Interview with Irish Trivia Writer Robert Sullivan

Author Robert Sullivan is crazy about Irish culture, and seeks to share his passion with everyone. From his blog to his new book The Great Little Book of Fun Things You Probably Don't Know About Ireland!, Robert spends his time learning and teaching all about his ancestral homeland. He sent me a copy to review on my blog, then very kindly took a great deal of time to answer some questions about Irish culture and his book.

What is your background?

I grew up in the New York area in a family that was a mix of German-Americans and Irish-Americans. Lots of fireworks! I think I got interested in Irish culture at an early age because of my Irish grandfather. He came over to the U.S. just before World War I, and was a truly unique individual. He didn't fit the typical stereotype of an Irish immigrant - didn't drink much at all, for example - but he had this wonderful sense of humor. When my grandfather was 95 he was still more fun to be with than just about anybody else. He was a modestly educated guy who worked his whole life with his hands, but who had an intelligence and a sneaky wisdom about him that I still look to for inspiration, even though he's been gone for many years now. (FYI he was from Kerry.)

He stimulated an interest in me about where he came from, which is ironic because he never had the slightest desire to return to Ireland. He saw it as a totally impoverished place no one would ever want to visit, which I suppose it was when he left (his wife, my grandmother, held exactly the same view).

I first visited Ireland, and the region my grandfather came from, in 1975 when I was going to school in England. It's hard to describe how backward it was then. I stayed with my grandfather's step-sister, the only one of his eight siblings who remained in Ireland. She was quite elderly and was, in truth, a bit behind the rest of Ireland even then. She lived in a house with no running water, no electricity, and one picture of the Pope on the wall. She was so used to hearing the heavily accented speech of the people in her area that she was completely unable to understand my New York English for a good day and a half. I could go on and on about my aunt Maggie, but suffice it to say that meeting her was like meeting someone from a different century. I absolutely adored her.

I spent two years in Europe during college and went to dozens and dozens of places. But nothing came close to the intensity of my visit to Ireland. I ran back there nine months later, as soon as I could, and had another great visit. I would go out to a pub with Maggie's nephew Pether (that's the right spelling) and it would be filled with men all wearing the same black cap. They would listen intently to each other and agree by saying "ooooh definite." My grandfather's home town was still a truly remote place then, and it seemed like a kind of wonderland to me.

Then my college in Europe phase ended, and I didn't return for a long long time. Flash forward to 1999, when my wife and I decided to take our kids, aged 9 and 13 to Ireland. This was actually before the true force of the Celtic Tiger had hit. But it was clear from the moment I drove out of Shannon that the place had changed - a lot! The landscape was covered willy-nilly with houses, most of which I found spectacularly ugly, and things seemed much more bland and homogenized, more like the United States.

Initially, I felt quite disappointed. It seemed like the Ireland I had enshrined in my memory was gone. But over the two weeks we spent there I started to realize that under the glossy, modern surface, there was a certain eccentricity which I have come to see as the true culture of the place. That's what got me hooked on it all over again. It's a subtle thing that I think you have to dig a bit to find, and it's become a sort of hobby to me learning more and more about it ever since. I think learning more about Ireland keeps me feeling connected to it, which is something I like.

Not long after I got back in 1999, I started a newsletter for Irish-Americans called "The Irish Letter." It was fun but the print publishing business was starting to weaken at the time, so I eventually turned it into a website called ireland-fun-facts.com. It's full of Irish proverbs, quotations, travel stories, basic facts, odd news stories from the Irish press; a whole lot of different stuff. I always look for things that seem indicative of the particular view of life Irish people have, that's a bit different than that of Americans. Some of it is quite serious but a good deal of it is pretty humorous. The site basically makes zero money but it attracts quite a large number of visitors, so I thought it might be interesting to package the kind of information I've collected there into a book. Hence The Great Little Book of Things You Probably Don't Know About Ireland.

I won't torture you any more - that's actually the abbreviated version!

What was your purpose in writing this book?

Well, two things mainly. I think, and I've had this confirmed by lots of readers both in the US and in Ireland, that I have a slightly different viewpoint on Irish culture than a lot of Americans. I really don't go for the typical shamrock and leprechaun imagery that exists tons of movies and books here. What I like is the more subtle humor, and the powerful traditionalism, that I think exists under Ireland's modern veneer. It isn't always pretty, but I find it very engaging. I really enjoy writing and talking about it all, and getting reactions back about it all from people. It's also given me reason to make some nice friends over in Ireland.

Second, and this may sound a bit corny, I would like to try and make Americans who have this heritage hear their own Irish voice a bit more. If you've got it inside but you haven't engaged in your own Irishness, I think you're missing a real potential pleasure in life.

What is it about Ireland that is so fascinating to the world, particularly Americans?

For an American visitor, I think it's an easy place to like because they speak English, the countryside is extremely beautiful, and the people have an essential friendliness toward Americans. But I think that when you visit Ireland, you're also sensitized immediately to a culture there that's fantastic. Everyone who visits Ireland comes back telling a great story, but it's never about the place they went to visit - it's about something unexpected that happened to them on the way to the place they were going to visit. There's just something capricious about the place, and the Irish people are so essentially social and gregarious (and also a bit nutty).

Generally, I would also say that the world has just always been touched by the written and musical culture of Ireland. There are too many great Irish writers to even name and the music, both the traditional and the more modern, seems endlessly popular. (I once interviewed Irish guitarist John Doyle and he told me he can never understand why Irish traditional music is quite so popular everywhere he goes). I think it's worth keeping in mind, however, that the Irish government spends a huge amount of money to preserve this culture and to project it worldwide. There's a real lesson for the American government there, if you ask me. A lot of people around the world have a general feeling that there's something wonderful and attractive about Ireland. That's not a complete accident - they put a great deal of effort into nurturing that idea.

Why do women go weak in the knees for the Irish brogue?

I think you would have to ask a woman that. But I can tell you that it's not just women who go crazy for it. People in business generally are instantly warmed and disarmed by an Irish accent.

What is your favorite thing about Ireland?

Well, the people - the uniqueness about them that hasn't changed. But also their persistent lack of awareness that there's something special about their country and about them. They're really quite clueless about it and it's very charming.

How many times have you visited?

Five times.

Does your family share your passion, or do they just go along for the ride?

I have a lot of people in my family who are interested, but I'm sort of the cutting edge. My kids absolutely loved Ireland and would like to go back, and my wife likes it, though I think she's had her fill of Irish music at this point!

Do you speak Gaelic?

I'm afraid not - my grandfather spoke it a bit. I believe we're supposed to call it "Irish" and not "Gaelic" these days!

What were some of your favorite, most random facts that you uncovered?

I love all the stuff about Celtic Halloween, an originally Irish holiday that was a lot more serious and mystical than its modern version.

Lots of the really old stuff is great. I like the tradition of handfasting:

Couples in Ireland could marry legally on St. Brigid's Day (February 1st) in Teltown, County Meath, as recently as the 1920's by simply walking towards each other. If the marriage failed, they could "divorce'" by walking away from each other at the same spot, on St. Brigid's day the following year.

It's just one of many, many odd traditions of the old agrarian culture of Ireland, which was obsessed with marriage. I also love the fact that old Irish Brehon laws allowed a man to divorce his wife for "making a mess of things."

But I love all the modern stuff too, like the fact that people in Ireland are up in arms because the EU might make it illegal to put rings in barmbrack cakes for safety reasons; or the fact that people there seem oddly conflicted about whether or not they should be respectful of faeries.

On a more serious note, I find it interesting that Aran Island sweater weaves were originally devised to help families identify fisherman who had died at sea when they ultimately washed up on shore.

The quotations are great because they give you a sense of the characters there. I love this one about Charles Haughey, a politician who died last year: "He was a one-off, a unique figure of medieval power, intrigue and complexity, surrounded by mystery and money, and protected by populism and cleverness and the well-timed one-liner."

That's a hard question to answer because I could give you five different answers tomorrow!

How did you go about your research?

Beyond creating a great many articles with Irish and Irish-American writers I have hired, I am just a sponge for anything about Ireland on the Internet, in the newspapers or anywhere else. Facts about Ireland come up in all kinds of places because the Irish diaspora is everywhere. Sometimes I think everyone is Irish - even Obama has Irish heritage. Of course, I also just picked up lots of other things from Irish-American friends and my own grandparents.

I think that over the past five years, the Internet and the Irish newspapers have been my best sources. On the Internet you find that there's a certain group of quotations, proverbs and facts that you find repeated on many websites. They all just copy from each other. But that if you go deeper you can find an unending supply of more obscure things. This week I came across the fact that Coney Island in New York may be named after a place in Ireland. I never knew that.

I enjoy the Irish newspapers, not so much because of the things they say, but because of the odd things they choose to write about. There was an article in a major paper there this week about how one farmer's hen laid an egg more than twice as large as all his other hens have ever done. I just love the fact that a story like that can still make the papers there.

What are some of the truest stereotypes of the Irish people?

That they are very outgoing, that they're great talkers, and that they love the craic of a social gathering. I would be the first to admit that they also have an inexplicable charm to which I'm not immune.

What myths about the Irish need to be debunked?

It seems to me they have already successfully debunked the myth that they're not very smart at business. The two things that surprise me as an American are that A) they are a lot less formal about religion, social standing and many other things than Irish-Americans are, and B) that the openness they show is a bit more complex than it seems on the surface. As someone who has hired many Irish writers to do articles (on my newsletter) I can tell you that I've consistently found that along with their friendliness, there's a subtle reserve about them. I cannot tell you how many times I've had to tell my Irish writers to go ahead and express their inner reaction or feeling to what they were writing about. They absolutely do not want to do it. You can joke with them all night long about many things, but so often when you ask them to tell you how they feel about something, you hit a real stone wall. It's an irony that I find completely fascinating, given how many great Irish writers and poets there have been, and how much unadulterated sadness pours out of their music.

The Irish gave us Guinness and Bailey's - put the two together for an Irish Car Bomb - what is your poison?

I'm straight as an arrow toward the Guinness. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a dinosaur in that regard as young Irish people seem to be turning away from it, but I love the stuff.

How does St. Patrick's Day here differ from in Ireland?

I haven't actually been in Ireland on St. Patrick's Day, but I know that a big parade and celebration on this holiday is a relatively recent development in Ireland. For many decades, St. Patrick's Day was much more of an American than an Irish celebration.

The Irish tend to hold on to their traditions when still in Europe. Do Irish-Americans tend to still hold fast to these traditions, or do they get watered down Stateside?

I think they get changed a bit with successive generations. I would say, as I mentioned above, that my mother was much more rigid and formal about religion (Catholic) than her parents were. I actually think that's quite a typical distinction between a lot of European immigrants and their first American-born generation of kids. Then I think that the grandchildren like myself tend to revert to a strong traditionalism about Ireland. I think it's because it all seems far enough away to be more alluring. People in my parent's generation visited Ireland, but while they liked it I think they also were caught a little off guard by how foreign it was to them in the sixties. I found that foreignness attractive.

Where are some of the strongest Irish-American populations?

I think it's in the major cities, particularly Boston, New York and Chicago, where there are tons of Irish-Americans who reinforce the culture.

What are some of the best Irish-American festivities?

I personally enjoy things like Irish music (I'm seeing Karan Casey on Monday night), reading Irish writers and doing personal things like learning to play the Irish fiddle. I guess I prefer a more intimate way of experiencing the culture, but the truth is that doing any of those things brings you in contact with Irish people and others who share an interest in the culture. Irish music is really great, because you can go and see some of the best singers and players in the world, and in many cases have a beer with them at the bar afterward.

People often confuse the Irish and the Scottish, particularly movie actors. How can we distinguish between the two? Is there "animosity" between Irish and Scottish?

Not that I've ever seen - I think they have a sense of togetherness from both being pulverized by the British for so long. There is, however, a good deal of animosity at times between people in Northern Ireland and those from The Republic.

Your son has a band called A Million Years. Please tell us about them.

I would characterize them as melodic rock. My son is two years out of college and he got involved last year with the group, which is led by an excellent songwriter and singer. I can see from their performances that they generate a very good level of excitement, and that they're building a good audience. Naturally, they're all masters of the whole social media universe. My son is the lead guitarist and I have to say I am extremely impressed with his dedication to it, particularly given that he has a good day job as well. You can listen to a few songs by them here: http://www.myspace.com/amillionyearsmusic

Have you ever written any other books, or have any plans to create some more?

I am really just learning about publishing books for the first time so I don't have any specific plans. I might do a little book of just Irish quotations since people seem to really enjoy them. I wouldn't mind doing something about Scotland, as I have some Scottish heritage as well, or maybe something about broader Celtic culture. I hope so - it's fun digging into things like this.

Where can readers find out more about you?

I don't really know - they should just write and ask me anything they want to know I guess.

How can readers contact you?

publisher@irishletter.com

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Just that I love feedback and suggestions for the book - I would like to update it every year going forward. I have no problem being corrected now and then as well!

Thank you so much for your time and for bringing the Irish culture closer to home!