. Alas, not me: About

About


Tom is a native New Yorker and happy to be one.  His ancestors fled various, decent countries to come here, no doubt under less than ideal circumstances. For the most part they were Irish or German, and it's a fair sign of change that eventually one of the Irish Catholics married one of the German Protestants, and no one disowned anyone. Among Tom's ancestors were: a Canadian who fought in the US Civil War because he believed all men were created equal; teamsters who listened to Eugene Debs speak in Union Square before the Great War and who delivered Dutch Schultz's milk after they came back; a saloon-keeper who went underground with Prohibition; police officers, teachers, nurses, a jobbing Broadway actor; and a heartbroken, homesick grandmother who decided to go home to Ireland, but met a charming, dapper, dancing fellow on the ship, who kept visiting her in Swanlinbar, Co. Cavan, all the way from Co. Wicklow -- quite a journey in those days -- and wooed her back to New York.  This would be their wedding picture. Any looking-glass resemblance between this bit and the events of Colm Tóibín's excellent Brooklyn is entirely coincidental.


Tom grew up on stories and languages, since New York was and is all about stories and languages. Whether it was tales of New York baseball in its days of glory and smatterings of German passed down from his father, or tales of fairy mounds and banshees and bits of Gaelic from his grandmother, not to mention the whole history of Ireland from Cromwell (him) on down, or Latin and French from his mother and stories of the Great Depression and WWII nightly at supper. His family thus gave him a taste for words and languages and history and myths, which he has indulged through decades of studying Latin and Greek and a few other languages, most recently Old English. (Though he can't speak a single one of them.)  In the long ago -- would that be ἐν τῷ πάλαι? -- he wrote about the Late Republic -- the Romans', not ours -- and how we need to approach sources like Plutarch if we want to use them for History.  Now the world grows more hopeless and horrifying. If he has not turned his face to the wall quite yet, he has turned it from History. Once more he attends to Myth, where there is truth; and reads Beowulf and writes mostly about Tolkien. 

7 comments:

  1. Hi Tom, just found your blog and initial impression is that it is brilliant. Have spent a little time reading various posts but resolved to get deeper in over the next few days. Noticed that you seem to posting a little less this year but all I would ask us do not stop!
    Best wishes
    Bob (from UK)

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    1. Thanks, Bob. Glad you like what you see. I'll try to keep things going as long as I have something to say.

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  2. Hello Im am one of the mods over on r/Tolkien & r/MiddleEarth Subreddits (Reddit). I also have a growing Tolkien discord that is respectful and mature, as we respect Tolkien's amazing work along with many of the Tolkien YouTube content creators form many parts of the world and recently some Tolkien bloggers have joined the discord. I wanted to invite anyone who wants to be apart/join the Tolkien Discord! As there are many Tolkien communities sharing their creations and passion with other fellow nerds and connecting with other communities!

    I hope hear from you soon!
    https://discord.gg/KNXKG77

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  3. Hello Tom. I have just discovered your site, courtesy of "A Pilgrim in Narnia" and I am enjoying it. I love the quote "All literature enchants, etc." Is it your own? It has an authentic ring, suggesting backstory and history. Thank you for an interesting site.

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    1. Sorry for the much overdue reply. I am glad you are enjoying the site. I suppose the quote is mostly me. 'The unenchanted life is not work living' is of course a play on Socrates' 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' The '10,000 things' is a Taoist reference to all the things in the world that can distract us from what is important.

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  4. I've just discovered your lovely essays via Eleanor Parker's A Clerk of Oxford (via her Twitter account, more precisely). Do you indulge in Twitter?

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    1. Glad you found me. I am at @alas_not_me

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