ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 14, 1996 TAG: 9611140005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
Dublin, N.H., is "nauseatingly pretty."
Dublin, Ohio, is "a yuppie suburb." Dublin, Calif., is "brain dead."
And Dublin, Md.?
An "epicenter of total nothingness."
Thank God for Dublin, Va.
The Pulaski County hamlet gets off easy in Joseph O'Connor's "Sweet Liberty: Travels in Irish America," a funny but scorching account of American towns named after the Irish capital.
O'Connor is a novelist and newspaper columnist from Dublin, Ireland. In this country he is much less well-known than his sister, Sinead - the slick-pated rock singer who once tore up a picture of the pope on ``Saturday Night Live.''
But he's working on it. Two years ago, O'Connor came to the U.S. to visit all the American Dublins he could find, as well as a few big cities, and write a book about the trip.
"Sweet Liberty," published recently by Roberts Rinehart, has received mixed reviews. To the San Francisco Chronicle it was "jaunty and irreverent." The Boston Globe found it "long-winded."
Others have taken offense at O'Connor's sometimes caustic brand of humor. "Irish author dumps on Dublin," read one September newspaper headline in Dublin, Calif. - the town O'Connor described as "brain dead" and lacking in cultural amenities. A chamber of commerce official quoted in the story called O'Connor "very misinformed."
In a recent telephone interview, O'Connor, speaking from his home in Dublin, Ireland, said the reaction to his book has been "generally good. I think most people are able to see that it is only poking fun."
He pokes plenty at Southwest Virginia - beginning with the Roanoke Regional Airport, where he arrived from New York City in the fall of 1994.
After his flight here in an "absolutely tiny" commuter plane, O'Connor found himself in an almost empty airport terminal at night.
And there, in "Sweet Liberty," the fun begins. Fresh off the plane, O'Connor asks a security guard if there is any place around where he can cash a traveler's check. "He laughed uproariously, as though having such a facility in an airport would be like having a condom machine in a convent," O'Connor writes.
The Irishman finds his way to an airport shop, where a female clerk calls him "Sugar." Later, in the airport lobby, O'Connor finds a display with direct telephone lines to local hotels - but most of them are disconnected. He then waits an hour for a taxi - nary a one shows up.
Finally, O'Connor decides to rent a limousine - "a bit pricey," he writes, "but I figured I had no choice." The woman minding the limousine desk whistles for the driver - who hobbles up on crutches.
O'Connor insisted to a reporter the story about the limousine driver was true. "The guy could hardly walk - but he drove the limo."
Three limousine services that offer airport service denied they have ever had a driver who used crutches.
"We wouldn't have allowed it," said Bill Roberts, of the Roanoke Airport Limousine Service. In addition to safety reasons, he said, drivers often have to help with luggage. "It just wouldn't be possible" on crutches, Roberts said.
As for the rest of the airport episode, Mark Courtney, deputy executive director for the Airport Commission, said there was once a Dominion Bank branch in the airport, but it closed. He said the airport does have an automatic teller machine, and that most airport businesses accept traveler's checks.
But he declined to take it all too seriously.
"He [O'Connor] is trying to take shots for humor purposes. Typically, I would imagine [humor writers] tend to exaggerate a bit."
Certainly, "Sweet Liberty" contains plenty of blarney. Both O'Connor's limousine driver and, later, his waiter at a restaurant near Christiansburg speak with comic book Southern accents. ("Yevah bin in Vurjinny beefowuh?" the driver allegedly asks O'Connor as they are speeding down Interstate 81).
His account of his wanderings in the New River Valley, meanwhile, seems hopelessly confused. At one point O'Connor sets out to walk from Blacksburg to Dublin - a good 20 miles. By the description of his journey, however, he seems to have started in Christiansburg, not Blacksburg. In any event, he ends up in Radford by mistake.
Later, in Dublin at last, O'Connor meets a young woman he says attends the veterinary college in Radford (in fact, the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine is in Blacksburg).
At another point in the narrative, O'Connor finds himself in a "cafe" in Dublin - where two middle-aged waitresses named Alice and Myrna dance between orders to the music of Little Richard on the jukebox.
Sure, they do.
That O'Connor was, indeed, in Dublin is corroborated by librarian Sue Barton - who recalled showing an Irish fellow some local history books some time back.
"I remember someone who came in and said, 'I'm from the real Doo-blin,''' Barton recalled. "He was all smiles. Very polite, gentlemanly, pleasant. I didn't have a chance to talk to him at any length."
In "Sweet Liberty," O'Connor writes of asking the Dublin librarian (unnamed) for books about the connection between Dublin, Va., and Dublin, Ireland. She "smiled dolefully and said that there wasn't much of a visible Irish influence on the town anymore, but the history was pretty interesting."
Barton said that was her, all right. She was unaware that her visitor had written a book - much less put her in it. She said the library does not have a copy of "Sweet Liberty," but she plans to order one now.
So what did O'Connor have to say about Virginia's Dublin?
This is the writer, after all, who called the City Hall in Dublin, Ind., "a building the size of your average public toilet."
Who said Dublin, Calif., is peopled by "victims of advanced neurosurgery gone terribly wrong."
Apparently O'Connor found Dublin, Va., (pop. 2,012) not nearly so awful as the rest - although sadly out of touch with its roots.
"I don't know what I was expecting," O'Connor writes, "but Dublin, Virginia, looked just like any other small American town. Sentimental and crummy, I know, but I would have actually liked to see a shamrock or a tricolour [flag] somewhere, and I didn't. This town seemed to have forgotten its own past."
Dublin Mayor Benny Keister was not offended by the passage.
In fact, asked if there was any trace of Ireland left in Dublin, Va., Keister said, "You know, I'm not sure there ever was."
Told that O'Connor had found mention in a local library book of some Irishmen who once lived in a shanty they called "New Dublin," the mayor was not convinced. Keister said the town might have got the name "Dublin" simply because at one point it was growing very rapidly.
He said a local expression goes: "Dublin's doubling every day."
In any event, compared with the abuse O'Connor heaps on other towns, his criticism of this Dublin is positively tame.
O'Connor told this reporter his most powerful impression of the area actually came from the Blue Ridge Mountains.
"You forget that there are these big, very empty, beautiful places in the United States that still have something of the wilderness about them," he said.
He also said no one should take his book too seriously.
"Obviously, it's meant to be a funny book and it does poke some fun."
Or, as his publicist, Shelley Daigh, at Roberts Rinehart put it:
"There's a lot of fiction in there."
LENGTH: Long : 138 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. The cover of Joseph O'Connor's "Sweet Liberty:by CNBTravels in Irish America" (that's the author on the front) 2. and a
postcard from the "real" Dublin (the one in Ireland). 3. GENE
DALTON/Staff. Downtown Dublin in Pulaski County: It "looked just
like any other small American town," Joseph O'Connor writes. color.