Sweet Liberty: Travels in Irish America

Joseph O'Connor is a gifted writer whose travelogue brought me to several bouts of uncontrollable laughter. The stories in this book contain a wonderful mix of dry wit and outrageous hyperbole, and O'Connor manages to weave in a bit of Irish-American history as well.As it happens, laughing out loud _is_ the only exercise I get (aside from running late for work), so I'm glad I took Roddy Doyle's advice and read this book. I'm sure you'll enjoy it, too.

A clue to how Irish I am can be found in the fact that, sitting down to write this, I thought this book topical as St. Patrick's Day was "coming up". The Valentine's Day decorations aren't yet out of the stores, so that may seem a little extreme. The fact that I did not set foot in Ireland until I was 22 does not seem to have significantly weakened this attachment to the country. So I am just the sort of Irish-American yahoo that prompted Joseph O'Connor to write this hilariously scathing look at the American landscape. "Sweet Liberty: Travels in Irish America" is Joe O'Connor's opportunity to satisfy a life-long curiosity. Having seen American's cartoon-view of Ireland from St. Patrick's Day parades in Dublin, he took his cartoon-view of America (from westerns and visiting tourists) and decided to investigate it. Not surprisingly, what he found was even funnier than what he thought he would find. "Sweet Liberty" follows O'Connor as he sets off to see the 9 towns named Dublin in the US, along with some classically American (and Irish-American) landmarks - New York, Graceland, the Grand Canyon and others. The Dublins tend to be non-extraordinary rural outposts with little or no knowledge of their own history. But O'Connor turns his encounters in these towns into rolicking tales - poking fun at himself, at those he meets, at the towns, his hotels, the roads, whatever. O'Connor is funny in a way stand-ups can't be, because his humor is not at all mean-spirited. Even while he is "slagging" someone or something, you can hear the affection for it underneath. Roddy Doyle, author of "The Commitments" and "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" (and object of O'Connor's professional jealousy), said of O'Connor that he is the man to read, "if laughing out loud is the only exercise you get." I thought he was kidding. Or at least exaggerating. But halfway through the preface, my slides were splitting. By the end of the first chapter, I was doubled over in laughter. Joe O'Connor has a brilliant dry wit and mercilessly accurate descriptions of characters - of both people and places. Having lived in Boston, I was almost brought tears, I laughed so hard at his antics there. Clearly the more familiar you are with any given area he is describing, the funnier "Sweet Liberty" may seem. But if you are inclined to a sense of humor about any of America's geographic icons, you will find this Irishman's perspective entertaining and engrossing. If you are rather more inclined to an academic look at Irish-America, you are better off with Thomas O'Connor's "The Boston Irish" or Noel Ignatiev's "How the Irish Became White". After all, some of the Dublins weren't even named for the town in Ireland.