Lifelong learner of Irish, fascinated by languages-- Old/Middle English and Latin of course; Spanish, Welsh, Hebrew, Manx, Czech, Arabic, Hungarian: if never that skilled at retaining more than scattered nouns and cognates. Certainly dazes and confuses my family, friends, students. Food: fish & chips; oatmeal; mince or blackbottom pie. Digestive biscuits. Bavarian pretzels. Drink: Murphy's dry stout (not merely for its name--it's less bitter than Guinness) or Mackeson's sweeter stout. Bold breakfast tea with milk & sugar, long brewed with loose leaves. Ballygowan sparkling water.
God. Francis & Clare of Assisi. "La Malinche." Amergin. Hypatia of Alexandria. Queen Medb. Sam Beckett. Dennis Potter. Primo Levi. Virginia Dare, first European child born to colonists at Jamestown. Eamon de Valera. Alice Kyteler, who in 1324 fled Ireland after being accused of witchcraft. "Lola Montez." Charles Lummis. John Scotus Eriugena. Nora Barnacle. That hapless girl who was left behind off the Santa Barbara coast on "The Island of the Blue Dolphins." My birth mother, wherever she may be now.
Always The Fall; Buzzcocks; Magazine; Pavement; Loud Family & Game Theory/ Pogues/ older REM; much of what passed for alternative/ college/ post punk twenty-five years ago today; same goes for much punk/ pop/ new wave subtract five to ten years prior; shoegazers; old and neo-psychedelia; Horslips; The Who and Kinks late 60's; Yardbirds; early Fairport & Steeleye Span; Hawkwind's pre-'75 phase; Spacemen 3; Velvets; New Zealand 80s-90s the "Dunedin Sound" on Flying Nun (Xpressway's South Island "crumbling guitar" honorably mentioned) label rock; Irish folk & sean-nos; droning, pipes and tin-whistles (the latter of which I try to play, "mediocre" in elder son's opinion.) 1000s of cd's/lp's more.
(For content): 'Decalogue.' (For form): 4 classic faves: 'Citizen Kane', 'Sunset Blvd.', 'Some Like It Hot'. "M". For brave if flawed attempts to combine form & content: Terry Malick's films "Badlands," "Thin Red Line," "The New World." Philip Groening's nearly three-hour documentary meditation on time's silent experience at the Grand Chartreuse hermitage: "Die Grosse Stille {Into Great Silence}."
Dodgers baseball, UCLA Bruins, Irish national football team if they ever make the Cup qualifiers again.
Joyce's 'Ulysses'; Beckett's 'trilogy'; Genesis (JPS/ Sarna commentary); 'Black List Section H' (Francis Stuart); 'Nine Roads to Jordan' (Denis Johnston); Tim Robinson's Aran volumes; John McGahern; Kafka; Borges; Liam O Flaherty; Ernie O'Malley's 'There Will Be Another Day'; Primo Levi's memoirs; Alisdair Gray's 'Lanark'; Dos Passos' USA trilogy; Shulamith Hareven's 'Thirst' trilogy. Henry Glassie's 'Passing the Time in Ballymenone' exemplifies passion wedded to scholarship. Not to forget Michel Houellebecq' s maddeningly thoughtful, misanthropic pisstakes-as -prose. Plus requisite desert island editions: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Sterne, Swift, Qur'an, Torah, Decameron, Dante (U of Cal edition with Moser's illustration s & Mendelson's translation) ; the Welsh Mabinogi; Field Day anthologies of Irish literature; Old English poems (Crossley-Holland's Oxford collection in a pinch for you non-medievalists!); Book of Job/Psalms (Stephen Mitchell's translations ). Recent reads I liked: Niall Griffiths, "Stump" & "Sheepshagger"; Magnus Mills [publisher blurbs him as 'contemporary master of the dystopian working-class fable'!]: the first three of his four novels; Michel Faber's novels. Yossi Klein Halevi's ecumenical itinerary in Israel; Hugo Hamilton's fiction & memoirs; Jochym Topol's Czech novel "City Sister Silver"; Tim Mackintosh-Smith's Muslim travelogues. J.F. Powers' diocesan realm of Great Plains, not forgetting Ostergothenberg! John Banville's "Prague Pictures." Ken Bruen's Galway noir. George Saunders' stories. Seán Ó Riordáin's Gaelic and Ciaran Carson's Belfast poems.
My long-suffering spouse and our two endearingly irritating sons. My dearly departed Airedale, Andrew. Nobody's perfect, but Thomas Merton, Dennis Potter, JRR Tolkien and Primo Levi all have touched me particularly in their aspirations and foibles and nobility amidst suffering.