Re: a friend of Charlie
Paul Kennedy (kennedyp@toronto.cbc.ca)
Fri, 25 Jun 1999 11:13:48 -0400 (EDT)
It must be the bottle of meths that broke when it fell off of Scottie's
writing desk, and permeated the bananafishbowl with such strange (not to
mention noxious) odours.... For reasons that entirely defy logical
explanation, over the past short while I've found myself connecting with a
couple utterly unanticipated threads: last week Nabokov (...whom I still
consider to be something like the Norman Mailer of Russian Lit. IE
perennial bad-boy who exhibited precocious early talent; but merely a blip
in a cannon that includes some of the greatest giants who ever
lived--Tolstoy, Dostoyevesky, Chekov... But we've already been through
that....) and now "Celtishness", or whatever.... (Scottie has this
diversionary tactic of subverting the Subject line--first "not Celts...",
then "Drams", then "Charlie".... Let me tell you, I know from personal
experience that he'll have us all doing secret handshakes under our kilts,
and toasting the king over the water before he's finished....
We probably need an anthropologist to shed some sort of light on the dark
and misty past of the "northern British" people.... I'm assuming here that
we can all agree that Ireland is the westernmost of the larger British
Isles.... Which means, I believe, that they could choose (though most
don't) to be called "north Britons".... The ethnic mix is a mess that I've
never seen satisfactorily explained.... But I've recently found the
somewhat trendy term "celt" to be a very useful umbrella. And I'm sure that
even Scottie and I can agree that umbrellas are necessary all over North
Briton....
Hugh Maclennan (the Canadian novelist/essayist) I mentioned called himself a
Canadian all his life (and the title of his novel "Two Solitudes" became, in
fact, the defining metaphor for this country's blissfully confused politics
throughout most of the middle of the 20th century.... I was quoting,
however, from a beautiful essay he wrote describing his "return" to
Scotland, when he was on military leave in South Britain, during the second
world war. He described the Highlands in some of the most haunting prose
I've ever read. In fact, he uses "ghosts" to explain the major differences
between the breathtaking beauty of Highland glens and the awsome emptiness
of the Canadian arctic.... These landscapes, he maintained, were so
seemingly similar that a martian dropped on either could be easily confused
about his/her (Do martians have gender? Have they long-since superceded
political correctness?) whereabouts.... Baffin Island, however, it utterly
empty. The Highlands are almost overpopulated with ghosts.... And it's
somewhere in the context of all that we find the quote about being a Celt
meaning never being far from tears....
I'd never want to live a life in which tears were never shed. And although
alcohol (and more specifically single malts) can act as a catalyst for the
kind of sloppy sentimentality that Scottie decries, it's not a prerequisite
for Paul's pouting (I'm sure I've filled more swimming pools with sober
tears than teaspoons worth of drunken ones....) and I think it's utterly
unfair to dismiss an entire nation as alcoholics (even though I've seen some
pretty serious drinking in Ireland....)
Glenlivet: I hardly know quite what to say, Scottie. Glenlivet is to
single malts what comic books are to literature. Entry level, maybe.... I
know it's a long climb to Lagavulin (even though barrels in the warehouse
sometimes bob up and down in the sea, when the waves are high), but so much
better to start with a truly GREAT whisky--say Glenmorangie--than with the
putrid piss produced by Seagrams INC....
Cheers,
Paul