FABLES OF THE IRISH INTELLIGENTSIA

Typical prejudices about the Irish slyly skewered to varying effect. In 12 tales set mostly in Galway and frequently narrated by a disaffected academic, Fitzpatrick highlights popular notions of Irish life—the promiscuous priest, the wild poet, the mad professor, and the virgin who loves men's minds more than their bodies—and takes them to their logical excess. In ``A Free Man,'' a professor of Sanskrit ``evades the drudgery of life'' by having a nervous breakdown, which allows him to do whatever he likes (``He doesn't go to faculty meetings, he spends five months of every year with the Maharish Mahesh Yogi....He is the only free man I know''). In ``The Missionary,'' Father Boniface, a priest who loves women too much, is sent as a penance to Manila, where, as usual, he attracts a coterie of women, including Imelda Marcos. Later, back in Ireland, even his imminent death becomes a drawing card for women as he preaches sermons to the hospice ``ladies,'' bringing a ``strange kind of peace.'' O'Sullivan, the would-be poet famous for his imagination, ``finds it very pleasant to be Irish in Paris'' (``O'Sullivan in the Luxembourg Gardens''), but his poetry has an extraordinary effect on the few people who read it. The beautiful student Finnula (``The English Disease''), wanting ``somebody with a mind,'' loses her virginity to her Moral Tutor, a ``civilized, brilliant'' man who even in making love can't ``relinquish the habit of logical and cogent thinking.'' Other fables describe a man who founds a short-lived religion (``Shambala Way''); a divorced man rejected by his family (``Easter Journey''); and a couple who find happiness as ghosts (``An Unusual Couple''). Stylishly witty sendups, though at times both intentions and effects show the strain. Despite it all, still quintessentially Irish.