Shanty Irish

by Jim Tully, John Sayles (Foreword), Paul J. Bauer (Introduction)

Memories of an Irish-American growing up log-shack poor in small-town Ohio “Shanty Irish is a window, cracked and soiled, into a time and a place and a people before the moving pictures became an American obsession, people who had to create their own dreams, invent their own stories, and find escape from hopeless lives in hard liquor or the cold comfort of a promised Hereafter.” ―from the foreword by John Sayles Jim Tully was an American writer who enjoyed critical acclaim and commercial success in the 1920s and ’30s. A former circus laborer, hobo, and professional boxer, his rags-to-riches career may qualify him as the greatest long shot in American literature. Following the death of his mother, Tully was sent from his home in St. Marys, Ohio, to an orphanage in Cincinnati. After his time at the orphanage, the young Tully spent six years as a vagabond, riding the rails and working for a small circus. He left the road and settled in Kent, Ohio, in 1907, working odd jobs while focusing on his new interest―writing. After getting a few pieces published in local papers, Tully returned to the road in 1912, eventually settling for good in Hollywood. He worked for Charlie Chaplin and later became one of the first reporters to cover Hollywood. His honest depictions of film stars and directors earned him the reputation as the most feared man in Hollywood. In addition to the celebrity pieces, Tully wrote numerous books, including Shanty Irish (1928). A hard-edged mixture of hilarious and heartbreaking memories, Tully’s autobiographical Shanty Irish digs deep into the soil of his native Ohio to show what life was like in the late nineteenth century for a poor Irish-American family. Within the covers of this acclaimed work, we meet the author’s father, also named Jim Tully, “a gorilla built” ditchdigger whose stooped shoulders carry “the inherited burdens of a thousand dead Irish peasants.” We meet his mother, Biddy, a “woman of imagination” who “had all the moods of April.” We meet his uncle, ruthless John Lawler, who was tried, convicted, and sentenced to fifteen years in the Ohio penitentiary for stealing horses. And we meet his grandfather, Old Hughie Tully, “born with the gift of words”―“capable of turning death into an Irish wake and pouring liquor down the throat of the corpse.” Old Hughie, “never without a tale to tell,” emerges as the most vividly drawn character in a book packed with unforgettable characters. Tully’s most deeply personal book, Shanty Irish had a profound impact on readers and other leading American writers of the 1920s. “Shanty Irish is a chunk of real life,” wrote Upton Sinclair. “It made me feel human and humble, which is good for anybody.” H. L. Mencken said, “ In Shanty Irish, it seems to me, he has gone far beyond any of his work of the past. The book is not only brilliantly realistic; it also has fine poetic quality.” Indeed, a book soaked in mud and whiskey, Shanty Irish is at turns brutal, sentimental, ironic, lyrical, humorous, and tragic.

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1928

About the author

Jim Tully was an American vagabond, pugilist, and writer. He enjoyed critical and commercial success as a writer in the 1920s and 1930s.

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this but it wasn’t as enjoyable to me as Tully’s Beggars of Life.

I will read more Tully but this one was only a three star read for me.

[Arjadi · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Jim Tully's shanty Irish are not the sentimental, winking, top o' the morning Barry Fitzgerald tipplers of vaudeville stage and screen," John Sayles writes in the introduction to this rediscovered 1928 gem. He's got that right. These stories, drawing on Tully's childhood as an orphan in rural Ohio, are sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous and always compelling. The characters he brings to life are a memorable lot, mostly family members. At times there's pure poetry in what he writes: "Grandmother ... with wrinkles in her face deep enough to bury matches."

Tully's realism evokes his contemporaries, Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair, and foreshadows latter-day Irish-Americans writers such as Malachi Martin. This is a fast read, but I underlined numerous passages that are pure gems deserving to be recalled.

Personal note: Tully spent part of his early life in Kent, Ohio, working at Seneca Chain, and some of his earliest published works -- his poetry -- appreared in the pages of the Kent Courier, whose successor publication I now edit. I'm probably prejudiced, but I'm happy he has been rediscovered. He deserves a wider audience.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim Tully, along with Dashiell Hammet, was the creator of the hard-boiled style of American writing. This style was later picked up and refined by Ernest Hemingway, H. L. Menchen, and Raymond Chandler. But Tully stands out from all these others in the fact that they simply wrote in the style, while he lived it. The term Shanty Irish is a derogatory term for poor and uneducated members of the race. As opposed to the Lace Curtain Irish who rose in power, education, and prosperity in America. The equivalent today would be the pejorative “white trash”. Now as to how accurate the book is. That's difficult to tell. Nothing obvious sticks out as false, but Tully was six during the first half of the book, then went to the orphanage and didn't emerge until he was twelve. Thus he had to rely heavily on other's memories. So, a touch of exaggeration, a smidge of the big fish story, was bound to slip in, but that does not mean this isn’t a worthwhile look into a long dead America.

[Mickael Broth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raw memoir from a dude who pulled no punches at all. Not quite as memorable as Beggars of Life (a portion of his life that appealed more directly to my interests), but wonderfully insightful in different ways.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

Less a novel than a series of character sketches and anecdotes, Shanty Irish veers between pathos and sentimentality in its portrayal of ignorance, poverty, hard work, and drunken blowhards.