Concerned about football's violent nature, one Notre Dame professor asked
Coach Knute Rockne whether the school could compete instead in a more acceptable contact sport, such as hockey.
Rockne replied that the idea was dismissed previously by the university's president on the grounds that "Notre Dame would never adopt a game that put a club in the hands of an Irishman."
Rockne, a Norway native, offered a dispassionate observation of the Irish.
But with St. Patrick's Day approaching, Irish history buffs may also welcome the renewed interest in an icon that shared their ancestry, the late writer James Farrell (1904-1979). Indeed, Farrell: Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy was just released by The Library of America in honor of what would have been Farrell's 100th birthday.
The volume was edited by Pete Hamill and includes Young Lonigan, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan, and Judgment Day. Hamill, a celebrated novelist and newspaper columnist, will be discussing Farrell and his most renowned creation on Tuesday, March 16 at 7 p.m. at Manhattan's Union Square Barnes & Noble while also appearing in Northport in April, but more on that in a moment.
"Studs is obsessed with being recognized," Hamill said, referring to the title character. "You feel like saying to him, 'Live your life. Don't perform it.'"
The trilogy traces Lonigan's path from his World War I-era teenage years to the onset of the Depression and won accolades when first published in the mid-1930s for its realistic portrayal of urban life. Moreover, the narrative tracks closely Farrell's own formative years on Chicago's South Side and evokes a sense of time and place.
Joe Jackson, a Chicago White Sox star, for example, receives a mention in the text as do U.S. presidents, from Woodrow Wilson to Herbert Hoover. Lonigan, not surprisingly, wanted to see New York governor Al Smith, an Irish-Catholic, win the 1928 election against Hoover.
"I actually read the first volume when I was a year older than Lonigan, about 16," Hamill continued, adding that the book convinced him and other aspiring authors that you "didn't have to write about colonies on Mars, like Ray Bradbury. The subject matter is right up the block."
Referring to Farrell's incorporation of daily Irish-American life into his fiction, Hamill stated: "You can't get around the fact that he (Farrell) was there first." Farrell's contemporary successors are writers such as Jimmy Breslin, William Kennedy, and, yes, Pete Hamill.
Long Islanders can also catch Hamill on Thursday, April 29 at 7:30 p.m. at the Northport Public Library. More information on the ticketed event can be obtained by calling 631-261-6930. His visit coincides with Long Island Reads' decision to bestow its annual honor on Hamill's Snow in August.
Long Island Reads, a group of Nassau-Suffolk librarians, selects one book for simultaneous reading by their patrons during National Library Week (April 18-24).
Many other libraries are planning programs centered on Snow in August, as well.
