keep the line-up straight!

Eva? No. This is a summer dalliance to Eva. To Billy it is the stuff of Irish myth. Part of his personal tragedy (“the aesthete priest”) and every great Irish Poet needs a great personal tragedy (“the Irish girl”). I didn’t FOR A MINUTE accept the fact that Eva’s OR Dennis’ betrayal accelerated his personal tragedy. AT least McDermott didn’t convince me – and I don’t think she meant to. He wasn’t so much in love with Eva as with his personal myth building – “he fell in love with the rest of his life, and that was better still.” But, as always, you guys can. I’m listening!

(Sarah – I’ve probably gone too far, here. In the FIRST Chapter, sure, Eva is built up as a great and tragic loss for Billy – but the first prick in that bubble comes at the end of Chapter One when Dennis tells his daughter “Eva lived.” The telling of that summer idyll in Chapter 4 sheds a lot of light on the events and the truth comes into sharper focus. McDermott’s technique is quite interesting – the story itself is fairly evident from the beginning – it’s the truth of the story that is revealed like the layers of an onion through slices of time. It looks like we’ll have page numbering discrepancies: the PB has 243 pages and the HB has 280 – so I’m guessing that by through page 72 you mean the first three Chapters and not thee first four – the fourth Chapter being the telling of the Summer when Dennis and Billy fixed up Holtzman’s house on Long Island and met Mary and Eva).

First I'd like to comment on how I chuckled at the opening.....presenting a funeral event.....and how different fromo the start of Amsterdam

I agree with Sarah about the narrator. I was confused the first time i read this back when it first came out and this time again. Especially when there are the short interjections about whom she will marry as she sees him in the car several times. That bit of detail doesn't seem important to me.

And I sure hope we get into the discussion of lies. And alcoholism.

And also, all the talk at the table while Maeve is at the other end. But we do know people will do that. Maybe that is a peculiarity also of the Irish wake. They were all trying to get a grip of who Billy was. And how the alcoholism fitted into his life.

It's been a long time since I've read Finnegans Wake, Charles!! Good addition

----Marj

No, alcoholism most certainly does not occur out of tragedy. Modern medicine now knows that alcoholism is a disease - a chronic one(it can't be cured much like diabetes) - and if affects somewhere between 15 and 25% of the population. Certain cultures seem to have a greater preponderance of alcoholics e.g. Ireland, England, Blacks, Native Americans while others have fewer numbers e.g. Asians, Jews, Italians. This disease affects men and women equally although it seems that there are more male alcoholics because men tend to drink publically and women at home. Alcoholism is NOT a stimulant. It's a depressant and is the most widely abused of all drugs known to mankind. Its principal characteristic is denial that there is a problem - and alcoholics are especially adept at ducking the real issue by blaming any number of people and external influences. For years I kept a list of excuses and reasons for drinking - there were several hundred entries on it - useful when confronting adult alcoholics with whom I worked for many years.

No, I do not find Billy charming - quite the opposite. He managed to weave whole cloth from a small fragment of yarn using it as the rationale for the rest of his life. I loved the use of Dennis's daughter as the narrator - at times I felt that she was the only realistic figure in the entire book.

So, Maida: You seem to indicate that Dennis’ daughter is the only logical choice as dispassionate narrator – a realistic figure. If so, I agree that she is a good choice. As the only figure in the book not of that generation, she seems able to filter the truth as it is revealed to her without biases of prior knowledge and assumptions.

Thanks to our MarjV, here is an interview McNeil/Lehrer did after McDermott won the National Book Award

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec98/mcdermott_11-20.html

Maida - how interesting that you thought Dennis' daughter was the only appropriate narrator. You're right that she was the only dispassionate character in the book. But why couldn't McDermott have told the story without a narrator? I didn't find the daughter's insights to be very useful.

I was also intrigued by Billy's sisters, especially Kate (the one married to the lawyer, very caught up in money and privilege, and yet essentially miserably unhappy). I would have liked to know more of her.

Charles, are you saying you didn't find Maeve believable? I agree that she fit the stereotype of the long-suffering alcoholic's wife, but aren't there lots of women (especially of Maeve's generation) that fit that role?

While my family's problems don't include alcoholism (and I agree, Maida, that this is all due to genetics), I see a lot Maeve in some of my older female relatives. They didn't work, and seemed to exist (at least prior to their husbands' deaths) simply to serve their men.

On several of your observations about the "Eva fantasy," why did Billy create such a huge story around this casual summer affair? Was his "charm" completely predicated on a fear on intimacy - a tendency to form only surface relationships?

Join us!

I have posted the reading schedule in the heading.

I loved this book as it reminded me so of my beloved Irish mother and the many wakes I attended with her. The atmosphere was so familiar and the way the family spoke reminded me of my mother's people---the close family used to much tragedy. Ireland was a poor country when my mother was a child there and under British rule even though she lived in Co. Mayo. The Black and Tans (the uniform of the Brits gave them that name) made life difficult for my mother's people and when she was attending school her native language was forbidden to be taught. I have visited IReland many times and the families are still so important -- just as Charming Billy showed them to be. It was a warm, comforting read for me and I could hear my mother's lilting accent throughout.

Maeve was believable in the way that many stereotypes are ‘believable’ – but stereotypes never interest me much. The character I really liked was Sheila Lynch!! Liked in the sense that she was new and real.

The Eva myth was made to order for Billy – it was a perfect fit for what I took to be his pseudo-religious martyrdom – the opiate of the people.

Didn't Billy find out for himself that Eva was still alive, when he went to Ireland? And didn't she tell him that Dennis knew? So how much time passed before Billy died?

He was well on his way to his death, healthwise, before he ever went to Ireland for "the pledge".

Fiery (great name): Welcome. Tell us more! This was such a sad book; was that aspect also familiar to you? I kind of hope not, but would also be interested in hearing more about whether these characters rang true to you.

Charles: Is there anything about Maeve's long-suffering nature that seems real. I think again of some of my older female relatives. I can't imagine any of them on SeniorNet talking about books, for example. But then one of the most interesting things I've learned is how each of us - regardless of age - has an interior life that is far more complex than outward appearances might indicate. What I mean is - and I hope I don't offend here - I've always had a certain sense of my grandparents that is completely contradicted by what many of you say here. Are my grandparents different from you - or do they only show me very limited aspects of themselves?

How did I get onto this? I have learned so much about what is in the mind of "seniors" from being involved in this site. You all feel like peers to me (I'm 40 years old). I don't think of my grandparents as peers, unfortunately. I sometimes wish I could see how they REALLY are when they don't know I'm around.

Ugh - don't hate me. I mean this as a compliment, but it isn't coming out right.

Pat - I think Billy learned the truth in the mid-70s and died in the early 80s. So you're right that he was well along in his addiction when he learned the truth. I guess my question is whether knowing the truth right from the beginning, right after the war, would have changed his destiny.

Sarah age is interesting isn't it and how thoughts and feelings are shared. I have emailed several through SN in their 80s that bawled me over with their ability to think independently, way past anything I could have put together and I have also talked with young people in their late 30 or 40 that bore me to death with their single focus of 'doing the socially correct thing' as well as, although collage educated there was no depth of understanding. I've had woman friends, in fact at my last birthday when I turned 66, that ranged in age from 22 to my best, 30+year long, friend who is now to my astonishment 80.

Some of my intimate woman friends of such age differences are as a result of sharing our pain, hope, encouragment and successes when we attend ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) meeting. I've been attending not only ACOA but Al-Anon (for those living or working with or have lived with an alcoholic) since 1987.

For most of us long time regulars we agree, it isn't or wasn't the actual drinking, it is the behavior of the alcoholic that creates such pain and confussion. They are seldom there for you, you can't depend on them, there is a feeling of being abandoned as they are isolated within their alcoholic state, they often do dangerous things or don't take care of themselves or their responsiblities, expecting family members to pick up the pieces. Chaos often surrounds the homelife of an alcoholic. On and on -

My friendships are not based on a mutual 'poor us' but rather that, we are willing to became that vulnerable and share our vulnerablity, and actually say out loud what we want or need. Often others in the room are actually there for us, which is frightening, since we do not have a history or practice in asking for something as simple as a hug. Many of us learned early on, not even to ask. It takes such courage to actually do what in our heart of hearts we believe could be, when our history has taught us to deny these needs.

And so I think when ever folks share more then the tip of the iceburg, as here on SN, we admire that courage and wish that those we love have had some outlet where they were able to share their deeper thoughts and feelings. I think we admire and enjoy those that share regardless, it be about understanding an authors thinking and learning, how the authors thoughts have triggered feelings and thoughts differently then our own, or sharing deeper thoughts and feelings with those we have bonded because of another interest.

It is interesting that so many alcoholics, are charming.

In general, I agree about 2nd readings, Charles; I want at least a shot at understanding/pleasure the first time around. On the other hand, we don't demand that from poetry---the finer nuances and subtle meanings may grow with each reading. Or from paintings. Or from music, for that matter. Imagine hearing a jazz piece just once. I'm willing (although with a little whining) to see that some writing is worth a 2nd consideration.

This book may be a case in point. About midway through the first chapter, it struck me that this book isn't about Billy. It's about those who knew and loved him, what they (possibly) invented about him, what they needed from that invention. And one step back, it's about the narrator, daughter of Dennis. Her, or maybe her generation's, view of her father, his best friend Billy and these friends and family. She's trying to make sense of these stories of Billy and her father.

.....which led to my wondering if this is not just something an Irish-American family does. This categorizing of family members. This excusing or seeing past the obvious dysfunction to honor someone---for the family's needs, not the person's. I suppose there have always been roles in families that come with status and honor, regardless of the person's characteristics. And other roles, I guess, that just evolved over time but were never checked for accuracy. I'm thinking here of those roles that come not with honor necessarily, but with tightly scripted summaries---the selfish one, the wise one, married too early, conservative.

I like this narrator's voice, by the way. I like her exploration of this family story, this sorting through, trying to make sense of it.

Barbara - thank you for your insights. Why is it that I can have such close relationships with people older than I (and younger) except when they're members of my own family? I too have friendships ranging in age from 20-80, but it's different when it comes to my own family members. Those roles get "set" so early in life.

Readerdoc - you make this point marvelously by pointing out how we all get categorized in families. With friendships, it's possible to be your true self at the moment. With family, I find I am still the person I was at 8 and 20 and 35. It will never change.

I also love your point about the story being about those around Billy, rather than about Billy himself. I was struggling with the discussion in the book of Dennis' daughter's relationship with the sun of the renter Mr. West, and of Dennis' mother Sheila, and of - oh now, who was it that drove the streetcar??

This is clearly a book that deserves to be re-read.

The McNeil/Lehrer interview in post # 32 is interesting. Here, McDermott explains to Elizabeth Farnsworth why she used Dennis' daughter as the narrator:

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And the book is almost an elegy, the voice that one of the judges referred to that tells the story, which is a young woman, actually, has a kind of delicate elegiac tone. How did you decide to do that, to make her the storyteller?

ALICE McDERMOTT: Do you know I resisted that voice, that first person narrative, but it seemed to me if you're telling a story about faith, you're also telling a story about telling stories, the things that we believe in -- our stories that we hear and are told. And so it seemed to me that the entire novel needed to be told to someone, and that was where - the inevitability of that first person voice telling a story that's not necessarily her own, but putting together, as women do, the various stories in her family and making something of it.

*****

So she uses the daughter's voice to tell a family story "as women do." Do you, as women in your own families, do this?

Another nice point from the McDermott interview is her discussion of the family's attempt to romanticize Billy's life by basing it on the "Eva fable":

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And you don't sentimentalize any of it. I mean, his death, the terrible discoloration of a body that dies from liver damage is quite graphically described. Did you try very hard not to be sentimental?

ALICE McDERMOTT: Well, that was very important to me, because having an alcoholic - a lovable alcoholic at the center of the novel and someone who was romanticized by the people around him, I didn't want to romanticize him myself as the author of his book, so it was important to me that we recognize that these people are trying to build a romance around a tragedy. But they've also lived with a tragedy, and they know intimately the horror of this kind of life.

Wow, lots of interesting comments and insights!

MarjV, thanks for the clickable.

Fiery, I agree with you, coming from the same background, I had that sense of familiarity with the characters. Even the writer said in her interview that she wrote an Irish American tale because since it was her own experience, she could focus on the story.

Sarah, I too got confused more than once as to who the narrator was talking about. It was later in the book that I realized that Billy was married to Maeve when he found out the truth.

Maeve was a mystery to me because you actually never knew what the heck she really was thinking - the martyr type, not, because martyrs let everyone know how they're suffering.

Billy, to me, is drawn as a dreamer who sees everything in an alcoholic haze - friendly, lovable, I don't think so. Alcoholics are users from the get go - adept at saying all the right things to lure their nearest and dearest into becoming "enablers". Yes, my family has had their share of alcoholics and all the pain that goes with them . Anyone who drinks excessively and who has that one drink too many always turns ugly - even Billy.

Eileen Megan

Sarah: Why do so many women,including authors,think or feel or believe that women are the only ones with enough insight and capability to be able to convey the "family stories"?

In many non-western cultures the family (tribal)stories are the provenance of the male.

Does McDermott have a hidden agenda in this novel?Is it an attempt to show men as inconsiderate and uncaring fools who take advantage of women?

Welcome Eileen. I too was struck by McDermott's comment on why she wrote about an Irish-American family. She said that she didn't necessarily set out to tell an Irish-American story. However, being of that background saved her research into forms of speech, mannerisms, cuisine, etc. Both you and others of Irish American heritage feel she captured these details well. Expand on this for me.

I'm Irish-American on my mother's side, but, interestingly, DON'T recognize the characters AT ALL. We're San Francisco Irish - perhaps there's a difference between us and our East Coast cousins??

Ed - Let's not make this a man-woman battle. I think McDermott portrays some VERY sympathetic male characters (Dennis, for one). I think it would be presumptuous for her to say that men are the family storytellers if that's not her experience. In my family, especially on my father's side, men really do carry on the family stories. Women dominate on my mother's side. I think it varies, even here in the US.

Everyone of today's post have been wonderfully insightful - isn't it amazing what the shared reading of a good book brings out in us indivudually! I haven't time for a long response tonight but did want to comment on Barbara's assertion that alcoholics are charming/charmers. I think that they think they're charming - especially when imbibing intemperately (when don;t they?) but frankly, that "charm" is little more than an elaborate con. The degree of charm usually depends on the intelligence of the drinker. The biggest con of all is when the alcoholic decides to sober up - and makes countless promises to "do better", "taper off", "switch to beer", "only have one after work" and, best of all -- "I'll NENER do that again.

Maeve? In some ways she is typical of her generation but I found that I couldn't find it in my stony little heart to respect her.

readerdoc makes the point that “this book isn't about Billy. It's about those who knew and loved him, what they (possibly) invented about him, what they needed from that invention.” To me, this is central to my understanding of this novel. It’s about invention, about myth making. What I haven’t fully decided is why they engage in this? As readerdoc says, for the purposes of the family? Billy fills a need for them? What? McDermott indicates that “it was important to me that we recognize that these people are trying to build a romance around a tragedy". Again why? Here was a guy whose “indifference ripped through [their] affection.” But he had a touch of the poet. Quoting Yeats to the young ladies. McDermott’s image of Billy with his drink to his heart is so perfect – anyone who has spent late hours in an Irish pub has seen this. It’s a favorite pose. There are others who fulfill niches in the clans pantheon – you can tell what by the studied references: Bridie (“from the old neighborhood”), Holtzman (“The shoe-store man”), and of course, Eva (“The Irish Girl” – (Paradise Lost)). It’s interesting how Billy works to uphold his mythical position. How he “never mention[ed] that girl again, once he married Maeve." How he very obviously refused to ‘get himself back to the Garden’ (Long Island) again: “I won’t go back myself”. He was a martyr for the clan – a sufferer for the family. Why? Did he somehow relieve their pain by silently carrying on as the Virgin Father? Dan Lynch preferred to believe that he was waiting to die and ascend to Heaven to meet his Queen. Billy did not disabuse him of that notion. Now the troubling aspect of all this is that this myth, this family iconography is built upon a lie. This is not an accident, I suggest. McDermott DOES have an “agenda”, Ed. What that agenda, that purpose may be – well, I have my suspicions. I do believe that Dennis’ daughter, the narrator is the alter ego of McDermott (“the apostate”). Certainly, the spinner of the Great Lie, Dennis understands that one who wears the “brokenhearted” label will make a better icon than the “fool”. Does McDermott tip her hand when she says that “Irish Catholic Queens New York” cannot abide “illusion”? Except that which is either “Church-sanctioned” or “alcohol-bred”? Interesting.

Contrast that icon (Billy) to Sheila Lynch:
“Her philosophy of life seemed to be to get to the bottom of things.”
She married for a whole “laundry list” of reasons. Love was not one of them
“She was a Geiger counter for insincerity, phoniness, half-truths.”
No romantic suffering there.

I need to comment on another short paragraph that stopped me in my tracks. My wife, being one of eight, the oldest child of an Irish father and Italian mother, looks, quite naturally I believe, at her parents ongoing 50-year marriage as “the ideal.” As does the whole family. This is their “myth’ if you will – their sacred parable. And I think it is a terrible burden to live under and up to a myth of that nature. For what does anyone see of the truth behind the myth – nothing – for the myth is given but unquestioned. Frankly, the women (four) have struggled with their men and the men (four) have, with one odd exception, fared even less well.

I suppose there’s not much sense in trying to measure the breadth and depth of your own parent’s romance, the course and tenacity of their love. Your parents’ or anybody else’s, for that matter. I know an older couple who have so convinced their grown children of the charm and endurance of their passionate history – married young and poor, separated by war, reunited to become dedicated and hardworking young parents, loving partners in the building of a business, patient guardians of teenagers, payers of tuition, and finally (looking proudly into each other’s eyes) grateful, rich and still passionate retirees and grandparents - that their children have had nothing but disappointment and grief in their own love lives and now, in middle age, look at their aging and still smug progenitors with envy and despair.

Be careful of the myths you build and the paths you outline – others may feel that they must follow and flourish on the same paths without deviation and be forever disappointed.

Charlie

Charlie, yes, yes, the thoughts of my grandmother were behind my words on the entrenched "roles" in a family. The myth of her role, value, is never to be questioned, either outloud to others who can't bear it, or even in my heart for the longest time. Her words provided short-term relief of pain in our childhood--the only place that provided any relief--but promoted values that still entangle and pollute healthy adult relationships today. It has taken some of us a lifetime to figure out how damaging her well-meant excuses for another were.

The narrator can judge and question and sort through because she is a generation removed. And, if this is McDermott's voice, as you suggest, this gives her a softer but broader canvas to question the (her) Irish-American legacy of, of...what...death by alcohol? Other romantic poisons? Or is she writing of culture, society in general. The Irish-American family has no exclusive ownership of damaging myths.

Sarah T.-----Oh, yes--the yoke of sadness is something we Irish wear and frequently---just look at so many Irish writers. However, humor is there and pops out frequently. All of these characters are so typically Irish and I feel Alice McDermott is right on the money in her depiction of the lives of these characters. Interesting reading the postings of so many readers and their opinions bounce off one another.

Readerdoc - what McDermott SAYS she did and what she actually did may be two different things, but she seems to be saying she didn't intend to tell an Irish-American story:

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You're sometimes compared to James Joyce, because also in the book - we haven't talked about this - the whole family is important. There are many, many characters; they're talked about in great detail. The whole community is important. Did you set out to write about Irish-American life?

ALICE McDERMOTT: No, I wouldn't say that I did. I set out to write about the things we believe in, and the way we feel, and things like hope and faith. Being Irish-American, myself, Irish-American material is readily at hand to me. I know Irish-American people. I know what their homes look like. I know what they have for dinner. I know how they turn a phrase. And so since it was readily available, it saves me lots of research time, and I can spend the time instead trying to develop the things that I think are important in fiction, and that is the inner life of the characters.

Charles asks why the characters around Billy try to make myth out of tragedy.

What are your thoughts on this question?

If Billy were a real SOB, would the family be so intent on making him into a tragic figure? Was his "charm," however transparent/alcoholic, what caused their sympathy for his story?

Were they trying to cover up deficiencies in their own lives by creating a cover story for Billy's life?

For example, Billy's sister Kate (with whom I continue to be fascinated) spent most of her time pretending her life was just fine, when in fact she was married to a rich, mostly absent, somewhat abusive man.

Dan Lynch was a very lonely man whose reverence for priestly celibacy rang quite false. I also find him quite fascinating.

Thoughts?

I wonder who or what is the "real" or "true" Billy.

McDermott investigates the multi-faceted glimmer of lies in general... Lies we live by, or like Dennis..lies we give as gifts.

What is the narrator's own stake in this story?

Who's lying? Who's telling the truth ? Who knows?

Doesn't Billy tell us what he represents - He is the martyr as Eve is a taker, a sinner running in hellfire. Adam and Eve - Adam is propelled to the garden of America and Eve took the apple America provided, as many of the American-Irish have provided the money, in the hope that Ireland would finally free itself from under the yoke of Britian. Billy against his better knowledge, that he wants to deny but, fondly overcome with female charm he eats the apple and forever more is caste out of his garden of paradise into the role of martyr myth.

Interesting that Billy quotes Yeats since Yeats considered middle-class Irish hucksters. The American-Irish is middle-class and Billy is discribed as a charming huckster.

I'm beginning to see this as a story between the martyr drunk and the co-dependent mainipulator Dennis. His story has fueled the myth and the wake gives everyone an opportunity to express their own spirit in the way they can tell a tale and competitivness, certainly between Kate and Rosemary. I think Eve is just the hype, the romantic notion that allows the story to be told and the real story is about Billy and Dennis.

Dennis's mother is protestant, therefore, pragmatic rather then with romantic notions and, she shows control issues. Dennis commits the mortal sin in the name of protecting Billy. He betrays the truth, Billy, the community and keeps the secret. Both Billy and Dennis are complicite in keeping the myth with their shared secret.

Is this a story about the end of the romatic nostalgia, the Celtic Twilight, with the reader, Billy and Dennis knowing the truth. That Ireland has been taking the resources and those that have immigrated are lost in a nostalgic dream. The wake is waking the myth that kept the dream alive.

Having associated the AA movement with the protestants, of course it couldn't 'take' with Billy. The AA movement is as a result of the Oxford movement started by John Henry Newman who later converted and became Cardinal Newman. Although admired, the Irish Catholic still didn't accept him as one of their own since, he was English and a protestant before converting. As we learned reading Joyce it is hard to seperate Catholicism from Celtic/Gallic Irish. And Billy seems to be a Celtic martyr for the community to hang their hat on.

And of course there had to be the support for the Jew in that the Irish have identified with the Jewish struggle for a couple of hundred years.

Something about all this reminds me of the Kennedys and not just because they are a typical Irish family. But it is like Dennis takes on the role of Joe Sr. and tells Jack,- your brother is gone and now, playboy or not, you must carry the family and become a martyr to the cause. How much of the cause was to inform this country about Ireland's struggle? We certainly, as a nation, didn't hear about Irelands struggle till J.F. visited his families home and yet, the American-Irish have always financed Fenian - the Brotherhood. Isn't it one of Bobby's girls that married one of the jailed catholic rebels and with her Uncle Ted helped free him?

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; The beach became vast and black, and the thud of the invisible ocean, even with its predictable rhythm, seemed relentlessly startling She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. Eva had her shoes off and her white toes were partially buried in the sand She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree. As a child, Eva thought she was going to hell Billy thought he’d be a saint – probably a martyr

In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; ”There’s the difference between you and me” Eva said But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

An Old Song Resung by W. B. Yeats

In some respects, this book is about how one generation passes off its desires and aspirations to the next. This myth making, or storytelling is how one generation copes with life’s vicissitudes. Thus it is also about how succeeding generations receive these sacred stories. Viewed this way, Dennis’ daughter is the only real choice for narrator of the book. In other respects we are perhaps meant to consider the value or the meaning of individual lives – or this individual life: Billy’s. Much as we were asked to consider the same thing in Mrs. Dalloway – in The Hours. Interesting how the central characters in each of these books defined their lives by one seminal event:
Billy’s kiss of Eva: “…it was like something else, too, something that could not be distilled from its parts; that was the dark flavor of desire, but a desire for…life itself to be as sweet as certain words could make it seem.”
Sally’s kiss of Clarissa Dalloway: “the most exquisite moment of her whole life.”
And Clarissa Vaughan’s “kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass…that singular perfection…That was the moment right then. There has been no other.”

For Billy, by choice…there was no other.

Charles I hear you about one generation passing on the stories etc. but in this case the story is a fabrication that both Dennis and Billy share the truth and it is their very own generation that is as caught up in the myth/story rather then successive generations. At the wake I do not remember that many of the younger generation were adding or remarking about the story. Of course I understand they could have been in attendance and soaking it up but If Dennis's daughter is any example of the rest of her generation she seems to see through her Uncle Billy when she notes the flask in his jacket in the resturant and she is sharing the knowledge that the myth is a fabrication.

It is almost as if she is saying look this is how the preceeding generation gave meaning to each other's lives but, it was all based on a lie that they were all fooled by Dennis and later Charming Billy the huckster.

Help help I'm trying to understand give me your opinion or rather expand on your thought.

Barbara: Billy’s generation is intent on passing on their myths to the next. The next is skeptical . HURRAH! The next generation should ALWAYS be skeptical of the myths of the previous. Mostly they are misleading and false stories that no longer have meaning for the next generation. Perhaps I am too harsh/cynical. The next generation needs to clear space to spin their own yarns – yarns which may be good for them but when passed on again should be taken for what they are. Dennis (the truth-holder, the purveyor of the great lie) is trying to pass on the real deal to his daughter.

Even with each generation questioning the lives/myths of the former, don't you think we are living in a dizzying, confusing, high-speed myth-questioning time? The principles of my youth are so distant from me now I cannot articulate them. And I can barely grasp the dormant period when I was married, a non-person phase I call it, even though I was living how I thought I was supposed to. I identify with Leslie Stahl's first sentence in her book, I was born at 30.

Some of the most treasured textbooks I own report on cultural myths but some are already dated. We've moved on. I wonder if the last 3 or 4 decades of award winning books of fiction reflect a record number on cultural myth examination. I'm not as critical of this as I sound; when I finally did find a voice mid-life, it was a loud one. But that doesn't lessen the culture shock of each renovation. Dennis and Billy's choices/lies/secrets that lasted through Billy's life can seem almost luxurious by comparison. Both were "loyal" to a way of life in a way that I will never experience.

I want to know about McDermott's quote on "faith" and "hope." I can't think beyond the obvious. Anyone have thoughts?

The discussion is superb. And I think whomever tells the story, male or female, is the one with the talent for that. If you are not a story teller it doesn't work.

And Maeve......I know women who live as the martyr. Perhaps even waiting for a spouse to die and then they will live their life. What a waste!

I concur with those who think Billy is not charming. I do not think drunks are charming. I, too, have had encounters in life with alcoholics and no charm that I can see .

From Charlie's post <"Be careful of the myths you build and the paths you outline – others may feel that they must follow and flourish on the same paths without deviation and be forever disappointed"> So ---Thanks Charlie. So much myth building I have heard thru the years. . One reason is that it makes an image that they feel "looks good".

I want to comment on Dennis' mother. What an unlikeable woman! Tough and survival oriented is all I think right now.

---Marj

From Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own) to Clarissa Dalloway (An Attic of One's Own) to Sheila Lynch (A Basement of One's Own)....

What I find interesting about Sheila:
She objected to "anonymity"
"And that was what she couldn't get enough of - after the life she had led. To be noticed, to be singled out."
"Her philosophy of life seemed to be to get to the bottom of things."
"She was...intelligent and witty...her cycicism was bolstered by a keen logic."

She may have been the perfect wife for her Daniel Lynch, but a difficult mother - but someone who you could depend on for the truth - the rock solid truth - there's something to be said for that.

I am enjoying Charming Billy. live in a small town so when ask the clerk for the book she said is it about Bill Clinton, made my day but we found it and am on page 106. My mothers mother came from Ireland, she was Catholic, so the book brings back many of the words and I can even hear her Irish brough. For me it is fiction mixed with the authors knowlege of the ways of the Irish and maybe some personal experince. I am very much enjoying this book.

ginger

Ginger-welcome to our discussion. I love that so many of the readers are finding a bit of their own families in this book. That in itself is a tribute to McDermott's skill in capturing a culture, I think.

That's hysterical about Bill Clinton! Was the librarian kidding?

MarjV - two of my grandmothers (I had 3 - don't ask!) only seemed to grow into their own personalities after their husbands died. I suspect if you asked them if this were the case, they'd deny it. However, I felt I only began to know them after my grandfather and step-grandfather died.

Readerdoc and Charles - on questioning myths: My whole life has witnessed the cultural upheaval that causes each decade/generation to question the myths of the previous one. It's the norm for me. Change is all I ever expect. And, oddly enough, I still think precisely as I did at age 16. I still have the same view of the generation ahead of me.

Great posts everyone. I love this discussion too.

What do you all think of Dennis? I'm having trouble deciding if he's a truly good egg who just kept the truth from Billy because he wanted to spare his feelings; or if he's an "enabler" who simply pushed Billy deeper into the depths of alcoholism.

Maida and others: do "enablers" actually make the alcoholism worse? Or is this disease completely out of the control of anyone - the alcoholic himself, and others around him. Clearly, some people get sober. Why? Is it simply because something inside of the alcoholic himself "clicks." Or is it also because of the influence of those around him.

I think everyone around Billy enabled his drinking. By labeling him "charming," they validated him. By covering for him at work - after all, they knew of his problem 30 years before he died of drink - they made it easy for him to continue drinking.

So how guilty/complicit are Billy's loved ones in his drinking and ultimate demise?

Fiery makes the point that there is humor in this book. It's a topic we're also confronting in The Country Life, which is quite tragic in (I think) a blackly humorous way.

Do you see any humor in this book?

Sarah, I agree. The enabling went on and on.

I have also been thinking about Dennis. Do I like him or not? Is he a person of integrity? He could be a good egg who didn't understand he was enabling. Many people do not...want to keep the waters smooth; perhaps if i keep the waters smooth he/she won't need the alcohol. Then, of course, the enabler is caught in the denial.

Is sparing the truth an act of love and caring? Or is it the easier path?

I liked McDermott's narrative of the love and marriage and death of Dennis & wife. For all the lovely reflection our narrator at 18 had wanted her mother there in the flesh.

---Marj

As I understand 'enabling' it is the one that takes up the slack and keeps the drunk 'looking good' or takes care of him/her so the drunk doesn't have to face the consequences of their actions. I'm not sure that Dennis was enabling Billy's drinking as much as, he had control issues that stemmed from protecting his concept of how Billy and their community would handle or react to Eva's marriage and taking Billy's money.

Dennis's mother has control issues. Example; getting her second husband to allow the two boys to fix up the Long Island house etc. It would fit that Dennis, although trying to protect himself from his mother with secrets, would have learned from childhood her ways and continue the line of 'Controllers'.

Neither Billy nor Dennis want to feel uncomfort. One 'drinks' to keep uncomfort away and the other 'controls' to assure less uncomfort in his life. Both are knee jerk obsessive behaviors that keep someone from experiencing life.

Sara T, I bought the book so it was a clerk that asked the question and she was was not kidding that is what made it so funny.

I to see Dennis and mother as controllers also.

Recently I have seen one "enabler" come to grips with the fact that she mistakenly protected her husband from the consequences of his actions, for one thing, out of fear that he would lose his job, maybe trying to hide his behavior from the children (hah!). Finally, finally he went into a program where he lived for 6 months - they both had counseling, separately and as a couple. Please God, they are on their way to recovery.

I think Dennis was wrong, wrong, wrong to lie to Billy, it wouldn't have made a particle of difference if Billy knew the truth - the truth would have served just as well as an excuse Billy's alcoholism. I'm amazed that Dennis's wife put up with Maeve calling him at all hours of the night to help her with Billy.

Eileen Megan

Barbara's comment about enabling was right on. The enabling is destructive because it postpones the alcoholic from hitting a bottom so to speak. In other words, the enabler makes the excuses, tells the lies, keeps the kids at bay and all too often buys the booze. Enablers don't make it possible for the alcoholism to continue - they make it easier to not face the music - or think about getting professional help. Alcoholics drink for no other reason than that they have a disease - and once it's triggered (by the first drink) one drink is too many and 10,000 isn't enough. The only person who can help the alcoholic is the alcoholic him/herself. People/family can be supportive until hell freezes over but the drunk will curb his disease only when ready - for many that's never.

I liked the comments (Charles) about family myths - surely all families have some. We do - find myself still telling stories to my daughters. I think that I do this because their grandparents (my parents) died while relatively young and I seem to have a need to keep some things about them alive in my girls' minds, for they never knew them.

On a completely different subject: I posted the song Charming Billy early on in this discussion. The song never comes up in the book.

Are the book and the song related? Are any of you familiar with the song and its meaning/background? I've heard the song all my life but have no idea of its origin.

Great discussion about enablers. This alcoholism thing seems so hopeless. There's nothing anyone else can do. It all depends on the alcoholic himself. And he may never be ready to get sober.

It makes me angry to realize this and to also realize that the government treats alcoholism as a personal failing rather than a disease. It used to be that Social Security disability benefits were available to alcoholics. They had to be in treatment - or prove treatment was unavailable. A few years ago, that changed and all of the alcoholics were kicked off.

I think Social Security has also been doing mass reviews of people on disability for mental health reasons. Reviews always result in large numbers of people being cut off benefits.

If both conditions are so clearly genetic, if the science is so clear, why are we so backward in the way we treat these disorders in this country?

Is it just our puritanical origins - the attitude that one should "just cheer up" (a la Nancy Reagan) if depressed or "just say no" to drugs and alcohol? Are other countries more progressive in this regard?

Sarah, I think your way deep in the swamp on Alcoholism and the Federal Gov. Firstly, I'm delighted so many posting know what alcoholism and some of its affects are but, lets face it, many more out there think those that have a good job but party all weekend or have a beer and sleep in their chair most evenings are not alcoholics. With Mothers Against Drunk Driving making all the noise it just isn't enough and since they are among the many that have been hurt by the alcoholic their emphasis is not on understanding.

Untill the average citizen understands this desease then there is no reason for Congress to understand. Lets face it, most congressmen are alcoholics. We also have a huge liquor lobby keeping things as they are. And when folks screem about give-aways those that appear to be capable because the average do not understand their problem are the first to be cut.

It is hard to be compassionate towards folks that will not commit to the difficult work of stopping. As the disease progresses not only is the family embarrassed, unless they learn about support meetings but in addition, the alcoholic often needs further numbing and embarks on additional obsessions that can further paralyse the family.

Society is not comfortable hearing about what is considered social taboos unless, it is salacious or horrific therefore, it is difficult to get this story out in a compassionate way; made even more difficult in face of the years of work it often takes on family members part to get past their hurt, anger, grief and rage. Unfortunatly, it takes an OJ type incident for domestic pain of any kind to recieve the blair of press that would make a difference nationally and subsequantly to the families being hurt by alcoholism.

One of the many hurts that affect children is the night after night of feeling unloved because they are ignored by the alcoholic in his/her reverie or stuper. That is often what starts the cycle in the next generation along with a genetic predispositon to alcoholism.

Amazing the chords and feelings this book is bringing up. Pain within families is so often not spoken about but it is there under the skin.

I was so intrigued by your discussions of this book that I picked up a copy for myself. I've been lurking and reading along with your group. I am so glad that I did, the book is thought-provoking and your discussions so helpful.

Charles W - What a delight to read your posts! I got stuck while reading the part about toes buried in the sand. I just couldn't picture the narrator having this amount of detail told to her by her Dad. Your probing thoughts made sense for me.

Barbara - I was very touched by your discussion of alcoholism. My father was a hard-working responsible family man, who drank beer every night and weekend of my childhood. He was either at work or in his chair drinking. He never attended his children's school events, was never affectionate and never gave praise. I didn't realize my father was an alcoholic until my own failed marriage to an alcoholic made me examine my life. Alcoholism is incredibly insidious and dangerous, it makes me shudder to think about it.

Yay marylou. I love it when someone leaps over the barrier and goes from reading along to posting. The more the merrier, I always say.

Yes, you're so right that this book brings up a lot of feelings for a lot of our readers. That's what I love about our discussions - they often go beyond plot and character development to discussions about how we and those around us live their lives. I was never one to discuss books; I only read on my own. I realized that the discussions here went far beyond the books themselves. We got to know one another through the books - or learned something about the world around us. This is truly an amazing medium.

On another subject, my husband and I are in the midst of a ghastly move, so I may be a tad unavailable this week and next. Just keep going as you have been; I too have really enjoyed your insights.

SarahT

Your comment on how this book brings up lots of feelings about our own families is right on the mark. Instead of thinking about the book, I've been thinking back to how alcohol was always "acceptable" in the family - every occasion, weddings, wakes etc. alcohol and alcoholics were always present. I remember Dan Long who lived in Ma & Pa's cellar for many years when I was a kid - I never realized he was one of Pa's alcoholic friends who had no place to go. He was an artist, I particularly remember his painting of Blarney Castle and a painting of my Aunt Betty. Oops, off the subject of the book again but that is how the book has affected me. Eileen Megan

Eileen Megan - that's so interesting. It's tragic that Dan Long had no place else to go - and also a testament to the generosity of your family that he lived in your home for many years. I think . . .

Was the experience of having him around positive or negative?

San Francisco is a very Irish town. Many of the native San Franciscans (and there are very few of us left; we're overrun with Silicon Valley millionaires!!) I know are of Irish descent. There are still Irish bars on many corners of the City streets. The old police force was once very Irish. Lots of Irish still come straight here from Ireland (like my movers yesterday - straight from the "old country.") We're also an old union town.

So in many ways, we're a lot like the places McDermott describes.

I've read this weeks suggested pages feeling like I have a chicken bone caught in my throat. And so the historical protection of the girl child!

I asked a bit ago about Charming Billy, the song, and MarjV obliged and gave me this information. There are American, English and Irish versions of the song here, as well as the 18th century ballad from which the song derives.

Have a listen:

http://www.contemplator.com/folk3/billyboy.html

Occasionally, I get wind of the fact that many readers tune in here, but don't comment. I completely understand the intimidation factor at work here.

I think one of the ways we can lessen the intimidation that comes with putting your ideas out there for all to see is to TALK TO ONE ANOTHER. We just don't do that enough anywhere.

I'm as guilty of this as the next person. I want to say what is on my mind, and often say it. But the interaction that comes from responding to others' posts, and responding to those responses is what these book clubs are all about, I believe.

Therefore, I'd urge all of you to acknowledge each others' posts as we work through a book. I think it will cause more of our readers to speak up - and those who do speak up to stay.

I know we all TRY to do this. Some of you are great at it already. But let's try harder.

We have a great community here - let's bring in new friends!

For those of you that feel shy about commenting - you are welcome here. We respect your views and your insights. You don't have to be a literary critic to speak here. Sometimes you may just want to respond to one of the real world issues a book - or another reader - has brought up. That's ok too.

And feel free to e-mail me if you have questions, thoughts or concerns.

Sara T. I love all three versions, Thank you. How old was she 39, 49, Or 61. He he he

Ginger - hahaha; isn't that amazing! Does your computer give you the nifty music? It's actually not bad on the tinny little speakers that come with my iMac.

The melodies and messages in the songs are really quite distinct. I don't know that I'd assume they were the same song if they took the name Billy out of each.

It's the first I've realized that there can be three distinct versions of a song from three different countries.

Our MarjV was the generous "researcher" who unearthed that item; Marj, is this typical?

Sara T Yes I got the nifty music all different and enjoyed it. Thank you/

I'm not sure that it's fair to characterize "many Congressmen" as alcoholics. I've known hundreds in my career and only a few would qualify and Ted Kennedy is right at the top of the list.

Alcohol is and has been the accepted social lubricant - for all of the obvious reasons. Furthermore it is legal and other drugs with the same capacity are not.

Is anyone familiar with the roles often assumed by children of alcoholics? The hero, scapegoat, lost/angel and the mascot/clown? In my counseling job I can spot these kids instantly.

Yes, Maida these are roles that are not only typical in homes of alchoholics but in the homes of most any obsessive abuse - or as many refer to them as the collection of -oholics. Food-oholics, sex-oholics, shopping-oholics, drug-oholics, rage-oholics etc. etc. Any family where there is, usually and adult member addicted to a behavior that is used to numb their feelings and that behavior becomes progressively more adictive so that it affects the lives of everyone in the home. This same behavior that often has folks feeling like they are walking on egg shells can affect a place of business and those brought up in this enviornment are so used to the obsesive as a norm they are attracted to job opportunities where an obsessive adiction is playing out as well as, choose a partner that compliments one of the roles the -oholic family needed in order to function.

ACOA is such a boon to adults that as children lived out one of these roles regardless of the -oholicism. And of course we know with every role there is the skills learned that are a benefit to the individual as well as, to society. Learning what behavior is beneficial and start the long road of discovering how the knee-jerk reactive behavior is played out in your daily life, what behavior is either hurting or benefiting, and find your own center is painful and exhilerating as each characteristic is understood.

It appears that in our story "Charming Billy", we can deduce that Dennis's daughter is playing the hero role. She is taking the family story and making it 'look good' by going beyond shame and allowing the story to become public in a way that brings social acceptance to the family. She is writing the family myth crowning it with social acceptability rather then continuing the story as a secret myth of family shame only shared within the family who sanctify the obsessive behavior rather then feel "shame, hurt, anger, grief etc." because of the behavior. There is always a good excuse or reason given to justify the behavior of the addict rather then, acknowledge the helplessness you feel to change the addict. That justification of the addict's behavior is what is called, being in denile. And that denile is the way to creating a role needed by the addict within the addicts 'family'.

Heros are the ones whose behavior is centered from making the family 'look good'. They usually are the oldest and achieve the most education or the best job or exhibit whatever behavior the family will feel the most proud. Dennis is a heros, as he carries on the family annoited and sainted behavior of caring for the needy who come in his path. His relationship with Billy is based on his heroism role of caring for Billy's achieving his dream and arranging 'for' Billy the means to achieve that dream. And Billy is the perfect mascot, making every one feel good with his charm and banter. Typically the youngest fills that role in that the family quickly needed a hero. the hero role fulfilled the next child usually trys to outdo the hero in what ever way he/she can and becomes the troublemaker or the 'rebel'. Most often the next seeks attention by becoming a 'lost child' that is quiet, good, no trouble, does his/her own thing. For many years it was assumed these roles were in birth order but now the realization is that many factors may set child against child early on and there are disposed heros as well as, as children leave the home their role is needed to be filled by another remaining child and therefore, some children have characteristics of more than one role.

These roles are only a problem to the adult child because they have knee-jerk behavior patterns that keep them from knowing their true selves; they sometimes act inappropriatly to a situation as well as, untill the role is understood will attract others that also need that role in their life.

There are wonderful workbooks that facilitate groups working together, helping each other learn how their role-behavior is affecting their life and the group then becomes a catalyst to embark of the long arduous road to a healthy full life. This road is often a life time road as set-backs are part and parcel of the journey especially, when stressful life experiences enter the picture. The behavior pattern is not quickly seen in all its nuances and the journey includes the constent aha of discovery.

All interesting stuff - this book is promoting an education usually shared only by those on the journey and their helpers.

A young girl having been sexually abused, as Dennis's mother, brings an additional set of issues. Without the hard work of finding your soul again issues of control, rage, shutting down emotionally are typical. Often looking for a hero to protect becomes another lifetime desire that allows some, abused as youngsters, to choose men that are not there for them. The girls that have no sense of sexual boundries sometimes play out publicaly their experience and are using the pimp as their mythical protector.

On and on, this book brings up so many issues and yet the author is using these issues to tell a story. I think it is too easy to pass judgement on these issues rather then observe how this family is handling their obsessive addictions. So much of this behavior is so commonplace we forget, that it is disabilitating behavior and this book would be one more of the many family stories showing a family that has been affected and are acting in their dysfunction. Blame is not a usfull tool we learn early on in this program of healing as, each generation can blame the previous generation back to the time of Cain and Able. And adults caught in their cycle of behavior are acting out in the only way open to them as children; they have learned their lessons well. As healing adults there is much courage needed. Since support is not something they were used to recieving as children, just seeking help takes a lot of courage and often only happens when they are hurting so bad they have no where else to turn.

SarahT, it was not unusual behavior for the Irish immigrants of my grandparents generation to "take in" someone - they all looked out for each other.

Lots of interesting comments on the role a child plays in an alcoholic house. There were many "hidden" women alcoholics years ago - children learned how to "cover up" for Mom. They knew it wasn't "safe" to bring friends home after school.

Eileen Megan

Barbara - fabulous points as always. I am astounded your discussion of the different roles the children take on. I'd never been aware of this, and yet you say the kids often turn out this way.

You also say: "Blame is not a usfull tool we learn early on in this program of healing as, each generation can blame the previous generation back to the time of Cain and Able. And adults caught in their cycle of behavior are acting out in the only way open to them as children; they have learned their lessons well."

I agree that spending your life blaming your parents for everything is really a waste of time. But aren't you letting parents off the hook just a bit here? True, the alcoholic parents suffered as kids. But the suffering they inflict on their kids is still the parents' FAULT, don't you think? And the kids have a right to be angry about it, at least for awhile.

What about Dennis' lie? Do you think that it was the best thing for him to do? I agree with most of the comments that Billy would be an alcoholic no matter how his life turned out. Even if Eva came back and married him, he would die from drinking. Dennis took it upon himself to step into another person's life in a definitive way. He thought that the pain of losing love to death was better than losing love to rejection. He also thought that Billy as a mourner was more sympathetic than Billy as a rejected suitor. Should he have given Billy the opportunity to make a choice of what the story should be? What would you have done in a similar situation?

What about Maeve? Isn't she the perfect example of a co-dependent? First she took care of her alcoholic father, then Billy. Did he consciously choose her because he saw her devotion to her father?

Sarah I have a hard time blaming or saying a parent was able to respond to rearing their child so that the child did not experience dysfuntion if, the parent has no clue that they are teaching the child behavior that will later prove painful. Most parent truly are doing the best they know how but, until they awaken to their issues or problems they cannot heal themselves or magically change behavior for the sake of their children.

Do we hold the cripple responsible for not playing baseball with their son or requiring their children to walk at a slower speed then other families etc. etc. The parent was a child that learned behavior within a crippling situation that they bring with them when raising their children. Untill someone hurts enough to say something is wrong and then seek help the dysfunction continues generation after generation.

Now if a parent has learned they have problems and avoid the arduous, soul tearing work of healing because, it is too much work then, there is a logical reason to feel anger. But remember, most anger is simply covering hurt and hurt most often is because certain behavior was expected from another and the other could not or did not deliver. The anger and hurt felt because you expected to feel safe, loved, what ever, that then is your issue. It is how you respond to not recieving what you wanted or needed and as long as, you carry blame, anger, hurt, expectation for others around within, you will attract more experiences in your life that allow you to feel blame, anger, hurt, and expectation for other behavior. As well as, what you expect from others; the self rightous belief that you should be blaming, angry, hurting, expecting certain behavior from others is what you do to yourself, in spades, when you do not perform to your own standard of perfection.

It is hard but, people need to forgive and get on with it for their own emotional and mental health. Forgive does not mean becoming buddy buddy with the perpetrator of your abuse and, it may be that if the family member does not change, you may have to detach, realizing the love of a parent is not there because the parent does not know how to love. But, that is the key, the parent did what they did because, they either did not know or, to satisfy their own need to smother their pain in such a way they hurt you, just as their parent hurt them etc. etc.

Responsibility simply means the ability to respond - a parent's response can only be within their ability. They are not magically emplanted with the seeds of knowledge, love and effective nurturing, other then what they already knew, when a child is conceived. There, unfortunatly, is no training for parants on how to be; functional, clear, open, with the ability to sustain all their feelings and help their children learn to accept their feelings without, covering painful feelings with some activity.

Parents cannot keep the trains on time or fly the plane to safty if they do not know how or do not have the power to make those things happen just as, they cannot all of sudden drop their lifetime experiences and years of learned behavior, useful for their circumstances, in order to be able to respond differently.

folks on the journey to funcional living learn to detach from expecting certain behavior from others. If they see behavior that bothers them, they look within themselves to see how that behavior had affected them in the past and how they handled it. If it was handled in a way that judged or blamed another they are really saying "I can only be happy when you act as I think you ought to act". Then you have made yourself co-dependent. Dependent on someone elses behavior to make you happy. That is all co-dependancy is - wanting, needing, expecting something from another so that you can feel OK.

Barbara, you certainly are knowledgeable about the journey to a functional life. I realized that my alcoholic father was too emotionally damaged to ever be the father I needed. While initially the realization made me angry, my real problem has been coming to terms with the grief I feel. I will never have a nurturing father. Even though he has quit drinking, he will always be an emotional cripple. Have you found that others struggle with this grief?

Oh yes, marylou - for me there was this gaping hole that for many years I thought I could avoid if, I read enough about recovery and dysfunction, or went to enough meetings, or enough workshops, attended enough classes, or wrote enough of my story or enough journaling or enough articles, or cried enough. I realized, as long as I tried to avoid the hole, the hole was raw and painful and I blamed.

It wasn't till I said enough! I quit 7 years of therapy with a wonderful psychiatrist, all additional group therapy, quit my work at the Battered Woman's Center, quit ACOA meeting and only attended Al-Anon meetings (since Al-Anon deals with todays issues) unplugged the TV and essentially sat still allowing myself to meditate on my hole, visualizing coming to the edge of it and finally into and through the hole that I was on the way to healing.

I had to really accept the pain, the betrayal, the feeling of abandonment, own the fact that I was victimized without rushing to prove to myself and others that I am able, capable, smart and not a victim. When I could accept my pain and inner hole without feeling terror or less worthy then a penny, when I could get my brain around feeling how big the hole was and how unfair that, as a little kid some God allowed this to happen to any little kid, on and on, I became less compulsive. It was quite a year of ranting and raving plus, dead still sitting for sometimes hours but, I broke through. Found an inner spiritual wise old woman that guided me. Now I have compassion for most of my perpetrators, for myself.

Frankly, I still have work to do on my daughter's perpetrator. And I still have work to do with my expectations for the public at large. At times, I have a knee-jerk reaction to spit out angrly, information I think everyone 'should' know so that they 'should' be able to understand and not make 'stupid' inferences or unjust remarks. Wow, expectations galore, should, should, should, I give myself away as I go on a tear but for me, the silent one, the dependable one, it is probably getting my voice back.

I also have learned there are different therapy styles. That some, especially addicts of any substance, need confrontive therapy and for recovering victims, confrontation drives them further into being revictimized. I'm still not good at setting boundries when I feel confronted. I'm over 12 years into my journey and it is two steps forward and one back.

No Maeve here, even my mother worn to a nub beyond sanity wasn't a Maeve. Maeve the helpless, sainted victim that like the large spider gets everyone, through sympathy, to support her need to be a victim. Her need to be a victim seems to have little to do with being co-dependent on Billy as much as, she needed drama in her life so she could prove to herself how helpless she was and how much she 'needed'. Billy simply provided that drama as did her father before Billy. She could be the sainted cartaker, victimized by their behavior, incapbable of handling these crises on her own.

Marylou I pray you wings of courage on your journey -

We're now into the second week of our schedule. Here we experience Billy's heady first days with Eva, and Eva's great passion for Billy (just kidding)

He says "I wish you would marry me."

She responds: "Oh Billy, . . . end of September and I'm back home."

Billy: "But you'll come back."

Eva: "It costs a lot of money to go back and forth."

(I don't like this. Money comes up in the very first exchange on this subject.)

B: "Then stay. . . . Can't you just stay?"

E: "My parents are there."

(She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother)

B: "But your sister is here."

E: "And three more over there."

B: "Then send for them. Send for your parents, too."

E: "Oh sure," she said with a laugh.

Not the stuff of great romance is it. I really don't like this Eva.

I think the best insight on why Billy builds this dalliance up so far out of proportion comes when he and Eva first kiss:

"Kissing her was like inhaling the essence of some vague but powerful ALCOHOL. He recalled his poetry: like taking the wine breath but not the whole wine. He knew it was the literal commingling of her whiskey and his gin. . . . But he knew it was something else, too, something that could not be distilled (interesting alcohol-related word) from its parts. . . ." (HB p. 97)

So kissing her was just an extension of taking a drink. And Billy had been drinking when he first kissed her.

I suspect he could have been kissing a goat and would have felt the same passion in this moment. I don't think it was about Eva at all. He certainly knew nothing about her at this point.

He was trying to fill that hole that Barbara talks so eloquently about in her previous post.

Artemis - I cannot decide whether Dennis' lie was "right" or not. He rationalized this, as you say, by a desire to save Billy from the humiliation of being dumped and duped out of borrowed money. Somehow, Dennis thought, Billy would be less hurt by the pain of thinking Eva dead than by the shame of having his family know she dumped him and stole his money.

Interesting - shame is seen as more hurtful than death. What does that say about this family?

One of the more chilling moments in the book occurs when Billy and Dennis are on Long Island and visit a bar whose owner refuses to serve a Jewish patron. It is just after the war and the death camps have been opened to the world, so the bartender's attitude is particularly shocking.

I wonder, however, why McDermott put this in the book.

Sarah T------I feel McDermott wanted to show the BIGOTRY which abounds everywhere. We Irish are no more immune than so many others, unfortunately. My Irish mother and English dad had never been in the company of a black person, never really seen many until they came to this country. I am ever so grateful that my sister and I were not raised with bigotry because the hatred had not been taught our parents, and therefore, passed on to us. I was always amazed at how many of my classmates "hated" the colored (as we called African Americans then) and also Jewish people.

Fiery, I'm half and half and I distinctly recall being afraid to admit I was half Jewish when I was in elementary school. As I said, San Francisco is a very Irish town, also very Catholic, and so I said I was Catholic back then. I didn't consider myself Catholic, even though my grandfather was, so it was pure fear that motivated this decision. In San Francisco. In the 1960s. I had a babysitter tell me one time that if we weren't good, cattle cars would come and take my brother and me away. Awful memories.

I also thought that maybe the example of bigotry, happening during the very idyllic time when Billy first met Eva, was a foreshadowing of things to come.

Do any of you in this excellent discussion use a Mac? If you do, would you describe to me what you see when you look at the Discussion Schedule chart in the heading? I believe Charming Billy has a ghost! And we need to lay it! hahahahahaa

Ginny

I have a Mac but no Charming Ghost - the schedule has changed though - originally last week went to page 125 with only 3 weeks of reading and now there is 4 weeks of reading with this week only going to page 125 paper back rather then, on to page 196 as was origianlly posted.

In fact I rushed to read so I would not be behind and now it is hard because I have completed what was originally scheduled - I am I guess ahead having read all about Maeve.

Yes, Sarah, I agree, we need to talk to each other...my very thinking. Yes, I love to type something into a search engine and see what happens...re "Billy Boy"!

And Barbara's fearlessness to tell us of our struggles. I applaud her journey and her courage.

Maylou in Alaska....it must rain alot

. Anyway, it is quite an astounding revelation when you discover you didn't have a nuturing parent...be it father or mother. I remember when i realized how little nurturing I had...that I had been my own along with a guide such as Barbara evoked. And we often have to help our parents in a nurturing way.

--Marj

MarjV - how old were you to discover this? I think you have to be at least 30. When I see younger women saying "My mom and I are best friends," I think "Wait until you hit your 30s, honey!"

Barbara and others: I'm sorry about the discussion schedule. It's entirely my fault. What you see now is the correct one - when it was converted into a table, one week was left out, causing the confusion.

Is everyone comfortable with the pace as currently reflected in the schedule?

Is anyone struggling to keep up? Think it's too slow a pace?

Mac people: Do the page numbers line up properly below their respective headings? Is everything in line in its proper column or are things skewed??

Ginny

Looks great Ginny - the page numbers are not so much lined up as centered within each box or are they called cells, one under the other - but it looks fine, great, you don't have to diddle with it.

Ok, back to the question Sarah asked so many posts ago -

As immigrants, their association with 'home' would be based on a frozen memory from the time of their immigration. - My daughter and grands were just visiting after being away for only a year and were mourning for all the changes in Austin that represented loss to them. The loss of their dream of what 'coming home' was going to be all about.

Many of the Irish immigrated during the Great Famine in the 1840s and successively continued to migrate bringing with them their ingrained and now frozen cultural thinking and habits that, just as we do not remember how this or that habit or saying starts neither did the average Irishmen.

The Fanin Brotherhood, an organization rebellious to England's colonization of Ireland, started in New York City and was financed by the US Irish. And so 'Home Rule' and Irish for Ireland had its US counterpart frozen in Irish time as to its expression and was ingrained in the US Irish psyche.

Billy and Dennis would be the children of a dream/memory/fantasy/myth of Ireland and her struggles rather then a product of first hand knowledge. Eva is an original, taking money as the US Irish sent millians to support the failed Easter Rebellion and to support the failed liberation of Ireland also, the betterment of individual families whose lives in Ireland did not really change with all the financial support sent over. I think Dennis is representing the realist view and sees life would be better if the Irish struggle were dead to the US Irish rather then, accepting and continuing the pain of the massive fiancial drain on the US Irish for a disappointing failed dream.

Having participated in the James Joyce A portrait of An Artist discussion we learned that the Irish often aligned themselves with the Jew since they identified with; the Jewish nationless plight, Jews play roled, as actors in order to protect themselves and provide for themselves. It was only the generation preceeding Billy and Dennis that the Irish were, in the US, the recepiants of race discrimination. "No Micks allowed".

Men identified as Paddy's - the Paddy was at first a comic parody of an Irishman played out in London music halls. This racist slur was sanitized and worn with pride by the Irish. It became there guise of freedom, as an art of fawning duplicity, acting the fool while making shrewd deals which often took their rivals unawares. The Paddy could say and get what was needed while the enemy, the representatives of the conquering British monarchy, would be so busy laughing they wouldn't catch the subversive intent. The stereotypical Paddy could be charming or threatening by turn and was characterized as indolent, contrary, childish and feminine. Acting the buffoon, the Irish immigrant Paddy seemed harmless and even lovable characters to the many workers who might otherwise deeply resent their willingness to take jobs at lower rates of pay. Much of the above information is from Declan Kiberd's book "Inventing Ireland".

There was a book written a couple of years ago, and I do not remember the title since I loaned it to someone and did not get it back - about the dysfunctional society and specific chapters identified dysfunctionally nations relating to each other, comparing each nation with the roles typical of family members in a dysfunctional family. The hero nation, the rebel, the lost nation, the mascot nation and then the caretakers and the nation that played victim and the perfectionists etc. etc.

I'm thinking that is what Alice McDermott has attempted. The various characters are displaying the dysfunction associated with the Irish and Irish American relationship, as well as, the Irish American's role, the Janus, two sides of the ocean affecting the same metal as Irish identity.

Barbara, thank you for sharing your struggle with coming to terms on abandonment issues, that took a lot of courage. I especially applaud you for attempting to rise above the bitterness and look with compassion on the perpetrator - a good lesson for all of us to learn. We only destroy ourselves if we hold onto painful feelings.

Irish "faces", I recall hearing that the "black irish", black hair and eyes, were supposed to have descended from the sailors of the Spanish Armada that was wrecked off the coast of Ireland during Elizabeth I reign.

Eileen Megan

I have an interest in literature and certain kinds of criticism which attend it. However, I have very little time to indulge this interest. Is this site about literature or therapy? If it is about both, are there limitations? By that I mean are there particular psychological conventions which you have found to be especially valuable and are they applicable to certain kinds of literature or ‘across the board’ so to speak. I notice that the next offering is something called White Oleanders. How should I approach this work?

Welcome, John!! We are delighted to have you here in our Books & Literature sections and hope you plan to stay a long time! Your post made my day this morning as I see you are planning to join us in WHITE OLEANDER which I am leading, and I look forward to welcoming you there.

Each discussion in our Book Clubs is different! They are living, breathing entities of their own. Each one starts out, diverges, and delves as the group would like, each person bringing to the table his or her own ideas about the book and as much background material or life experiences as he feels comfortable sharing.

To prepare for WHITE OLEANDER, (I love that very thought), just read it, and be ready to express YOUR opinions on what it says to YOU on September 6. I am very glad to welcome you, we have a large proportion of men in our Books & Literature sections and we hope to welcome everybody home, male or female and be full strength in September.

If you like, you could look at previous discussions of books in our Archives, or this one: Memoirs of a Geisha , led by our own Charles Wendell, to get a feel for how some other of our Book discussions went.

Sarah and Group are doing a splendid job with the difficult CHARMING BILLY, with its very controversial themes of alcoholism and denial.

We're going to break new ground with WHITE OLEANDER, which I hear is also difficult (we'll SEE!) and we'll need everybody on board to help, so I hope you'll all mark it down somewhere and plan to join us there.

Ginny

#1 comment - Such a neat read at the beginning of this section concerning the area of the cottage. The part of "it has always been here" was poignant. How often has that happened to us. The area is so beautfully described and set , then, bang, we have the reality check of the scene in the bar. I know someone mentioned this in the context of racism. But I mention it in the context of the flow of beauty being halted so dramatically. I was glad she had the characters respond by leaving.

#2 Comment - In the scene where Billy is asking Eve to return.....she doesn't say she will. Unless I missed it. Somehow he must have thought it was a given. p.85 And this quote struck me, "...adrift in the same world that held their fine future there was accident and disappointment, a sickening snese of falst hope and false promise that required all of God's grace to keep at bay". Perhaps he would think the lovemaking to be a "yes".

Barbara.....such interesting historical input. Thanks. Especially enjoyed learning about "Paddy". It was an "Aha!" moment.

Sarah....you ask when I discovered the lack of mother nurturing. In my late 40s when I was going thru re-imaging self.

---Marj

I'm standing in the library looking at a text only screen and hoping this message will show up. As you know, I'm in the middle of moving and my iMac is packed. As soon as we move on Friday, I'll be back on for good. Until then, please keep up your wonderful posts. I'll try my best to get to the library again this week.

John F---You asked if this section was about "literature or therapy," and if it was about therapy, did we have any parameters. I wondered right away if you came looking for a dry, academic discussion of literature and, instead, found us freely divulging personal, painful experiences that the book inspired. Even if that was so, my initial defensive reaction died away quickly when I remembered that I've been disappointed the last couple of weeks in a discussion of Leslie Stahl's autobiography in another book group. That discussion is a lively, rich, memory and opinion laden look at the several presidents she came into contact with---which closely follows the book. The presidents, not Leslie Stahl. Both the book and the discussion, however, left me disappointed---I wanted her editor, publisher and our group to require richer treatment of the subject, HER life.

Underneath the disappointment, though, is an acknowledgment. I'm as responsible as the next person for shaping the discussion and I admit I disengaged early, letting my disappointment in the book permit my lack of involvment. So, for my disappointment in the discussion, I can point to....me.

I guess this is a 'round about way of saying that, much as Ginny described, each group's discussion really takes on a life of its own. Those who participate may explore the reading and shape the discussion from any number of angles. My guess is that the discussions that contain more personal reflections happen among readers who have built up a certain level of trust with each other and who feel it is a safe setting to take risks. That should surprise no one, as these groups are self-selected and have participated in selecting the books to discuss. And, in the finest sense, these discussions are interactive. Seeing someone else's personal insights often prompts others to feel safe enough to respond in kind. In the best discussions, there seems to be a self-leveling balance between a clinical assessment of the writing/story and the personal stories summoned. Also, several who are paying attention to process usually steer us back on track if we stray too far. So, we thrive under both inclinations.

Some books inspire more personal reflections than others. Some groups (changes with each book to some extent) are more comfortable sharing personal experiences. Some readers enjoy a personal perspective more than an academic approach. And, yes, it's obvious that the shared personal experiences are therapeutic, much as they are in any setting. I love that books do that. We read about a family or a culture that struggles and before you know it, we are thinking about and telling of our own struggles. An author's dream.

Readerdoc....loved every one of your thoughts. And I like the personal and academic mix that we are doing and being.

---Marj

I thought that was beautiful, am so grateful for all of you here in our Books, we just get better and better!~!

Ginny

I have been looking a bit for more on McDermott as i had never read her work. Here is a link to a few articles from New York Times archives (I hope)

McDermott in The New York Times

----Marj

Well I apologize again - I've not set up the computer yet because our phone isn't up yet. Back at the library (and they only allow 1/2 hour increments).

Would anyone mind if we moved the whole reading schedule back a week? I feel terribly guilty at neglecting you all.

An article in today’s Boston Globe about the Clintons’ weekend visit to The Hamptons had a reference used in Charming Billy: Commenting on the resentment of “the locals” to the disruption and rudeness of the summer influx there was the term bonackers.. Bonackers is a term derived from Accabonac Harbor, and in fact, is the name of the East Hampton High School mascot. ALso a "bonacker burger" is a hard roll with peanut butter!!

Sarah – speaking of phones…to get a new phone line in can take “7-10 days” according to the local Baby Bell out here. When my daughter went back to school, she called to have her phone disconnected, and after she hung up and was going to make another call – her phone was dead!! It is apparently easier to disconnect than to connect!

Without planning to, I began watching a PBS special on Irish immigrants in the United States, roughly in the middle of the program. Done in the Ken Burns style of reporting (maybe it was him), the program moved slowly through time segments just before, during and after the potato famine--but here in the US. Boy, the things I don't know. Some highlights for me---

The death of roughly 10,000 Irish immigrants in New Orleans from yellow fever. That's out of 100,000 total citizens of New Orleans. The Irish were the newest, poorest residents who took the lowest, backbreaking physical jobs and were glad to have the work, having come from an Ireland of starving families. The more affluent non-Irish families left for country homes to the north to be away from the summer heat and speading disease. What was assumed at the time, however, was that the Irish were dirty and diseased with yellow fever and other things. The city blamed the Irish community for killing off a few of the decent citizens and began a ferocious campaign to drive the Irish north "back to Boston."

Boston had its own campaign under way to keep the Irish immigrants as politically powerless as possible. Sometime later (sorry, no dates here), this bloody and violent campaign against the Irish in Boston came to its natural end about the time that the Irish represented the majority voter group. The deliberate, government sanctioned, well-organized hate that the Irish families endured in many American cities could rival any other time in our country's shameful past of singling out powerless groups to deny basic needs and rights.

Another segment described a later time in Boston when the wealthy families sought young Irish girls from Ireland as their house employees---nannies, maids, cooks, etc. These very young women were sent by their Irish families to accept these live-in positions in America so that almost all of their earnings could be sent home.

The narrator of this piece then said something startling: within a year or two of the first young women arriving, 70 percent of Boston's elite had Irish women living in and learning how to run enormous homes---SO, these young women changed the history of all Irish people. Some of these women had never seen an indoor cookstove, had never known such luxuries as table linens and crystal, or lived in well constructed houses that could keep out weather, or experienced such domestic stability as a regular income. They were introduced to an entirely different existence. Many who were of marriagable age, however, did not see themselves marrying Irish boys here in America, for that would have meant leaving the big house to live in poverty. Many did, however, but did not forget what they had learned. Others took their knowledge home to Ireland.

Throughout these segments, there were many references to the responsibility these Irish immigrants felt toward the family members still in Ireland. Bonded together as a national group even more from the miserable reception here in the US, they were still deeply bonded to those in Ireland still in need. Sending money home was a constant. Another constant was music--written and sung, written and played, written with such----here's what the narrator called it---longing. Longing for home, longing for acceptance here, longing for the better life. The singing and the "drink" came together. The longing and the drink were two sides of the same thing, reports the narrator.

See, I am still curious about McDermott's words "faith and "hope." She said these are at the heart of her book. As I watched the television special, it was easy to let my mind wander to the various meanings of faith that might fit Dennis and Billy's Irish ancestors' determination to endure, to prosper, to avoid violent death, to finally be able to "send for" family. The hope, the longing? to be reunited with extended family, the hope for a better life. The narrator makes the point that even as prospects improved and the famine ended, the songs and drinking behavior still reflected an unanswered longing. Quite a cultural legacy.

One other thing made me think of the book. I was staring at an art print of a house and yard in near darkness in the dead of winter. Heavy snow everywhere. Very little use of light in the print. It was bleak, very still, it held my attention. Then I looked down at the name of the print. It was "Hope".

I want to stop here and ask if others have thoughts on McDermott's "faith and hope." I asked before and everyone must have been as stumped as I was. Any takers now?

Readerdoc, I wish I had seen that program, didn't know half that, marvelous, thanks so much!

I wish I knew a source for that print, we could put it here in the heading it sounds perfect!!

Charlie: Bonackers? Wonder what words went together to form that word? Bone knockers? (knocking heads together??) Seems like I've heard that. It's amazing how references to a book come up in everyday life or things that make you think of a book once you've read it, isn't it?

Marj: Those are great articles, I'm enjoying every one, thanks so much for them! I didn't know much about her, either.

Sarah: not to fret one bit, of course you can delay the schedule by one week or more if you like, I'll change it by one week, looks like everybody here is doing a splendid job, it's one of our most popular discussions in the Books!!

What do you all think about Readerdoc's ideas of hope and faith? What's that famous expression about what faith is?

Ginny

Faith...."hope for things unseen." From the bible, if I remember my non-person days correctly. (Married to a preacher, that is, but have made a full recovery, thank you.)

As a child in the 30s, I remember my grandmother sending money and packages of clothing back to Ireland. Some of those Irish "maids" wound up marrying the sons of these wealthy families.

I remember having to memorize the prayers of faith, hope and charity. Faith in the holy Catholic church, hope for forgiveness of sin with God's grace and charity (love), love of God and neighbor, forgiveness towards others and asking pardon of those we have injured.

Eileen Megan

Oops, I see I didn't finish my thoughts on "faith and hope" It's a big part of Irish Catholic thinking and what sustains us. I would guess Ms. McDermott was saying that her characters "believed" in spite of evidence to the contrary that whatever happens, happens for a reason and as long as you have faith and hope, whatever does happen, it's all for the best.

Eileen Megan

I really found Charming Billy bland reading, and altho at times the characters were interesting, I can't seem to make up my mind as to whether I liked the story. I have since read McDermott's "At Weddings and Wakes", and again, I feel like I'm on the fence. There are familiarites, but on a whole, I really couldn't say it held my interest. I am trying again, and now reading her "That Night". So far, it is very different from the other two. Anybody else read her other books beside Charming Billy? Would appreciate your outlook on McDermott's writings.

Hello, Vmachac, and welcome!! You will make Sarah's day when she sees you here, as I believe she has read other McDermott books! Alas, she is in the process of moving and has to go to the Library to check in here, but she'll be totally excited to welcome you to the group, as we all are.

How about everybody else, was this your first McDermott, and, if so, how do you think she writes? Did you find it just so- so or could you get engaged with the characters as presented?

How are the characters different in That Night, Vmachac?

So glad you have joined us.

Ginny

Hi to girles and mannies make sense to anyone?

That is what my grandmother called a couple of her children.

I am enjoying (charming Billy) but lack your expertise.

Ginger: "girlies and mannies," boy that brings back memories, I've heard that many a time!

Are you Irish also?

You know what I'm enjoying this morning? I'm enjoying Ginger's attitude! Ginger is going to Chicago with the Books and she has enthusiastically thrown herself into several good discussions with the result being enrichment for us all.

You don't need any particular expertise, Ginger, all you need is a love of books and your own impressions. We're all bringing something different to the table, and we all leave enriched (kinda like a pot luck supper) by the contributions of everybody.

Did you find the characters strong and believable or was the entire thing sorta blah and bland, to you?

Ginny

I'm pretty new to this forum and so far my attempts to express my impressions have been a little clumsy. But in the spirit of adventure and learning I offer this observation (maybe a more eloquent member can unravel my ramblings). . .

I am finding the author's choice of narrator to be an obstacle. Instead of loosing myself in the novel, I am frequently confused about who is making the current observation. There was, however, one scene that really flowed for me and was easy to follow. That scene was the reception at Maeve's home after the funeral. I enjoyed how the author allowed us to learn about many of the individuals, while at the same time having the individuals move together like a dance ensemble. For me, that captured nuances of an extended family.

Mary Lou---Nicely said. Others felt the same way about the narrator. A second reading made things clearer for me but I'm sure that's not what the author intended.

Betty

Oh marylou...I am in agreement about the narrator; I would like a smoother flow. Really enjoyed your description of how you felt the reception scene had meaning: "while at the same time having the individuals move together like a dance ensemble. For me, that captured nuances of an extended family."

I have been thinking about the following for a couple weeks now...If someone like the narrator doesn't question character actions and myths then these behaviors would continue to pass on and on thru generations as esteemed behavior, something to emulate. Like in cases of abuse where children see it and are abused; then act out in the same way. Pondering.

---Marj

and Readerdoc....wish we could all see a re-run of the Irish special. thanks for the highlights.

Well, sort of changing the schedule? Poor Sarah, amidst moving, asked a few posts back if anybody would mind if we moved the schedule back a week to let her have a chance to catch up? She has to go to the Library to come in? And so I hope I did? But, knowing me, I probably made a huge hash of it, let me know, if so.

I printed the old one out. This new one should be held back by one week exactly?

Ginny

Ginny On my Mother's side I am Irish and French My grandmother came from Ireland and I enjoyed her company, Her husband my grandfather came from the Detriot Mich area and his people from New Oleans La., area. Now my dad's folks were English and German. I never knew my dad's folks as they passed to soon, But the Irish yes. Glad you liked the Girlees and Manies as Manny is the last one. I am enjoying the book but have not got as far as all of you as I washed the house down and has taken twice as long as it used to. Tee hee. Will catch up hopefully but I have met a very nice gentleman so, his son does my lawn he is very nice looking but looks is not every thing, but they are very helpful. what I have read is very much Irish, the women in control, my senior's drank but I never saw them drunk they were farmers and the cows had to be milked etc.

ginger

I finally have my computer back!! I've missed you all.

The first order of business is our next book. Because of my move, and an upcoming vacation, I'd propose we start reading it on October 10. Let's vote September 7-10.

Here are your choices:

Possession (AS Byatt)

Last Orders (Graham Swift)

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Roddy Doyle)

The God of Small Things (Arundati Roy)

Felicia's Journey (William Trevor)

Ship Fever and Other Stories (Andrea Barrett)

Kaaterskill Falls (Allegra Goodman)

To vote, click here:

http://www.seniornet.org:8080/cgi-bin/WebX?13@@.ee7d1bf"> Prized Fiction General Discussion

As you can see from the schedule in the heading, tomorrow (Sept. 4) we will begin discussing the third reading selection from Charming Billy (pages 146-225 in the hardcover; 126-195 in the paperback).

Thank you all for keeping the discussion going. It has been so great to see all of your insights - and especially to realize that despite some of the problems with the book, many of you of Irish heritage find the book really hits home.

A few questions before we move on tomorrow:

This book relies less on plot - after all, we're told the entire story in the first chapter - than on layering. That is, we get the whole onion at the beginning, but then begin to peel layers away as we move forward.

Does this device 'work' for you? Some readers prefer not to know everything in advance. They feel suspense is integral to a novel. How do you feel?

For those of you with feet both in Ireland and the US, how well does McDermott portray the Ireland Irish experience, as opposed to the American Irish one? I ask because I'm immersed in a wonderful novel about an Irish girl from Ireland (Felicia's Journey, one of our October Prized Fiction nominees) who goes over to England in search of a boy who's made her pregnant. Because the story is told from Felicia's point of view, I often wonder what we would have learned if Eva's perspective had been offered in the book. Maybe she wasn't such a terrible person - and maybe clues to Eva lie in where she's from.

See you tomorrow!

Oh Sarah welcome back have I missed you! I'm itching to get going again on Charming Billy also - hurah hurah Sarah has returned - ballons and confetti and dancing and champaigne corks a popping Sarah has returned.

I bet you still have days and weeks of unpacking boxes and putting up curtains. Is is a new builder home where you must also plant grass and screw in the curtain rods?

Your back and I am delighted.

Oh Barbara, you are such a doll. What a welcome. Really warmed my heart.

It truly is great to be back.

I've been re-reading our selection for this week and was struck by two things that I hadn't noticed the first time around. First, I really don't care for Holtzman. Not sure why McDermott chose to make him a German right after the war, which is interesting in itself, but there's something else that really bothers me. Holtzman advanced Billy money to send to Eva. Yet when Billy learns Eva is dead (at least that's what he and Holtzman believe), what does Holtzman do? Does he forgive the debt? Give Billy a little relief in view of his suffering? No - Billy has to keep working off the darn debt. This bugs me.

Also, I was struck by the parallelism between Billy's funeral and that of Dan, Dennis' father (Mr. jovial on the trolley - another "charming" man). Dan Lynch even waxes poetic about Dan's funeral at the reception after Billy's funeral. He makes a point of talking about how many people were at Dan's funeral - even mentions that a couple stopped and asked if it was a politician being buried since the turnout was so great.

I was struck by how sad and lonely Billy's funeral seemed by comparison - attended by a small group, many of them not close friends but simply neighbors, or fellow church goers.

I'm babbling, but I also found myself wondering again why Billy married Maeve. She was a plain girl who ordinarily only attracted the dim-witted boys with bad skin and little to say. Was Billy so destroyed by his "loss" of Eva - someone he never really HAD to begin with - that he just "settled" for a real loser. Was there anything really bright, interesting or special about Maeve? Or was she really little more than Billy's servant?

I was struck by the passage that said, essentially, that Billy's sobriety would have stripped Maeve of anything to do with herself. She liked the appearance of sobriety, but that actual thing would have done away with her purpose in life.

Somehow, I find myself disliking her more and more. . . .

Sarah, yes indeed, welcome back! You were sorely missed!

I agree that Maeve seems a very "colorless" person whose only role in life is that of a caretaker. I don't recall the author giving any kind of explanation of how Maeve and Billy wound up getting married. The biggest surprise to me was who she married in the end of the book - was she "charming" in her own way? It's a mystery!

Eileen Megan

Eileen Megan - thank you for the welcome.

You make an excellent point. Maeve is, in her own way, just like 'charming' Billy. She is NOT what she seems. She seems to be a selfless saint, almost beautiful in her plainness. Billy seems to be a charmer, with a note or a poem or a kind word for everyone. But Maeve actually feeds on Billy's weakness, gains a sense of purpose in life from it. And of course Billy is a hopeless alcoholic who dies a very uncharming death.

Eileen - It was a huge surprise for me too when Maeve and Dennis got married. What did I miss that I didn't see it coming, or understand it.

SarahT - Your description of Maeve: "But Maeve actually feeds on Billy's weakness, gains a sense of purpose in life from it.", makes sense to me. So why is Dennis a match for her? Is he weak, too? Is she feeding off him? . . .So many unanswered questions for me.

Marylous & Eileen.......haven't finished the book as yet. At this juncture I too am surprise Maeve and Dennis married. Had forgotten that from my original reading. Maybe I can watch for a clue. Think how many people in life go along as Maeve...enabling and feeling that is love. A thought.

Marj........Labor Day "Hello".

Marj and Marylou - I think Dennis is to Maeve what Maeve is to Billy. So it kind of makes sense that they end up together, I think.

I was astounded to discover as I read the book a second time that only the narrator and Rosemary, Billy's sister, seem to have relationships at all, or ones that work, or ones in which the spouse is alive and well. Everyone else either has a sick spouse (Bridie), no spouse (Dan Lynch), a dead spouse (Dennis, Maeve, Dennis' mother, Maeve's father), or a neglectful spouse (Kate, Billy's other sister).

Now what does THAT say about Irish families??

It is great to have some dialogue between us going on.

Sarah...you ask what does it say about Irish families? The norm I would say since McDermott has been writing of the Irish all along

Was just reading about one of her past novels. McDermotts father was a Con Edison worker. And it was used in "Charming B" as well. Here is the link..... "That Night" http://search.nytimes.com/books/search/bin/fastweb?getdoc+book-news+book-n+19628+1+wAAA+

"The story emerged out of the suburb where Ms. McDermott's parents, a Con Edison worker and a secretary-housewife, came to raise their children away from the city. The book shows how an out-of-the-ordinary storyteller can create art out of the ordinary streets of suburbia, proof that pastel siding may hide more than a matching interior. "

I will definitely need to read more of her work.

I have to say, McDermott sure doesn't worry about creating "nice" characters....she tells it like it is. There aren't many I would like to be in company with. How about any of you????

---Marj

OK I have to ask - Why would this book win the National Book Award unless there was something here other than a bunch of lonely people attached to their heritage and their religion of which half of them are drunks and two cousins, Billy and Dennis, so close, like brothers, reallytrying to get something out of life and each other. There must be something else going on here.

I started with the shoes - every important character except Dan Lynch can be connected to shoes including the ceremony of Billy and Dennis, as young men, taking their boots off before entering the water, barefoot making their life long connection with Eva and Mary. So I thought OK, commitments of faith are made shoeless and breaking faith is done with shoes on. The woman commit their love and life to the men barefoot trying on shoes etc. Etc. The money earned from selling shoes provides most of the family with financial support and shoed their feet here and abroad. And the profit from shoes provides shelter shared by several generations.

Dan is the only one concerned with societies view of the Irish. He is woven in and out of this story and holds it together much as the shoes, but there is no reference to him and shoes. He cares that Billy really considered him a best friend. He talks big about how they all should have fed Billy his liquid vise but then, doesn't really want to prove that was the solution to showing Billy their love. He is comparing Billy to a priest by questioning Billy and Mauve's sex life and speaking of celibacy as the glue that makes the Catholic Priest more. And yet it is Dan that remarks during the discussion about Billy breaking his AA vow that Priests break the sacrament of Holy Orders.

Mauve wants Billy to be her mythical Jesus - ...even when he was drinking, he was worth listening to. A smart man in his way. A sensitive man...maybe to sensitive for this world...a man with fine feelings...some broken martyr, a tortured and heaven-bound saint. Billy Lynch in the flesh in her own home.

Billy the loyal, seeing; the cruelty of war, separation and losses in life, the failure of hope, the death of the young, the world sorrow through a veil of tears from drink. I had real problems with this whole philosophy expounded on pages 186-7. It read to me as if drink was no more than the absolution for injustice and it's pain. Faith and Communion and Benediction and Redemption, Heaven all strong icons and in heaven is Eva and the way to heaven is through seeing the bottom of a glass of your favorite - sounded too much to me like one more justification for any deviant behavior that kills or damages others in the community.

Through out, Billy is quick to forgive, actually seeking the humor in his betrayal. Then it hit me - Dennis is the one with the ton of rocks on his back. Dennis wants Billy's attention and love. < I> Think of me. He'd never said it before and would surely never say it again, but just this once he might tell him, Thin of me, Billy...Put aside your nonsense, Billy, put aside the past and think of those who really love you, who've loved you all along. Every one of us living proof, Billy, that it's a powerless thing, this loving one another, nothing like what you had imagined. Except in the way it persists. Dennis feels good, like his Dad, when he can arrange for Billy to have his $500 dollars but it also means, Billy is there where Dennis can see him at the store in addition to running into him at Con Ed.

When Billy learns about Eva he also learns and shares with Dennis, the damage he did to Mary and Eva's relationship by betraying Mary's love. Of course he couldn't risk Mary being around destroying the image of Billy he wanted to preserve with his lie. Billy, with his letters and jokes, his loyalty and his broken heart - could have been cured of his affliction by rote, set back into his life by the simple application of some formula meant for everyone else. He couldn't come clean with Dan because than he would have to own the pain his lie caused Mary and Eva.

Both Dennis and Maeve need Billy to satisfy their need to feel, not only loved by Billy but, Billy's drinking gives Maeve purpose that justifies her sacrificing her life taking care of her father. She manipulates events to attract Billy and Dennis needs Billy as his sacrificial savior to love him and helps create with a lie the myth of Billy that keeps Dennis' sins from public scrutiny. He had to shed himself of Mary to insure the protection of his lie. Mary would be a daily reminder of that lie and that, caused the breakdown in what this story seems to be about, faith in family, family love, support, identity thru family and it's history.

More later I have to go. The whole thing about redemption, faith, and what I see as Dennis and Maeves shared communion - Bread (toast) and Wine (hot soothing tea).

Folks - don't forget to vote for our October selection. Click on Prized Fiction General Discussion in the heading.

More later . . . . Great posts!!

I think that Maeve is a perfect example of a co-dependent. She spent her youth taking care of her father, then she took care of Billy. I think that she loved him. He was everything that she wasn't--charming, witty, lovable, everybody's friend. He was someone that she, a plain ordinary girl, would have thought so far out of her reach that all she could do was daydream from afar. His dependence on her assured that he would stay with her.

Dennis, also, was a co-dependent. He, too, loved Billy for his charm and good nature. He was always ready to bring him home or take him off to bed. His talks with Maeve after getting Billy to bed brought them together on an emotional, heart to heart, basis. The toast and tea as bread and wine is an interesting insight, not too far fetched. The sacrament brings people together through a shared meal. So Maeve and Dennis were brought together by their shared snack after caring for their mutual love.

"The toast and tea as bread and wine is an interesting insight, not too far fetched. The sacrament brings people together through a shared meal. So Maeve and Dennis were brought together by their shared snack after caring for their mutual love. "

Barbara & Artemis....I liked the above as well~

My book is marked to discuss something but it is downstairs...so tomorrow!

I must say I am tired of all these co-dependents.

Was trying to search out the National book awards reasoning for this book's award....didn't find anything that gives their specific standards. There are reader comments at Amazon.com with pros and cons regarding Charming Billy. Interesting!

----Marj

I've decided on rereading this book that virtually everyone is "charming" in the way Billy is charming. That is, no one is as he seems.

Let's see:

Dennis on the surface: a hero. The real Dennis: needy, lost his father at a young age.

Maeve on the surface: long-suffering. The real Maeve: loves feeling needed.

Dan Lynch: Religious, pious/lonely and miserable.

Holtzman: Generous/miserly.

Kate: Married well/miserable in loveless marriage

And so on. I guess one could say this about virtually anyone.

Artemis I do like the way you have observed and do feel the same way about Maeve and Dennis.

As I obliquely mentioned in post 130, I will be on vacation starting tomorrow.

This discussion has lost some of its momentum - and it's my fault - moving really got in the way. Nonetheless, I hope those of you still keeping to the schedule will post your final thoughts in the next week. Your insights have been brilliant (as they say in Ireland). I love the way this book has brought out many of your own (and my own) feelings about your own families, alcoholism, co-dependency, enablers and all sorts of other issues that many "normal" families tackle.

That's what I love about this book discussion - we're free to meander, get personal, go beyond the four corners of the book. It seems we can always count on this being a friendly, accepting group.

Do I sound as if I come from California?? Well, I do!!

In the meantime, pick up Possession. Look for a new discussion area - yet to be set up - under the "Book Groups" heading. I'll post a reading schedule in early October.

Take good care -- Sarah

Sarah, have a ball, I've heard nothing but great stuff about POSSESSION, can't wait to hear this sterling group's take on it!!

Let's surprise Sarah, who is probably on the road as we speak this morning and amaze her with your final thoughts in the last week. I can't help, I've not read the book, but have enjoyed everybody's insights here. Let's surprise her, she's done a great job!

Ginny

Sarah T, have a wonderful vacation! You have done a super job of guiding us through "Charming Billy".

I agree with you that the book brought up a lot of personal feelings about alcoholism in families. It certainly awoke a lot of thoughts about my family, I was almost tempted to write a book myself except that I'm totally untalented in the writing department! It's neither here nor there, but even though plenty of the family alcoholics were Irish, my alcoholic father's background was Scot-Presbyterian, his brother also died an alcoholic.

The end of the book was a surprise to me, Maeve and Dennis getting married. It shouldn't have, they both loved Billy and probably had a grand time mourning him together.

Eileen Megan

When I was teaching a lay caring church group one session was on co-dependency....just found some of the notes...here are a couple interesting things....

-----co-dependency is counterfeit love, rescuing, supports rather than heals the other -----a co-dependent is a people pleaser, "care taker" rather than care giver; addicted to taking care ------a co-dependents whole identification is wrapped up in someone else...no sense of self therefore doesn't have to deal with own feelings.

You can see how co-dependency can erupt in any area of life.

---Marj

Referring to pg.212... "How lonely they all seemed to me that night, my father's family and friends, lonely souls every one of them, despite husbands and childlren and cousins and friends, all their hopes , in the end, their pairings and procreation and their keeping in touch, keeping track, futile in the end, failing in the end to keep them from seeing that nothing they felt , in the end, has made any difference"

I thought this was beautifully said. The story teller has made a leap in understanding and looking at her family's myths. It does need someone to look and see. And then maybe some of the patterns can stop.

And then the chapter ends with her not sure that her father lied when he said he believed everything again.

Hmmmmmm!

Marj (glorious weather today[Saturday] in Detroit area)

--And I wish Sarah a vacation that gives whatever she needs!

I have enjoyed reading the posts in this discussion but must admit to feeling a bit impatient with the book's content which, I think, must stem from having lived a variation of this life and because counseling substance abusers and their families is what I do for a living. The book held few surprises for me; I suppose that I don't want to revisit my daily work in the few minutes that I have for pleasure reading - usually just before going to bed after an emotionally exhausting day. I wish that some of you who posted here could bring your wonderful understanding and empathy right into my office - I could furnish you with a never ending supply of needy folk who could use your gifts.

Well, thanks for your thought > "I wish that some of you who posted here could bring your wonderful understanding and empathy right into my office - I could furnish you with a never ending supply of needy folk who could use your gifts. "

Marj

As Sarah is gone and we're concluding (aren't we?) our look at this prize winning book, I wonder if any of you have any conclusions about the book you'd like to state for the group?

How would you rate this book on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the best, a don't miss this if you have to go without food to get it and a 1 being don't take it if somebody gives you a copy?

I would like to say for my part, that I'm extremely proud of our new Prize Winning Discussion series here, it has filled a need we've had for some time and I've enjoyed every post. I thought some of your posts were better than the book, frankly. But that's normal for us here in the Books & Lit.

Does this book, in your opinion, live up to its reputation? Would you have awarded it the prize? Is there something in it you would change that you think would have made it better?

Would any of you like to try to produce a review of it for Barnes & Noble or Amazon or both??

Ginny

"Charming Billy" was a very readable book that had scenes and attitudes that were quite familiar to me, even if I not Irish. I'll rate it 3.5; but if I were issuing prizes, I might look at some of the other books on the list.

I agree with Pat W., it was a very "readable" book and since I am Irish, much like "Angela's Ashes", there was a certain familiarity about some of the characters and their attitudes. As you can see from some of the posts, it brought up a lot of memories, some sad, some happy for many of us. I'd give it a 4.

Eileen Megan

I certainly didn't LOVE this book for reasons amply state previously but would have to give it at least a 4 if just for the simply beautiful language. IMHO this woman is a gifted writer, and even if I didn't warm to the story line, she deserves much credit for her obvious talents.

My compute crashed last night during Floyd as he blew through the NH seacoast. I heard the chime as it shut off at 3AM and then couldn't go back to sleep wonderful how in heck I would ever get it repaired - or even if I could get it repaired. The first place told me that they would charge me $200 to come to the house to look at it - with no guarantee of being able to effect a repair on the spot. However, they did offer me the name of a man who agreed to drive right down - he fixed it in less than 20 minutes and charged me $25 for the service call. You bet I'm a happy camper tonight!!!

Maida, wow, that's service!!! What, do you leave it on when you go to bed?

So far ratings wise, we're averaging 3.8.

Ginny

Well I am still struggling with the concept - I think I have reacted so to the Alchoholism it was easy to miss what this story is all about, - this whole thing with redemption and Faith. I'm seeing the alchoholism as maybe just background chaos and it reminds me of Kafka The Castle where the protagonist is trying to reach the castle and the craziest illogical happenings, with their own build-up and climax, keep him from ever reaching the castle.

I think the castle for Billy is a place of no sorrow and pain, the poetic place that Dennis says Billy wants the world to be.

The drinking is like the Kafka story of the Hunger Artist. Another obsessive compulisive with a life distroying outcome.

The Hunger Artist is set up in cage in the center of various towns and is watched as he starves for 40 days, the allotted time that the town councils will allow him to starve himself. All the on lookers give him attention and then night time attendance, assuring that he really isn't sneaking food, and as a result of their vigil the Hunger Artist has the companionship he desires. The Hunger Artist is convinced he can go more than 40 days and finally, because his feat is no longer of an interest to most folk, he sells himself to a small circus who sets him up in cage near the animal exhibit. The Hunger Artist sees all the people coming toward him but soon realizes they are passing him enthralled with the animals. The circus forgets he is there and he then starves to his heart's content till the circus needs the cage and someone is instructed to clean it out. They find a dying Hunger Artist who in his dying breath extolles the virtues of what he could accomplish.

This is a quote from the annotated Kafka -

The most insatiable people are certain ascetics, who go on hunger-strike in all spheres of life, thinking that in this way they will simultaneously acheive the following:

1) a voice will say: Enough, you have fasted enough, now you may eat like the others and it will not be accounted unto you as eating.

2) the same voice will at the same time say: You have fasted for so long under compulsion, from now on you will fast with joy, it will be sweeter than food (at the same time, however, you will also really eat).

3) the same voice will at the same time say: You have conquered the world, I release you from it, as from eating and from fasting (at the same time, however, you will both fast and eat).

In addition to this there also comes a voice that has been speaking to them ceaselessly all the time: Though you do not fast completely, you have the good will, and that suffices.

That sounds like Billy to me. - And the following, another quote, sounds like Maeve.

THE SIRENS These are the seductive voices of the night; the Sirens, too, sang that way. It would be doing them an injustice to think that they wanted to seduce; they knew they had claws and sterile wombs, and they lamented this aloud. They could not help it if their laments sounded so beautiful.

And here is yet another Kafka quote that somehow reminds me of Billy as his reason for drinking himself to death.

gave orders for my horse to be brought round from the stables. The servant did not understand me. I myself went to the stable, saddled my horse and mounted. In the distance I heard a bugle call, I asked him what this meant. He knew nothing and had heard nothing. At the gate he stopped me, asking: "Where are you riding to, master?" "I don't know," I said, "only away from here, away from here. Always away from here, only by doing so can I reach my destination." "And so you know your destination?" he asked. "Yes," I answered, "didn't I say so? Away-From-Here, that is my destination." "You have no provisions with you," he said. "I need none," I said, "the journey is so long that I must die of hunger if I don't get anything on the way. No provisions can save me. For it is, fortunately, a truly immense journey."

Sounds to me like Billy's journey to redemption!

The lie I think is central to the story and Dennis is ultimatly hurt more by the lie having to carry the quilt of affecting the relationship between Mary and Eva. One who gave too much and the other who didn't give at all.

Where as Billy I think struggled with the betrayel of the lie. The fultility of struggling with faith in life having meaning when all there is to work with is, what you know and that could be false knowledge. His view of life, his faith in life, is placed on a set of happenings that may or maynot be true and that seems hardly worth the effort. He had faith in 'Eva in Heaven' as his truth and Bily tried to acheive feeling absolution and Benediction (his castle), remembered from his attending church, in the saloons he frequented.

When "Charming Billy" is looked at as a book of hope and faith, as someone shared earlier - even there the trail saunters and turns. I forgot the quote but something to the affect, Faith is only in the action. Well Billy sort of has faith is bringing Eva back but as other events, that he feels he should show his participation come up, he donates - weddings, babies births, priests anniversaries etc. He is not just focused on getting Eva and her family to the U.S. Now Dennis shows more faith, he puts his faithin action coming up with a plan, and goes after what Billy needs to achieve his dream.

What ever McDermott is trying to say there seems to me a struggle in uncovering it. I cannot believe it is just about being Irish immegrants and alchoholics. Her ability at character writing is superb as y'all - Pat, Eileen and Maida have shared but to get to the deeper understanding of this story I thought was a struggle. Again, to be prized as a National Book Award I think a book would have more going for it, then superb beauty of line and true discription of character and place. I am sure the message is there but, not easy to sort out, so, I will only give it a 2.5 out of 5.