Ireland - Travel, Ireland - Travel Essays & Descriptions, Historic Preservation

The Irish way

Name: The Irish way
Author: Robert Emmett Ginna
ISBN: 9780375504303

by Robert Emmett Ginna

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Overview

Since well before Marco Polo's fabled journey, the literature of travel has always made for grand reading. In The Irish Way: A Walk Through Ireland's Past and Present, Robert Emmett Ginna has written a memorable contribution to the genre, for here is Ireland, viewed by a veteran traveler intent on depicting the country as it truly is and describing what has made Ireland and the Irish what they are today. In his eighth decade, Ginna set out to walk the length of Ireland, some 350 miles from its most northerly point, Malin Head, in Donegal, to Kinsale, on the Atlantic coast of Cork. Familiar with the country for many years, Ginna had seen the influx of high-tech industries and membership in the European Union transform Ireland from a poor, largely agricultural country into the prosperous "Celtic tiger." He wanted to judge for himself what the Irish had gained -- and perhaps lost -- and what they have preserved from a rich yet tumultuous heritage.

Ginna encountered a host of interesting Irish men and women from many walks of life on his trek through three counties of Northern Ireland and ten counties of the Republic. Among them were the soldiers of the British garrison in Omagh, the young woman who directs the annual film festival in strife-scarred Londonderry, the self-made man who founded the Famine Museum at Strokestown, captains of high-tech industries, and farmers whose families have worked their lands for generations. At Birr, he visited the Earl of Rosse in the castle his family has held for nearly four hundred years and where a forebear constructed what was for seventy-five years the world's greatest telescope. In Tipperary, Ginna was regaled at a show by rollicking priests, talked horses with a successful racehorse trainer, and met a gentleman farmer who had unearthed an early medieval chalice valued at more than [pound]6 million. In the thriving city of Cork, the Republic's second largest, Ginna sought out the Lord Mayor, spoke with an innovative police superintendent, explored Cork's vibrant cultural scene, and met the woman who is probably Ireland's youngest feature-film director. And of course, all through his journey, Ginna enjoyed serendipitous encounters with engaging characters in the pubs that are at the center of so much of Irish social life. Weaving song, poetry, and story into his narrative, Ginna brings to life the heroes and rogues, saints and patriots, who have shaped Ireland's turbulent and colorful culture and history.

About the Author, Robert Emmett Ginna

Robert Emmett Ginna’s long stays in Ireland have led to numerous articles in many publications, including Connoisseur, Esquire, Horizon, Life, and The New York Times. In Ireland, he wrote, produced, and directed the documentary Ireland Moving, and for MGM was coproducer of Young Cassidy and producer of Brotherly Love. He has been an editor of four magazines, editor in chief of Little, Brown and Company, and for many years a teacher of film and writing courses at Harvard, including one called Travel as Literature. A dual citizen of the United States and Ireland, he lives in Jaffrey Center, New Hampshire, and Sag Harbor, New York.

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Editorials

The Washington Post

It's just amazing how the author manages to sustain this aura of serenity and gentility! He treats people with kindness; they treat him with kindness. Sure, from time to time he's bothered by panting trucks or yapping dogs, but for the most part he hikes happily through the days, making his way in good time to a lodging that has just the room for him. He logs hours and hours in those public houses, which in my memory had more than their share of acrimonious conversations and even a few maudlin tears, but maybe Ginna gives his custom to a better class of pubs. Maybe people see him and just automatically behave themselves. — Carolyn See

Publishers Weekly

Seventy-four-year-old Ginna, who's produced films and written articles about Ireland and served as Little, Brown's editor-in-chief from 1977 to 1980, decided to take a walking tour of the country, from Malin Head (Donegal) south to Kinsale (Cork), to see what's changed in the last 30 years or so. This sounds like he might be interested in the impact of the European Union or reforms in the Church or even the high-tech revolution, but it boils down to something slightly more mundane: whether a site Ginna visited 30 years ago is still accessible, whether a particular tailor is still available to make him a new jacket, etc. He walks from one bed-and-breakfast to the next, buying his food in shops or eating in restaurants. He visits pubs most evenings. If he's near a ruin, a graveyard, a church or a historical marker, he will examine it and recount an anecdote culled from his collection of Irish history books. Passing a factory, he may call on the owner and make inquiries about what's being produced and how it's going. Mostly, he talks with b&b owners or other pub drinkers. Almost everyone Ginna meets and every place he sleeps is "cheerful," and many a landscape is "bosky." It makes for a monotonous, somewhat narrow view of a vibrant, culturally rich country. Readers looking for clues about life in modern Ireland-what people eat, how they shop and work, what home and school life are like and how the sexes relate-should look elsewhere. On the other hand, those with a taste for tales of ancient battles or castles might find Ginna's account tolerable. Illus., map. (July 8) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Ginna's credentials-he is a Harvard-educated art historian and film producer; former editor in chief of Little, Brown; and holder of dual citizenship (American and Irish)-would seem to promise an exceptional travel book. Regrettably, what Ginna offers instead is a dull plod from one end of Ireland to the other. Interspersed between such passages as "Back in town, I browsed in a bookstore, shopped for small gifts, napped, and read" are guidebook-flavored bits of Irish history. Ginna includes monument inscriptions, song lyrics, pub conversations, and his own scenic sketches, but even these extras cannot instill his 350-mile trek (from Malin Head to Kinsale) with many memorable moments. The book may be useful for bed-and-breakfast travelers, as accommodations are carefully noted (as are "good" pubs). Purchase only where there is a strong demand for Irish travel books.-Janet Ross, formerly with Sparks Branch Lib., NV Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A good-natured, noodling walk down the length of Ireland, full of agreeable digressions and historical marginalia, from former Little, Brown editor-in-chief Ginna. This is a satisfying Baedecker of a book, unhurried and curious, not preoccupied with politics in a land rife with them, though not averse to shoving its oar into the debates that brew in the pubs. Ginna would like to know if the recent technological investments, Euro infusions, and the go-go economy have changed this land he knows and loves so well: the green, bosomy hills; the thatched cottages, peat, and Travelers; the theater and universities; the rural and agricultural. So he takes a walk, from wild Donegal’s Malin Head to Cork. Ginna is good company, happy to stop at the pique of any fancy, with a ready humor (on a gout diagnosis: "I had been living like a mendicant friar. Could this be?"), and only the occasional affectation: "Mike Mullins, for so he was, ushered me in to a large room." He is also a whiz at local history and will, it is guaranteed, make even those readers without a religious bone in their bodies fascinated by the crumbling monasteries, abbeys, and churches he visits. He is everywhere and all at once, describing ring forts, racehorses, Irish literature, Bronze Age tombs, casting a fly on the Blackwater, perusing the work of the ancient scholar-monks at Clonmacnoise ("neither prudish nor humorless. Thanks to them the lusty sagas of the pre-Christian Irish were preserved"). He does report on the economic development of the country, but he’s more at home in the pubs and ruins and at the Foyle Film Festival. This Ireland is a place where both society and solitude can be easily had, where the remains of theancient past can be communed with, and where the present—from the Troubles to the high-tech—is abating and abiding in proper order.