Via Audible, I spend a year in an Irish garden

On my June 1 post, I talked about buying on Audible "In Kiltumper: A Year in an Irish Garden." I mentioned that I don't listen to many audiobooks as my vision remains fine and I love reading. There's a little message inside my head that says: "Audiobooks are for endless drives across Wyoming." During my 25 years at the Wyoming Arts Council, I made many drives across the 98,000-square mile state and listened to cassettes, disks, and, briefly, on one overlooked Spotify intro subscription in a state auto. 

So many great memories of Janet Evanovich (perfect to distract a keyed-up driver on I-80 winter drives), a dozen Wyoming-based mysteries by C.J. Box and Craig Johnson, an odd Chuck Palahniuk novel on the way to Sheridan (weird scene in a swimming pool), and one perfect summer drive to Jackson with geological landmarks discussed in John McPhee's "Rising from the Plains." Kurt Vonnegut's "Galapagos" got me all the way from Cheyenne to Salt Lake City. 

So here I am, taking a break from the printed page and listening to the wonderful voices of Niall Williams and Christine Breen on Audible. Twelve months in an Irish garden. I am transfixed. My Irish roots and life-long gardening interests are both addressed. In "March," an Irish priest dropped by the narrators' little patch of land in County Clare, and conducted mass in the garden. Neither Niall or Chris are active Catholics (more the fallen-away variety) but both agree and it's glorious. 

But there was something about it.

Quote from Chapter 4, April

"The moment of spring sets everything within me tremoring."

I've felt it in Wyoming. 

March is filled with wind-whipped snowstorms. April's beginning can be much the same. But there is a day when I step out to sun and calm. I look at the garden. A few bulb plants bloom. It's still six weeks before I put seedlings in the ground. 

But it's the light of those early April days that transform me. Every day the light stretches out to those long summer days. On June 21, the western sky is still lit at 10. I love and fear that day as days start to get shorter until it's dark at 4:30 in late November, even at Halloween the kids gets started going door to door before 5.

I have felt the tremoring Williams describes. Here in Florida, it is calmed by the coming of heat and humidity. By June 6, the tremoring has given way to sweat and sunburn.

There is happiness aplenty (and sorrow) in This Is Happiness

This is happiness.

This is happiness.

This is happiness.

So says Christy, one of the characters in Niall Williams’ novel, “This Is Happiness.” Christy rides his bicycle with our protagonist and narrator Noel (Noe) Crowe in Faha in County Clare, Ireland. It’s the spring of 1958. Christy is an electric man, sent to the village to sign up people for “the electric,” the miracle of electricity finally coming to rural Ireland. It takes a while for Williams to reveal the man’s true purpose, to apologize to a local widow, Annie Mooney, for leaving her at the altar 50 years before. Christy finds shelter with Noe and his grandparents, Doady and Ganga.

Noe, 17, learns of the man’s mission and vows to help and therein lies the heartache and happiness of the tale. Noe fled to his grandparents’ house after his mother died, he quit the seminary and found himself at loose ends with his father in Dublin. For Noe: “All that had stitched me into this life came undone and I couldn’t escape the feeling that folded against my back were wings that had failed to open.” I don’t know of a better description of being 17 in Dublin or Faha or Daytona Beach, Florida. Anywhere.

This is my first Williams’ novel and I was entranced by its first lines, “It had stopped raining.” The reader finds that Faha is a soggy, boggy place, not accustomed to sunny days that stretch on forever and make life intriguing. It stops raining the Wednesday of Holy Week and the sun stays, as if the Good Lord himself willed it on the most sacred time of the Catholic year.

The writer’s style is beguiling, filled with his Irish voice and there is no stopping the reading once you’ve begun. You even begin speaking like the characters after awhile. You’re hooked. The ending can’t be predicted. You’re along for a joyful, sometimes heart-rending, ride.

Ann Patchett promoted the novel on one of her “New Book Friday” sessions from Parnassus Books in Nashville. I love her books so anything she suggests gets my attention. I am Irish-American, my grandfather came as a lad from County Roscommon with his own sad story that took him all the way to his 90^th birthday. He was a serious man yet kind, the man who always brought ice cream to our house. When I lost my college scholarship, he sent me a 20-dollar bill every month. That was happiness!

There is an Irish voice in literature. You know it when you hear it. Filled with words and humor and sadness. You could say that about writers from other traditions. Jewish writers, for instance, know a bit about dark humor. But literature has a strong Irish voice and that’s what you hear in Williams. He  lives with his wife Christine Breen and their pets in a renovated cottage in west Clare abandoned in 1910 when Chris's grandfather left for the U.S. 

This Is happiness. Keep saying it while pedaling your beat-up bicycle through the heather in County Clare or wherever you may be.

This Is Happiness.

Postscript: Checking out Williams' web site, I entered his world and his wife's. Listening to a snippet of their book, "In Kiltumper: A Year in an Irish Garden," I decided to buy the audiobook. I don't listen to many audiobooks but this one combines the voices of the writers with gardening and a view of rural Ireland in 2021. How could I resist?

Want adsurdist humor in your novels? Think Tim, not Tom

Great quote from a 2011 Wyofile article on Wyoming novelist Tim Sandlin: “When you think American master of absurdist humor with acute observations about contemporary society, characters to fall in love with, and lines you’ll be quoting to your friend, the first name to spring to mind should be ‘Tim’ (Sandlin), not ‘Tom’ (Robbins),” said Sarah Bird, Austin, Texas, novelist and a friend of Sandlin’s.

Westerners face double-nickel speed limits

"Mandatory" is a despised term in Wyoming, especially when it's applied to our vehicles. Mandatory seat-belt use. Mandatory non-use of alcoholic beverages while driving. The imposition of mandatory fuel-efficiency standards which could change the design and utility of our monstrous pick-ups.

The worst is about to come: mandatory 55-m.p.h speed limits. That's the latest buzz from Washington, D.C., as Sen. John Warner of Virginia has plans for a national 55 m.p.h speed limit. We had one once, remember, back in the 1970s. Motorists accepted it then because Middle East oil sheiks had us by the short hairs. Wonder if they'll accept it now, when once again Middle East oil sheiks have us by the short hairs and our G.I.s are dying because of it.

I was surprised to read in an article this morning by Dave Montgomery of McClatchy Newspapers that the U.S. Trucking Association is behind a national speed limit of 65. The USTA represents 3.5 million truck drivers and 37,000 trucking companies. The USTA contends that a 10 m.p.h. reduction in the speed limit would reduce fuel consumption by 27 percent. The article does not mention that 65 is already the top speed you can drive in many states. Not in the West, though.

Westerners are used to driving long distances for work and pleasure. Fuel prices have hit us hard, yet we still have these miles to cover and only so much time to do it. My trips from Cheyenne to Casper (180 miles) via I-25 take from two-and-one-half to three hours each way, depending on construction, weather, and calls of nature. At 65, the drive would still be about three hours. At 55, three-and-one-half. More of my time has to be built in the traveling portion of my day and less on the meeting portion. On the plus side, I can spend more time listening to audiobooks.

I work for the State of Wyoming and we've been discussing fuel-saving measures, such as car-pooling and better coordination of meetings and conferences. Car-pooling is a foreign concept to most Wyomingites. We not only need our cars, we love them. We also like the solitude of driving alone across the wide-open spaces. Our office has a staff of 10. If four of us have to go to an event in, say, Lander, we often drive four cars. One person may have to stay longer and another has to get home early for another meeting or a child's soccer game. Another might want to stay a couple days longer for some personal time, as Lander's a pretty cool place and located near the Wind River Mountains, Sink's Canyon State Park, and the Rez.

We're going to have to change our behavior. I'm going to have to change my behavior. Some things I'm going to have to give up. Once, I traveled with a colleague to a conference in Cody, some 350 miles away. I decided to introduce my colleague to Annie Proulx's short stories in "Close Range." After meeting a slew of Annie's crazed Wyomingites behaving badly, my colleague pleaded: "Can we listen to something else?" We settled on some classic rock CDs she brought along for just such emergencies.

The state motor pool bought several Priuses, but I've not yet been able to snag one. That would be an improvement, mileage-wise, but until the entire fleet is a multi-colored melange of Japanese-made hybrids, is won't make a dent in our fuel consumption. Besides, Americans now have to get on a waiting list to buy a Prius. By 2010, Toyota will make them in the U.S., and availability should increase. What price will gas be in 2010?

Meanwhile, I'm going to have to forgo Annie Proulx for an audiobook that everyone wants to listen to. Yikes! Groupthink is another word despised by Wyomingites.

"Tin Roof Blowdown" in Wyoming

Listened to CD version of James Lee Burke's "Tin Roof Blowdown" on my trip to Riverton last week. I've always been a Burke fan, and have read all the other Dave Robicheaux mysteries -- or maybe they should be called Southern Gothic police procedurals. They're all compelling, no matter the terminology. In "Tin Roof Blowdown," Robicheaux is sent to New Orleans to help with post-Katrina recovery. Amongst the chaos, a priest friend of Dave's disappears, some black guys looting a white neighborhood are killed by a sniper, blood diamonds are stolen from a racketeers home. Back home in New Iberia, Dave's college-age daughter is the target of a stalker. All hell breaks loose and Dave is right in the middle of it. Just the way this reader likes it.

Some critics have called this one of Burke's best D.R. novels. Not sure if I agree. Hurricane-ravaged N.O. is a terrific setting. Yet pre-Katrina New Orleans served as a suitably violent and mysterious setting for his other novels. But the author draws his characters better than almost any other detective writer. That's always set him apart from the riff-raff. What's missing from this one is the eerie Southern Gothic juju he used so effectively in "Dixie City Jam" and "In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead." "Tin Roof Blowdown" has an edgy, urban feel to it, a tone similar to Michael Connelly's L.A. or Ed McBain's 10th Precinct in NYC.

I have to admit that I cheated a bit on this novel. Usually I get unabridged versions of novels on CD. This one was trimmed to six hours. Maybe some of the atmosphere was lost in the process.