Galway Advertiser 1989/1989_09_28/GA_28091989_E1_008.pdf 

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The Galway Advertiser

JEFF'O'CONNELL

THE SHOWMAN AND THE SWINDLER

GAY BYRNE is one of Ireland's national institutions. If ever the word "ubiquitous" deserves to be used about someone, it is Gay.
F o r o v e r 25 y e a n " T h e took over the management Late, Late Show" has been of the family - " M a was an t h e w e e k l y " f i x " o f intelligent w o m a n , sharp thousands of Irish people, a s a t a c k a n d h i g h l y who have been both enter porganised. In other times tained, outraged, and - this a n d from another is perhaps the most background s h e could remarkable part quite easily have run a educated by it. G a y ' s dai thriving business. Not hav ry radio show - a m i x of ing that opportunity, she middle-of-the-road music, substituted her family, comment, l i g h t a n d and ran it with success and serious discussion - takes expansion in mind". Clear c a r e of those w h o can't ly Mrs. Byrne was a for wait out the week t o con midable woman, and her nect with h i m again. T h e stress on her family's suc media is fascinated b y cess w a s to drive Gay into him, although G a y pro show business (to emulate fesses mild astonishment the s u c c e s s of her hero, "When people d o ask m e E a m o n n A n d r e w s ) and as they d o a d infinitum, if. o t h e r m e m b e r s o f t h e I a m a w a r e of the impact family far away from the I h a v e o n people - King nest, in particular Ernest, G a y b o , S o c i a l w o r k e r whose career provides an G a y b o . T a o i s e a c h G a y b o , unhappy parallel to Gay's. Bishop G a y b o , and s o o n - His c a r e e r a s a broad I can honestly reply that I caster in the U.S. began c a n see myself in n o such with bright prospects, but rote. I a m a broa caster, bitterness and a sense of and that is the beginning having missed his chance, and end of it. I say what I combined with a serious think o r what will g o down drinking problem soured well on the radio I inter himand he died in 19B6 " a view people, and 11 is ten to d i s i l l u s i o n e d , broken their answers. S o it i s a hearted man constant source of surprise T h e m o s t fascinating to m e when people fall out of their standing to s e e m e chapter in T H E T I M E O F washing m y c a r o r m o w M Y L I F E deals with the devastating impact on ing the lawn G a y ' s life of a character Now for all those w h o who seems to have stepped want to know m o r e about right o u t o f a n o v e l . this intensely private per Russell Murphy Murphy, son - s o m e o n e e v e r y o n e a high-powered accoun /eela they know but w h o m tant with a taste for fine few really d o there is living, was one of G a y ' s T H E T I M E O F M Y L I F E closest friends, godfather (GUI & Macmillan: U1M) to o a t of his daughters, a - a wonderfully readable, father figure", a s Gay anecdotal account of the puts it. who embezzled all man's o w n life by himself, of his life's savings, leav with a little I unspecified) ing him shaken to his the help from Swaday Tribune roots o f fast being to this journalist D t h d i i PurceO day. T h e story, as G a y T h e early part o f mm it. is utterly compel) book provides V tng. a n d admiration f a r fascinating glimpse into tin* Dtzzare f i i j i M l i i a a l L G a y ' s early lite After his across even a s be recounts ther s o>ath. his mother the methodical way b e

I happened to read the m a n u s c r i p t to a much travelled friend while she was visiting m e in Ireland last year. She was s o in trigued by m y description of the San Juan Islands that she proposed bringing The chapters on " T h e myself and m y children to Late, Late S h o w " a r e full Los Angeles to visit her of entertaining stories, and then driving us the most of which will b e 2000 miles to s e e Buck familiar but a r e good to Mountain for herself. read about again - T h e I filed this at the back of celebrated c a s e o f " T h e m y mind along with "win Bishop and the Nightie", ning the lottery" and all Brian Trevaskis' outburst but forgot about it. In a g a i n s t D r . B r o w n o f January she phoned and Galway, the psychiatrist said to g o and book a flight R . D . Laing, drunk and out for the three of us any time of control in the hospitali in June, a cheque was in ty r o o m and on the show. the mail. This w e did, Gay tells us about s o m e of f o l l o w e d by the usual the p e o p l e w h o ' v e i m flurry of getting photos, pressed him most - Mother renewing passports, and Teresa of Calcutta, a n d day at the embassy, collec John Stalker, with whom ting luggage and s o on. he feels a great sympathy. After a surprise send-off in Gay Byrne's life story is the Atlanta, a friend drove interesting not only for us to Shannon where w e it tells as about - had to pass up the smoked salmon, Baileys, and Rus sian China as w e were car e w a life s a d rying out 100 copies of the impart he has had on Bock Msmlsjn Poems , aO of us is a kind of capsule w o n d e r i n g w o u l d t h e history of Ireland these bookshops b e interested, last twenty-five y e a r s . would our friends and rela There's certainly m o r e to tions really want to own him than he has let out in copies o r would we be lumbered with the same have ever tuned into " T h e volumes c o m n g h o m e ! Late, L a t e " or listened In Five years ago, in a very to " U n c l e G a y b o " on the different state of mind, I airwaves will be grateful had tried to return to the forwhat b e ' i a D o w e d as te island and start o v e r , as it were. E c r y thing at that Peter Stunton time proved to be against

took his client for all he had, even born-owing huge sums of money on the deeds of his house. Gay ad m i t s t o an i n c r e d i b l e naiveity, even giving Mur phy power of attorney, something an accountant friend once told m e you never, ever do. The after math, quite apart from the loss of his life's saving, af fected him physically " o n e curious side-effect was that for quite a long time I was not able to write by hand. Even to put m y signature to a piece of paper was a great effort: the pen tended to slide downwards and off the page." The tale of the splitpersonality M r . Murphy (each year he would act as a volunteer at Lourdes and he w a s a daily Massattender) is u n q u e s tionably the most fascinating part of this b o o k . What a novelist could d o with it!

Return to Buck Mountain
Last year Anne Kennedy's Buck Mountain Poems was published by THE SALMON PRESS to great acclaim. Earlier this year Ms. Kennedy returned to Buck Mountain and in this specially composed piece describes what it was like to "go home".

Most people, reading my Buck Mountain Poems , or hearing the radio broadcast, assume that I wrote them when I was liv ing on the mountain, twenty years ago. They were, in fact, all written last year in a period of less than a week after I had finally surrendered to the notion that I would probably never see my islands again. What happened next definitely falls into the too-true-to-be-good category.
it, not the least being our desperate homesickness for Ireland, something I had not bargined for. This time I was going strictly for a holiday and with few expectations. If I went in to culture shock after not seeing the packed freeways, the s m o g , the senseless opulance of L.A., for twenty years, so be it; if the kids w e r e restless and bored, so what; if w e hit any of the natural disasters I had grown up with - fire, earthquake, floods, scorching Santa Anas, I could handle it.

HOUSE

OPt

in summer, and w e walk ed the rocky path to the cabin. The pond where the The house where w e None of this happened: ducks froze is overgrown stayed sits on a knoll in old the weather w a s ideal, with alder and willow and forest growth, forest that very like Ireland's this many houses have been has not been logged in the summer. W e travelled built on the road below the last fitv years or more. spacious motorways from cabin, but the mailboxes Sunlight softly f i l t e r s California through Oregon still lean at crazy angles through ginat c e d a r s , and up into Washington beside the pond, and the spruce and pine, spindly State without m i s h a p , view to Canada is unim newcomers crowding the stopping in the tidy rest paired, the s u m m e r venerable old thick-trunks stops set up for travellers, sunlight filters down on the for light. I spent hours on staying with friends and dark steep slopes which the porch, looking out and relations all the way up the planning how to thin the are never dry. Water eeps coast. One sorrowful note: rom he ferns, rivulets now, scrub here and discreetly the California condors I cull dead branches there to soon to be torrents. It was described soaring over the a melancholy walk. Some get a view of the water, Santa Inez m o u n t a i n s things a r e better left tantalizingly just behind w h e r e R e a g a n has his remembered than the treeline. The woman ranch a r e no more. They reviewed. who built the house told m e are now extinct in the wild Visiting the shops in the she was sitting by the win as they cannot breed and villages was like a fiesta as thrive around man and dow one day in winter everyone wanted the book when a sparkle caught her man's infernal racket, s o e y e ; she glanced up and as a souvenir. The actual now w e see them only in launch w a s even m o r e saw the water, but the next zoos. One of the glories of festive, with s o m e of m y my young years w a s to day she couldn't find it nmad neighbours in the again. travel through the canyons audience (the ones who Day two in the islands north of L A . and see the survived) and m y w e walked on the ferry for a short ride to Orcas, no daughter Allison who did the illustrations for the change, foot passengers g o book and lived in a tiny loft free. The sun was splitting that first winter. the rocks, cormorants dry In coming back to Buck ing their wings, and since Mountain to launch the word had travelled that book about m y life there, the Kennedys were bach, everyone was saying hello. I had c o m e full circle. There is a deep satisfac Because part of the pur tion m havaag the prrraege pose of the trip was to see as many old friends as of paying tribute to people possible, I had arranged a and a place central in reunion with three close o n e ' s l i f e , b a t n e v e r s c h o o l friends, o n e o f theless, I realised that a whom owns the hotel at the profound chasm existed Orcas ferry landing; they between the self who lived were waiting for us when those days, w h o walked the slopes s a d listened to we docked. Scriabin and watched the F r o m there everything otters, and the self who sat seemed to fall effortlessly in a room in Galway twen into place. W e had for ty years later and wrote warded Buck Mountain about It. No matter bow Poems to the local felicitous the cir newspapers and the copies cumstances, w e caa't g o had been circulated so that home again. I have to the library had arranged a agree with Proust that reading and book launch . the true paradises are literally at the foot of Buck the paradises w e have Mountain .(took my friends out to the north shore, so lonely in the winter, so hospitable

Return Journey

mighty silhouettes of the condors up against the clouds. Taking the ferry from Anacortes north to Seattle out to the San Juans pro duced, as always, a deep feeling of going home, of being where I should be. The first people I said hello to didn't recognise m e . This was puzzling as they looked the s a m e to m e . It later e m e r g e d that they hadn't recongised m e because I looked so happy! We rented a log a house in a forest on Shaw Island where I had lived after leaving Buck Mountain and where m y daughter, Maura, w a s born. T h e general store at the ferry landing is e x a c t l y the s a m e as it was when I left except now it is owned by an order of Nuns. Cathlics are a distinct minority in the Pacific Northwest, but a Catholic family who own ed hundreds of acres on the island have willed their land to three working and contemplative orders.

ANNE

KENNEDY