| Living On Locust and Other Stories is a collection of ten short stories the author contextualizes as Irish American, post-regional literature, characterized by a sensibility that suggests the world is either immensely tragic or hopelessly funny. Or perhaps both at the same time. This appreciation for the absurdity of life is reflected in this collection, and the underlying themes reveal a uniquely Irish American sensibility: Life is suffering. And it's too short.;Post World War II America was a mobile society and Irish Americans were engaged in the pursuit of the American Dream. Deep divisions were being broken down under the great equalizer of war. Irish Americans were eager for success, and found themselves displaced geographically by their pursuit of bigger and better dreams.;Many scholars, among them Lawrence McCaffrey, observed that this geographic dislocation moved Irish Americans out of the traditional parish communities, and began to diminish their sense of ethnic identity. The post war move from ethnically vibrant urban areas to the homogenized suburbs is characterized by McCaffrey as a move from someplace to no place. And few places were as Nowhere as American suburbia of the 1970s, where conformity was a sacrament. This author calls the geographic and psychic alienation that exists among Irish Americans relocated to the suburbs, a kind of non-locus to begin with, post-regionalism. Many Irish American writers have used this dislocation to underscore their characters' alienation. This is critical to understanding locus in contemporary fiction, especially strongly ethnic-American works, because writers today are working less regionally and more in these "voids" that exist in culture.;Characters in Living On Locust seek to reclaim power and identity, making and remaking illusory selves to adapt to an often hostile society. The world of Locust Street becomes a Darwinian microcosm, a predatory world, a generic dead-end road. Locust Street remains extra-geographic, a locus easily situated in the mind of Darwin, if Darwin were a suburban planner. These characters are post-modern lost souls, a lost generation of ethnic Americans expatriated within the geography of their own nation.;The limited way in which revelation operates in these stories is revealed in those characters that accept a communion of suffering. Redemption, in these stories or in the theological sense, is elusive. |
