Tucson Weekly: Punch-Drunk Prose (March 19

Punch-Drunk Prose

'Irish Whiskey' Is Just One Unrealized Desire After Another.
By Amy C. Murphy
Irish Whiskey, by Andrew Greeley (Forge Books). Cloth, $23.95.
ON THE MORNING drive to the Catholic high school I attended, Colleen McGuire and I often indulged in listening to a tune we regarded as one of our theme songs: embarrassingly enough, Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young." The song involves a young thug who attempts to woo a sheltered Catholic girl, named Virginia (big surprise). The part of the song we sang with the most fervor was, "Come on Virginia, don't let me wait/You Catholic girls start much too late/But sooner or later it comes down to fate/I might as well be the one/You know that only the good die young."
Books The song was a vehicle for sublimated desire, enabling us to happily embrace the idea of our "late start" while we contemplated the idea of engaging in an activity that we wouldn't actualize. Andrew M. Greeley's book, Irish Whiskey, proves a similar exercise: The prolific author attempts to maintain the momentum of the novel through a few different plots, none of which come to fruition.
This novel is the third in a series of love stories written by Greeley, who in addition to being a novelist is also a noted sociologist and priest. It's the priest part that hangs me up a bit. Irish Whiskey has some sexy scenes, mostly involving the young hero, Dermot Coyne, copiously kissing the breasts of his nubile heroine and fiancée, Nuala Anne McGrail; and one of the novel's subplots is based on the delayed gratification Dermot and Nuala must experience as the result of their commitment to remain virginal until their wedding night. Knowing that a priest concocted these sexy episodes was akin to imagining Father Casey, the principal of my school, lifting up his vestments to reveal fish-net stockings.
Yet if one imagines a priest should write hot passages such as these, Greeley writes them precisely in the fashion one would expect. In one of the many titillating moments, Dermot finds himself encompassed by "a firestorm of longing": "She was naked to her waist, her breasts glowing in the moonlight as I devoured them with my lips...My brain exploded in love, desire, and pride. I would prolong this moment of joy forever. I wasn't really doing this, was I? Yeah, I was. I'd better stop."
Such is the pious (and scientific) lens through which Greeley contemplates sexual activity. Despite the desire that appears to take Dermot by storm, he staves off finding satisfaction in the "responsive" Nuala, believing they should save it until safely wedded. Greeley's writing comes off as unintentionally ironic--the idea of prolonging the moment of joy to a critical point being undercut by the dominant influence of Dermot's Catholic superego.
Greeley recycles this kind of moment throughout the novel, perhaps in an attempt to make its moralistic ending, which occurs on their wedding night, seem ultra-sexy and utterly climactic: The underlying idea, of course, being that the best sex occurs within the sanctified bounds of wedded bliss. And with the racy episodes leading up to their consummation, the reader anticipates that this last scene will deliver the promised punch. Instead, the author lets us down gently with, " 'Ah, that wasn't so bad at all?' Mrs. Coyne said when we collapsed into each other's arms at the end of our ride through the stars." Come again?
Irish Whiskey's other converging plots suffer from similar anticlimaxes. The story begins with a scene in which Dermot and Nuala visit the Mount Carmel cemetery where his grandparents are buried. Nuala, an Irish woman with psychic powers, concludes that the entombed body of a famous Irish bootlegger, presumably in its final resting place beside them, is in fact missing. Nuala and Dermot's research into this matter uncovers a Mafioso twist; and their discovery then demands that the innocent couple take on the big bosses heir to the throne of Al Capone.
Such "mysterious" encounters fail to reach their foreshadowed moments of enlightenment or crisis, making the start-stop mechanism characterizing Dermot's approach to lovemaking an apt model for the way other promising scenarios in Irish Whiskey unfold. The reward the reader anticipates through engaging in the novel is ultimately thwarted by what may be, for all the author's unconventional appeal, an overarching philosophical hang up: that Good Book principle of postponement. Somebody respectable ought to advise the good Father that when it comes to storytelling, at least, it isn't always better to wait.
Father Andrew M. Greeley will read from and sign copies of Irish Whiskey from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, March 25, at Borders Books and Music, 4235 N. Oracle Road. Call 292-1331 for information.

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