tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post5029599155905533487..comments2024-03-29T03:56:08.315-04:00Comments on johnshaplin: Great Blasket by Robert Kanigeljohnshaplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-44198249847358594662012-03-26T20:29:56.349-04:002012-03-26T20:29:56.349-04:00George had never been to America, through all his ...George had never been to America, through all his life never would go, and, according to his daughter Margaret, developed no little antipathy for it. Even by 1926, America had become a symbol to him of all that was too rich, frenetic, and cruel in modern life. Nor was he alone in seeing its vaunted opportunity, its Hollywood glitter, its cars and skyscrapers, as just a cover for a place that ate up immigrants and consumed their souls, its stopwatch-clicking efficiency experts and gang bosses squeezing the life out of them…’it’s a corner of hell where the condemned are forced to go without sleep or rest in their struggle to make a living.’ In America, the good, gentle virtues of rural Ireland stood no chance.johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-16204075759028276432012-03-26T20:29:22.561-04:002012-03-26T20:29:22.561-04:00Numbers matter, It’s not enough to coolly report t...Numbers matter, It’s not enough to coolly report that many Irish immigrated to Australia, Canada, and America. It may be truer to say that, from before the Famine to the time of George Thomson’s visit to Blasket, most Irish immigrated. A letter to the editor of The Irish Statesman in 1927 asked readers inexplicably left unmoved by emigration whether they had ‘ever travelled through the empty lands, empty now even of bullocks? To any sane person a perusal of the last census is terrifying; the evidence afforded to the eyes of a deserted countryside and a swelling group of dingy, decaying towns filled with beggars is overwhelming.’johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.com