Films About Mentors

Today I finished watching The Wonder Boys, a film made in the year 2000, which stars Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, and Robert Downey Jr. It's a comedy-drama about a professor of creative writing who is also a novelist, one who has been writing his second novel for the past seven years. (People think he has writer's block, but it's quite the opposite; the novel has grown to gargantuan proportions.) It's one of those "one crazy weekend" sort of stories.

It's the first non-horror film I've watched in months, as far as I can remember.

I watched it for two main reasons:

1) It's set in a university, and I'm very drawn to university stories right now.

2) It involves a mentor-student relationship, and I'm especially interested in those right now. In fact, this is why I sought it out (although it had been on my radar for quite a while).

I'm looking for mentor films right now. When I say "student-mentor", I'm not especially talking about formal education. And I'm definitely not talking about the flogged-to-death storyline of an unconventional teacher come to a tough, inner-city school and changing the kids' lives around. To Sir, with Love should have been the last of those. I'm more talking about a mentor relationship between an old master and a young prodigy-- that kind of thing.

I love hearing people talk about their teachers, mentors and inspirations. I find it very inspiring when someone mentions one of their old teacher's sayings, or when they say something like: "I come from the school of such-and-such."

I've always wanted a mentor but I've never had one. I'm forty-nine years old in twelve days so it would be rather ridiculous to have a mentor at my age. But I've always craved a Gandalf or Van Helsing figure look up to.

(Writing this, it occurs to me that I very much did have a mentor in my own father. His influence on me can hardly be overstated and I often quote the things he said. But...a mentor is different from a father.)

I'm even rather envious when I hear people describe their relationship with their spiritual director, their old family doctor, their old teacher, their solicitor, etc. the groundskeeper of their old school or college, etc., when that professional relationship has become a friendship or quasi-friendship. I've never had that.

The Nature of Tradition

I've pretty much stopped commenting on contemporary controversies on this blog. Looking back, I think I probably stopped doing so around the abortion referendum in 2018. It seemed such a definitive defeat that it made engagement with current affairs in Ireland seem rather pointless. (I have kept critiquing political correctness and woke, but that's more socio-politics than current affairs.)

I realize that many of my readers are international, so I don't know how much you've been keeping up with the controversy about the Orange Order and the Garvaghy Road in Northern Ireland. The Protestant (and, let's face it, historically anti-Catholic) Orange Order were given permission to march down a road with a mostly "nationalist" population (whatever that means these days), for the first time in years. In the past, the march had led to huge stand-offs, which once resulted in the utterly horrific murder of three young brothers. This year, once it was announced the parade would go ahead, the nationalists immediately blocked the road, along with many sympathizers. Today the nationalists won the day and the parade was banned again.

As I said, I've stopped commenting on contemporary controversies. I especially avoid doing so in the case of Northern Ireland. As far as I can see, both the "Catholic" and "Protestant", "Irish" and "British" communities are now for the most part secularized and globalized, leaving nothing but a tribal conflict based upon historical grievances. Large-scale immigration is transforming everything anyway, as in the Republic. That's as far as I can see. I might be wrong.

(If there's any exception to the picture I've painted here, it's that the Democratic Unionist Party seems to be the only major party in Ireland with socially conservative positions on anything. How long they will maintain these is another matter. Both of the major nationalist parties have enthusiastically embraced social progressivism, and the Ulster Unionist Party seems to have gone down the same road, albeit with less gusto.)

Regardless of the controversy, and regardless of your stance on the controversy, I think this passage from a tweet posted by Emma Little-Pengelly (the Deputy First Minister, a unionist) is very profound, as regards the point that she is making (the grammar is a bit off, but who cares?): 

All of our traditions come from particular aspects or “sects”. By its very nature, they are “of “something and not “of” something else. They are exclusionary by the very nature of it pertaining to the particular tradition, beliefs or views of some, but it is not exclusionary by experience or engagement. Every religious order or community is exclusionary by doctrine, but not by outreach.

I think is a hugely important point, setting aside its application to the current controversy. Do we want a society with vibrant traditions? If we do, we have to accept that traditions are inherently exclusionary, sectarian and even divisive. Of course, we could have a society without traditions, or where traditions are relegated to private life. But that will be a pretty colourless, rootless, impersonal, atomised sort of society. It seems to me we are travelling in the latter direction.

(I always appreciate comments. But if you're leaving one on this post, please avoid anything inflammatory.)

Everybody Has Some Idea What's Going On

Today I loaned a book about tapestries to a library patron. We had this brief exchange:

Him: My wife is going to see the Bayeux Tapestry so she wants to know a bit more about it.

Me: Oh, is it here?

Him: No, it's on loan to London.

Or words to that effect.

I've been mulling on the exchange since. Think of the assumed shared knowledge it reflects:

1) He assumed I'd heard of the Bayeux Tapestry. (Correct.)

2) He possibly assumed I'd heard that the Bayeux Tapestry was on exhibition in London. (I had actually heard this, but I'd forgotten the details.)

3) I assumed that, when I said "Oh, is it here?", he'd know I didn't mean that it was always here-- in Ireland, or in Dublin.

Everybody has some idea what's going on. The truth of this often strikes me and surprises me.

I mean, there's so much to know. Think of everything that happens in the world in a minute, in an hour, in a day, in a week...all those events piling up, and all the ages of history coming before them. And yet we can have a working assumption that people know what we're talking about when we talk about almost anything.

The Bayeux Tapestry is interesting in this regard. What other tapestry do you know about? I remember, when I was learning about it in school, thinking: "Why are we learning about a tapestry? This is history class." Probably the teacher did explain its importance as a historical source but I just wasn't listening.

Or maybe I'm being too harsh on myself. Maybe I did understand it's importance as a historical source but wondered why we were being taught about the thing itself in such detail.

The depiction of Halley's Comet on the Tapestry has always interested me as well. It seems so unusual and exceptional.

I can remember, in 1986 (when I was nine years old) being confused as to why people were getting so excited about the comet. Weren't there lots of comets? Now I'm very pleased that a pub in Dublin is named the Comet because it was built that year. (Or so I've heard.)

From the Wikipedia Page on Pope Nicholas the Great

In 866, the Bulgar Khan St Boris the Baptiser wrote to Pope Nicholas asking a wide range of questions, one of which being whether or not it was sinful for Christians to wear pants. In response, Nicholas wrote, "For whether you or your women wear or do not wear pants neither impedes your salvation nor leads to any increase of your virtue." The Pope then proceeded with a discussion on the virtue of wearing the "spiritual pants" of a temperate life while restraining disordered passions.

Personally I think I would support the abolition of trousers for both sexes. Women could wear skirts and dresses and men could wear kilts, or maybe robes. I'd love to go about in a robe.

Ivy Day 2026

Yesterday was the one-hundredth and thirty-fifth Ivy Day commemoration in Glasnevin cemetery. I was present, which made it my fourth Ivy Day commemoration.

The ceremony is held to remember Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish political leader who died in 1891.

I'm not particularly a devotee of Parnell. I'm a devotee of traditions. Ivy Day is the sort of low-key, long-lived tradition I find especially appealing. (It's never been interrupted, even during the Covid lockdowns.)

It's very simple. A small group gathers around the tomb, led by a piper who plays a few tunes. There's an introduction from the President of the Parnell Society, and then a dignitary of some kind lays a wreath on the grave. After that, the dignitary makes a short speech, the piper plays the National Anthem (one of the few occasions when I ever hear it played), and everybody troops out. It lasts less than an hour and I don't think I've ever seen more than fifty people present.

I was amazed when someone recently mentioned Ivy Day in a comment on this blog, apparently independent of my mentions of it in the past. Nobody knows about it. I was only alerted to it by the fact that it features in a James Joyce story, "Ivy Day in the Committee Room." (As you can imagine, it was a much bigger deal in the decade after Parnell's death. But even in the story, set in 1902, it's a fading tradition. The story reflects Joyce's usual cynicism towards any ideal other than the celebration of his own supposed genius.)

Yesterday, the dignitary was the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Claire Hanna. The speech was the usual boilerplate about pluralism and change, although there were some references to recent events in the North.

Ivy Day itself is tomorrow, being the anniversary of Parnell's death. The commemoration is held on the Sunday nearest to the anniversary.

Every year, on the day before the commemoration, there's a Parnell Symposium in his country house of Avondale. I've been working up the courage to go for the last few years. The speeches are fine but the inevitable tea-breaks are daunting. I might go next year...

My Idea for a New Word

For my entire life, I've had the ambition of inventing a new word and getting it into general usage.

Today, I found myself thinking about a particular class of words: drink (as in alcohol), sale (as in special promotion), product (as in hair gel), view (as in picturesque vista).

All these words are special (but common) senses of a more generic use of the word. Everybody knows what someone means when they say: "I don't drink". 

My suggestion for a rhetorical term to cover this is: "extrageneric". ("Extra" used in the sense of "extragalactic" or "extra-sensory.")

Update: Sadly, and quite surprisingly, there's already a word for this. It's actually autohyponym. Those linguists, you wouldn't be up to them.

Proverbs About Places

Be warned: there's no real point to this blog post except what it says in the title. I like proverbs about places-- I mean, specific places. I've always had a very specific (pleasurable) aesthetic reaction to them.

Why? I think it might be the combination of universality and specificity. A proverb is something that, in a sense, floats free of time and context. It seems to apply to everybody and everywhere. This is a pleasant atmosphere in itself, but the fact that a place-proverb is tethered to a particular place gives it an added relish.

The most famous place-proverbs are to do with Rome. "Rome wasn't built in a day", "All roads lead to Rome", and (my favourite Roman proverb) "when in Rome, do as the Romans do".

I recently learned that this last one had a Christian origin-- it was something St. Ambrose said to St. Augustine and his mother about fasting on a Saturday, as they did in Rome. I was greatly surprised (and pleased) to learn this.

The mention of Rome in proverbs gives them a certain grandeur. Personally I am a confirmed Europhobe, for the very good reason that I've had Europe, Europe, Europe rammed down my throat by progressives my entire life. And yet the very name "Rome" (even for me) conjures up a deliciously vague impression of centuries of history and art and splendour.

I first encountered the proverb "All roads lead to Rome" in a book of proverbs when I was sixteen, and I'm still not sure what it means. It seems to mean different things to everybody. But it has an atmosphere of excitement and of broadening horizons and ever-widening thoroughfares-- very like the line "where many paths and errands meet" from Tolkien's poem "The Road Goes On and Ever On").

Proverbs that allude to Rome are especially potent (by way of contrast) in these drizzly and misty British Isles, which have been blissfully cut off from the mainstream of Yerpan history. They let me momentarily indulge in the glamour of the continent, while reassuring me that we're protected from all that by the silver sea that serves as a moat defensive to a house against the envy of less happier lands.

Of course, not all place-proverbs refer to Rome.

"Sussex won't be druv" is a proverb I've encountered in books, although I've never actually heard anyone say it in real life.

Ireland has "That beats Banagher" or "That bangs Banagher". The full version is "That beats Banagher, and Banagher beats the devil." Banagher is a small town in county Offally, in the east of Ireland. (It's been in the news recently because of a tragic accident, and that's what got me thinking of place-proverbs.)

I know this used to be a fairly popular proverb in Ireland, because I've encountered it used in old books. Today it mostly seems remembered because it's the most famous thing about Banagher. Or perhaps because it's such a memorable phrase. But it does make me wonder...why does this inconsequential place get immortalized in a proverb? Why did this proverb get remembered?

It seems to be the only Irish place-proverb that's survived. This interesting Irish Times article lists quite a few more, but I've never heard of any of them before. Elsewhere, I found a reference to "fighting like Kilkenny cats", which has sort of survived...at least, most Irish people know that the Kilkenny hurling team are nicknamed "the Cats" and many of us vaguely remember the story about two Kilkenny cats that fought each other until only their tails were left.

Donnybrook (an area in Dublin city) has been immortalized in the term "a donnybrook", meaning a fight-- it seems to bettter-known in America than Ireland. So that's proverbial, but not a proverb. Another Dublin suburb, Sallynoggin, was frequently invoked in my childhood, during neighbourhood kickabouts, when someone or other would shout: "On the Sallynoggin!" or "on the Sally!". As you can probably guess, it referred to heading the ball. But this isn't really a proverb either.

Having said all that about the paucity of Irish place-proverbs, I've just realized that I can't think of very many well-known proverbs about places in Britain, either. There's "Sussex won't be druv", which I've never heard actually used, and there's "Carrying coals to Newcastle", which I certainly have heard used on innumerable occasions. What about "sending [somebody] to Coventry?". I actually used this phrase earlier today, but it seems more of a phrase than a proverb. OK, I'm turning to the internet now..

(Please imagine light orchestral music for a few moments.)

Well, I ran an internet search, and all I really got (aside from carrying coals to Newcastle) were more idioms like "ship-shape and Bristol fashion" or "more front than Brighton". It seems reasonable to insist that a proverb has to be a whole sentence and can't just be a phrase. So maybe Ireland isn't doing so bad after all.

What about America, then? The only one that comes to mind is "Virginia is for lovers", and that's a marketing slogan of very recent provenance. "I'm from Missouri-- show me!" (or its shortened form "I'm from Missouri") possibly qualifies as a proverb. (It's used as a general expression of scepticism--- I first encountered it in the nineties TV miniseries of The Stand.)

And aside from those, I can't think of any others. Even New York, which is presumably the modern Rome, hasn't given birth to a single proverb that I can think of. (Yes, there's "the city that never sleeps", but that's more of a description.) The internet gives me this one: "A bad day in New York is better than a good day anywhere else." Well, all I can say is I've never heard this until now.

Wait! I've just thought of another one. "How will it play in Peoria?" Originally a showbiz proverb that came to be used more generally, asking how something (a show, a policy, etc.) will be received by Middle America. It's all I actually know about Peoria, Illinois. It's generally described as a figure of speech rather than a proverb, but it fits my definition.

And then there's "Don't call it Frisco", which I suppose counts as a proverb.

Really straining my brains, I can come up with "When Boston sneezes, Maine gets a cold". (I had to check to make sure I'd got it right. I hadn't. I thought it was: "When New England sneezes, America gets a cold.")

I've just done a quick internet search for other American place-proverbs, but I didn't find any that I would consider well-known. "As goes Maine, so goes the nation" rings a bell, but only a faint bell.

So much for Rome, Ireland, Britain, and the good old USA. But what about the rest of the world?

The first city that comes to mind is Jerusalem. Surely there should be a proverb that mentions Jerusalem? But I can't think of any-- although I have a vague sense I'm forgetting an obvious one. C.S. Lewis uses the phrase "Every road out of Jerusalem is a road into Jerusalem"-- or it might be the other way round-- but, though this sounds like it should be a proverb, I'm pretty sure it's not.

I can't think of any proverbs that mention Paris. Lots of phrases, lines from movies, and famous titles. But no proverbs.

And, after much racking of my brains, the only other place-proverb I can think of-- from anywhere in the whole wide world-- is: "He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him." (Which I've always considered a rather stupid proverb.)

So how about it? What am I missing? What place-proverbs do you know and love, or just know?