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tlkoehn's review
5.0
As a first-year folklore student at Indiana University Bloomington, I met Henry Glassie before I fully knew who he was, let alone read this book. It was a lightly overwhelming experience, as he asked me about myself & how I'd ended up there, & I slowly realized he was a man who had worked with & studied many of the people & media that had inspired my fascination with the elusive concept of "folklore" in the first place. I was supposed to be on my way to a meeting halfway across campus at the time. Needless to say, I was late to that meeting.
Stars was, in many ways, a perfect book to read that first year: a rumination, after some thirty years or so, on Glassie's field work in Ireland & a lengthy, accomplished career in folklore. The work paints vivid, lively pictures of these "Stars," characters whose actions & words were the talk of the town, & whose knowledge of the stories & history served as Glassie's guide, constituting what he calls the "Epic of Common Life." Through the stories, we catch a glimpse, not just of the people, Hugh Nolan, Ellen Cutler, Peter & Joe Flanagan, & the rest, but of their worldviews: the need for neighborliness through the toil of everyday life (despite political & religious differences), the inevitability & fruitlessness of violent struggle, not to mention Nolan's view of history as something perceived best in terms of space, a non-exclusionary metric, rather than time, where it's easy to lose context & leave out all but one perspective. In other words, to Nolan's (& thus Glassie's) view, the larger the scope of a historical narrative, the less true it is.
A deeply personal book, we come to care for each Star as Glassie describes them, & his relationships with them. & when they die, we mourn with him. He breathes life into Ballymenone from its introduction with the flow of the Arney River (the description of which reminds one of Joyce's riverrun into Dublin that opens Finnegans Wake), through the stories & people that constitute its Epic, before tying it all together with a reflection on an evening at a bar in Swanlibar, where the Troubles were on the mind, but discussed only through the revival of a song long-thought to be forgotten, unifying those present in a story of nonviolent resistance. This, Glassie says, is folklore.
The book is written in an approachable manner, & one doesn't need an existing background in folklore to understand it. It's also not as long as you expect it to be.
Stars was, in many ways, a perfect book to read that first year: a rumination, after some thirty years or so, on Glassie's field work in Ireland & a lengthy, accomplished career in folklore. The work paints vivid, lively pictures of these "Stars," characters whose actions & words were the talk of the town, & whose knowledge of the stories & history served as Glassie's guide, constituting what he calls the "Epic of Common Life." Through the stories, we catch a glimpse, not just of the people, Hugh Nolan, Ellen Cutler, Peter & Joe Flanagan, & the rest, but of their worldviews: the need for neighborliness through the toil of everyday life (despite political & religious differences), the inevitability & fruitlessness of violent struggle, not to mention Nolan's view of history as something perceived best in terms of space, a non-exclusionary metric, rather than time, where it's easy to lose context & leave out all but one perspective. In other words, to Nolan's (& thus Glassie's) view, the larger the scope of a historical narrative, the less true it is.
A deeply personal book, we come to care for each Star as Glassie describes them, & his relationships with them. & when they die, we mourn with him. He breathes life into Ballymenone from its introduction with the flow of the Arney River (the description of which reminds one of Joyce's riverrun into Dublin that opens Finnegans Wake), through the stories & people that constitute its Epic, before tying it all together with a reflection on an evening at a bar in Swanlibar, where the Troubles were on the mind, but discussed only through the revival of a song long-thought to be forgotten, unifying those present in a story of nonviolent resistance. This, Glassie says, is folklore.
The book is written in an approachable manner, & one doesn't need an existing background in folklore to understand it. It's also not as long as you expect it to be.
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