The Sting and the Twinkle: Conversations with Sean O’Casey ed. by E.H. Mikhail, John O’Riordan (review)

422 LETTERS IN CANADA relationship between Cather's life and art. Again and again he makes luminous passing comments on this topic (eg, pp 17, 74), or includes them in his notes. I have the impression that, while his study is devoted essentially to the explication from various points of view of Cather's writings in themselves, this emphasis is somewhat at odds with his present interests. (Several of the chapters have previously appeared as articles.) A related problem is his tendency to explain inadequately the biographical details he introduces in the course of his commentary (see, for example, the portentous references to the author's 'loss of her Bank Street apartment,' pp 119, 207). Yet MrStouck's diverse approaches to the novels, tales, and poems do serve him well in realizing the primary illustrative aim of his book. If Willa Cather's Imagination is neither a comprehensive nor - as its title would seem to indicate - a synthesizing study, it is a clearheaded and suggestive series of essays in criticism. (WAYNE R. KIME) E.H. Mikhail and John Q'Riordan, editors, The Sting and the Twinkle: Conversations with Sean a'Casey. London and Toronto: Macmillan 1974, xii, 183, $15.95 ane of the impressions left upon the reader of this collection of conversations with Sean a'Casey is the number of times the doorbell to the a'Casey cottage in Totnes must have been rung by people like Allan Chappelon, who were, as the title ofhis recollection suggests, uninvited guests. For the most part the selections in this enjoyable collection are recollections of spontaneous visits to a'Casey's simple abode after he had moved himself and his family to the relative isolation of South Devon. These uninvited guests included the 'highly and the lowly' and it is unfortunate that the 'lowly' who visited a'Casey lacked the middleclass technique of self-expression and have left very little record of conversations which one can speculate must have been highly interesting and entertaining. However, what we do have in The Sting and the Twinkle are conversations and interviews with a'Casey which are full of the deep humanity and mischievous humour of one of Ireland's and the world's great writers . And the selections are both interesting and entertaining. The title, The Sting and the Twinkle, is an aptly chosen one since it reflects the ambiguous and complex nature of a'Casey. When one looks at the titles of a'Casey's early plays the same ambivalence is encountered: The Plough and the Stars, Juno and the Paycock, The Shadow of a Gunman. Indeed a'Casey, in laterlife, called himself by the ambiguous sobriquet of 'The Green Crow.' To risk an outrageous Irish Bull, The Green Crow was a Parrotox; for a'Casey's nature seems to have been a mixture of the sweet and the sour - the sting and the twinkle - and the humanity of the man came in the synthesis of these dialectical opposites. HUMANITIES 423 The book is full of O'Casey's pronouncements on art, drama, life, Ireland, and if one feels in one selection that Q'Casey has given his final 'spoke' on a subject he or she will be jolted to find in a later selection the contrary attitude given. One finds Q'Casey berating and praising in these nicely-chosen excerpts from books, journals, and newspapers and he can be seen lashing and lauding the same person and almost at the same time. Dom Wulstan Phillipson saw O'Casey's fluctuations of temper reflected in his face which Dom Phillipson described as having the austerity of countenance of a prophet but with mischievous, twinkling eyes. The danger in any encounter with 0'Casey lay in taking his obvious sincerity of tone for simplicity of meaning. To one American interviewer, Bosley Crowther, O'Casey said when asked ifIrishmen ever are serious: Serious! Man, I should say so! There's no more sincere people in the world than the Irish. Why, an Irishman would murder his own father or brother over a difference in creed or politics! If you want more evidence of sincerity than that, I don't know where you can find it...