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On St. Patrick

 To me, St. Patrick's Day is mainly about storytelling. I don't know if Ireland is disproportionately "good" at writing, but consider the names: Edna O'Brien, Synge, Mark O'Connell, James Joyce, Colm Toibin, Yeats, Sean O'Casey, Brian Friel, Claire Keegan, William Trevor, Colin Barrett, Sharon Horgan, John Banville, Roddy Doyle, Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson, Frank McCourt, Seamus Heaney, Sally Rooney, Brian Moore. This seems abnormal.


My kids and I read "Patrick, Patron Saint of Ireland," by Tomie dePaola. We have read it many times. DePaola understands that a good story is about a character, not a message. And Patrick has a good story. He is captured from Britain and sold into slavery in Ireland. Alone, he talks to God incessantly for six years. Given a chance to return to Britain, he "seduces" a group of hounds, so that they will force their master to create a Patrick-sized vacancy on his ship. But, then, Patrick is restless in Britain. He senses he must return to Ireland to become an evangelist.

Back among ye banks and braes, Patrick narrowly avoids assassination. In fact, he comes close to losing his life on twelve separate occasions. He travels all over the countryside, baptizes thousands of people, and begins a movement. After his death, churches sprout up everywhere, and the canonization effort begins.

My other way of observing March 17th is to spend time with the works of the great Irish-American novelist, Alice McDermott. A writer's impossible job is to create weather with words; you're not merely describing rainfall, but instead you are actually persuading the reader that he or she is sopping wet. McDermott is famous for warping her syntax to manipulate her reader's mood. Take the unnerving first sentence of her career-defining second novel:

That night, when he came to claim her, he stood on the short lawn before her house, his knees bent, his fists driven into his thighs, and bellowed her name with such passion that even the friends who surrounded him, who had come to support him, to drag her from the house, to murder her family if they had to, let the chains they carried go limp in their hands.

In my (somewhat foggy) mind, St. Patrick's Day exists so that we can all take a minute and celebrate that first sentence.

Slainte.
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