Showing posts with label Harvard Yard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harvard Yard. Show all posts

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Easter 1916- A Novelistic Treatment- William Martin’s “The Rising Of The Moon”

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for novelist William Martin, author of The Rising of The Moon.

Book Review

The Rising Of The Moon, William Martin, Crown Publishers, New York, 1987


The last time that the work of novelist William Martin appeared in this space was when I reviewed his novel, Harvard Yard several months ago. The idea behind reviewing that novel was simply to use Martin’s novelistic treatment of the history of Harvard University (his alma mater)that was, moreover, filled with interesting and informative historical facts about that august bourgeois training ground and use it to make some political points about the nature of American society, American class society mainly. I should also note that I came to like the novel as its plot unfolded so that was a bonus. Here, in reviewing The Rising Of The Moon, I have a slightly different reason tied in with my Irish heritage on the anniversary of the Easter uprising of 1916.

Here Mr. Martin roped me in by presenting another Boston local novel (he has also written other Boston-centered novels, Back Bay and Cape Cod as well). More importantly he has tied in the familiar Boston scene with a topic very close to my roots, my family roots, the struggle for Irish freedom from English tyranny. And has used the events of the national liberation struggle named forever and framed forever by William Butler Yeats’ poem, Easter 1916.

Of course a primary consideration of any national liberation struggle, old style or new, is weapons-guns, ammo, etc. in order to fight the oppressor. And that thread, that desperate need for weapons against a heavily armed opponent, the British Occupation Army, is what drives the plot. But let's face it a simple exposition of the military needs of insurgents, Irish or otherwise, would make for an interesting history book but would no find favor in modern novelistic conventions.

However, what if you linked the Irish struggle in 1916 with the Irish diaspora in Boston. And what if you linked up Irish freedom fighters in Ireland with co-opted Irish freedom fighters in Southie (oops, South Boston) then the homeland to a great portion of the American Irish diaspora. And what if you surrounded the problems associated with getting weapons with kinship questions, some unfinished family business between Irish cousins, and, and, a little off-hand sex and romance in the person of a fetching Jewish girl (who also happens to be interested in national liberation struggles elsewhere- in Palestine). Well then you have William Martin’s interesting little novel that helps fill in the gaps, painlessly, about the Irish struggles and about what Boston, Irish Boston, looked like about one hundred years ago. As I said about Harvard Yard I liked the novel better as its plot unfolded so that was a bonus here as well. Kudos.

Easter, 1916 -William Butler Yeats
I
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.



II

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terribly beauty is born.



III

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashed within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.



IV

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

From The Bob Feldman 68 Blog -"Chuck Turner" (Boston)Protest Folk Song

"Chuck Turner" Protest Folk Song
by bobf

(No verified email address) 28 Mar 2011

Modified: 11:47:01 AM

"Chuck Turner" public domain protest folk song tells story of the recent illegal expulsion from Boston's City Council and imprisonment of Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner

Chuck Turner (sung to the tune of traditional Scottish folk song, "Come All Ye Tramps and Hawkers")

"Oh, my name it is Chuck Turner
And I'm in a prison cell
Far away in West Virginia
That's where I'm forced to dwell
In a lonely section
Of the penitentiary
And while I'm locked behind the wall,
I recall what they did to me.

"I grew up in Cincinnati
Then attended Harvard U.
I became an organizer
And to Roxbury I did move
To the Boston City Council
The people did vote me
And as their representative
I served diligently

"I fought discrimination
By the universities
And demanded that developers
Cease to be greedy
I fought to regulate their rents
And for Boston tenants' rights
And denounced police brutality
And the wars Bush launched at night.

"They could not defeat me at the polls
In six elections
So Ashcroft's partner and the FBI
Began a collaboration
They paid an informant thirty grand
To tape me secretly
And illegally tried to entrap me
For proposing a public hearing.

"Although I was elected
By the people of Roxbury
A corrupt U.S. Attorney
Charged me with `bribe-taking'
To cover-up his misconduct
The Feds arrested me
And from Boston's City Council
I was expelled illegally.

"Then after a press-rigged trial
The biased judge sentenced me
And because I pleaded innocent
He accused me of `perjury'
And added more months in prison
`Cause I spoke at some meetings
And imprisoned me for three long years
`Though my age is seventy.

Yes, my name is Chuck Turner
And I'm in a prison cell
Far away in West Virginia
That's where I'm forced to dwell
In a lonely section
Of the penitentiary
And although I'm locked behind the wall
Boston now wants me FREE!"
See also:
http://bfeldman68.blogspot.com/2008/05/ben-davis.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r3FBigdvGc

Thursday, January 06, 2011

Not Ready For Prime Time Class Struggle- Park The Car In Harvard Yard- William Martin’s “Harvard Yard”- A Book Review

Book Review

Harvard Yard, William Martin, Warner Books, New York, 2004


I like a good historical novel as well as the next person but I would not ordinarily read one on the trials and tribulations of college life, even if it is a premier Ivy League college and elite training ground providing the administrative apparatus for the American ruling class, august Harvard University. Except that Harvard University has been a scene of many of my personal political struggles, conferences, debates, marches, demonstrations, and the like, over a long political life. I know where the bodies are buried. So on the advice of someone I respect (who also told me that it was also an informative short course on the history of the university, and it is) I delved into the thing. And I am not sorry I did, although the plot line seemed thin by the end and did not justify the length.

Referring to that plot line it’s about the bird, stupid, (oops, wrong story) no it’s about a book, although not just any book but a play, a sequel to Love’s Lost Labors, supposedly written by one William Shakespeare who gave it to John Harvard in the early 1600s. And from there the adventure takes off as dear John goes to America to bring his talents to that well-known theater-is-the-devil’s-playground Puritan outpost, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Cambridge branch. The fate of the book/play is enmeshed with the tenor of various times (up the near present) from extreme religious intolerance early on to the 1969 Harvard radical minute when the staid decorum of the place went askew and a time that alumni on all sides are still talking about (or talking down and/or around).

Of course, since this is after all a novel, the missing book has to have pursuers, good and evil. On the good side is main character and Harvard alum, rare book seller Peter Fallon (last seen in the Martin novel Back Bay trying to find a rare Paul Revere tea set, apparently the struggle for old stuff never ends), whose efforts rile up many partisans on the other side who wish to find the book merely to sell it to the highest bidder rather than add one more book to the Harvard huge stockpile (some good old boy Harvard alums in the mix, as well, if you can believe that). By the end this now almost four hundred year span as it unravels the mystery of the location of the precious book, however, is just too long a time to keep our undivided attention especially as the plot gets more convoluted as we get closer to the present. Still it was nice to read about those bad boys, the 18th century Mather clerical boys, Increase and Cotton, the Harvard boys who fought for the republic in the American Revolution, and especially those Harvard Unionist boys who laid down their heads for the Republic during the Civil War. Memorial Hall is a fitting tribute to those last named deeds.