1. When I was a kid, I thought Brendan Behan was a total bad ass. I was defenseless against his charm and specifically his wanton, drunken, supposed irrationalism. That he’d been jailed for revolutionary activities with the IRA only added to his allure. He was the perfect antidote to my rigid and very intellectual high school education. Behan's behaviour, like Jackie Gleason's, was largely irresponsible and self-destructive, but when I was young I just wanted to be that bold, though all my education trained me otherwise.
2. I’m about as Irish as Wayne Gretzky’s Belarussian, maybe even less so, but growing up I wanted to be Irish. I wanted it real bad. I guess it’s to be expected with an Irish first name, but I also wanted to be a writer. I was inspired by reading James Joyce’s Ulysses to write my first novel, at age 18. It dealt with parking lot attendants, Calgary’s run-down Victoria Park neighbourhood, and took place, like Ulysses, within a 24 hour time frame.
3. I was once given an opportunity to go to the local Fine Arts school for acting, but turned it down in favour of my crushingly academic path, so that it’s Jackie Gleason in the photo below doesn’t hurt. That his family, like my own, hails from Cork, is even better.
4. The Pogues’ song about the Irish-American experience, “The Body of The American” has always and immediately reminded me of my own past growing up as an Italian-Canadian, perhaps indicating just how much the two immigrant experiences overlapped.
2. I’m about as Irish as Wayne Gretzky’s Belarussian, maybe even less so, but growing up I wanted to be Irish. I wanted it real bad. I guess it’s to be expected with an Irish first name, but I also wanted to be a writer. I was inspired by reading James Joyce’s Ulysses to write my first novel, at age 18. It dealt with parking lot attendants, Calgary’s run-down Victoria Park neighbourhood, and took place, like Ulysses, within a 24 hour time frame.
3. I was once given an opportunity to go to the local Fine Arts school for acting, but turned it down in favour of my crushingly academic path, so that it’s Jackie Gleason in the photo below doesn’t hurt. That his family, like my own, hails from Cork, is even better.
4. The Pogues’ song about the Irish-American experience, “The Body of The American” has always and immediately reminded me of my own past growing up as an Italian-Canadian, perhaps indicating just how much the two immigrant experiences overlapped.
5. So in typical Brendan Behan fashion, let's all disappear for an hour or so and then reappear only to act opposite to whatever state we were in, charming everyone in the process.
Slainte!
