'OH,PLAY THAT THING' - Softcover

Roddy-doyle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0224074431 ISBN 13: 9780224074438

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2004

Synopsis

Henry Smart is on the run. Fleeing from his Republican paymasters, the men for whom he committed murder and mayhem, he has left behind his wife, Miss O’Shea, in a Dublin jail, and his infant daughter. When he lands in America, it's 1924, and New York is the center of the universe. Henry, ever resourceful, a pearl gray fedora parked on his head, has a sandwich board and a hidden stash of hooch for the speakeasies of the Lower East Side. When he starts hiring kids to carry boards for him, he catches the attention of the mobsters who run the district. It is time to leave, for another, newer America.

In Chicago there is no past waiting to jump on Henry. Music is everywhere, in the streets, in nightclubs, on phonograph records: furious, wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. But Armstrong is a prisoner of his color, and the mob is in Chicago too: they own every stage—and they own the man up on the stage. Armstrong needs a man, a white man, and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.

In Oh, Play That Thing, Roddy Doyle once again gives us a prodigious, energetic, sexy novel, rich with language and music and, as Henry makes his way across America, teeming with surprises. It is both a saga unto itself—full of epic adventures, breathless escapes, and star- crossed love—and a magnificent follow-up to A Star Called Henry.

About this title

About the Author

Roddy Doyle is the author of six previous novels, including a Booker Prize finalist, The Van, and a Booker Prize-winning international bestseller, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. He has also written several screenplays and books for children.

From the Back Cover

"Together, [A Star Called Henry and Oh, Play That Thing] constitute one of the most remarkable achievements in recent Irish and American literature. And we re left with the tantalizing possibility of a third novel to follow." -Atlanta Journal- Constitution

"Oh, Play That Thing chronicles the birth of the American century, from the shores of Ellis Island through the Jazz Age and into the Great Depression . Doyle s characters are too lively-too full-blooded and lusty-to be mere ciphers, and the Booker Prize-winning author gets the feel of things-jazz, regret, memory-right." -Boston Phoenix

"Written in a combo jazzed-up sassy poetry-rhythms part Irish, part New York street, part Chicago South Side blues This is Doyle s rambunctious tale of the 20th century s immigrant America." -Chicago Sun-Times

"Vibrant, punchy images come in quick succession, evoking city streets teeming with life and possibility like the gritty poetics of John Dos Passos." -Philadelphia Weekly

"Doyle can make music come alive like no one else. His prose will bop and bang its head to punk or bump and grind to the blues . [And he] understands that becoming an American-whether you re black or Irish-is a game of improvisation, just like jazz." - New York Daily News

"A sprawling tale steeped in the grit, lawlessness and hardships of the early 1900s it all unfolds in Doyle s bold, vivid writing that, at its best, echoes the adventure and rhythm of jazz . By the end, he has us hooked, racing for the finish to a book we wish wouldn t end and eager for the final installment." -Rocky Mountain News

From the Inside Flap

Roddy Doyle's last novel, A Star Called Henry," was chosen by the "The New York Times Book Review as one of the eleven Best Books of the Year; "The Washington Post said it was "not only Doyle's best novel yet; it is a masterpiece, an extraordinarily entertaining epic." Now Doyle, author of six bestselling novels, twice nominated for the Booker Prize and once a winner, turns his protagonist Henry Smart's rich observation and linguistic acrobatics loose on America, in an energetic saga full of epic adventures, breathless escapes, and star-crossed love. "Publishers Weekly says "Doyle just gets better and better."
Our Irish hero arrives in New York in 1924 to bury himself in the teeming city and start a new life; having escaped Dublin after the 1916 Rebellion, Henry Smart is on the run from the Republicans for whom he committed murder and mayhem. Lying to the immigration officer, avoiding Irish eyes that might recognise him, hiding the photograph of himself with his wife because it shows a gun across his lap, he throws his passport into the river and tries to forge a new identity. He charms his way into the noisy, tough Lower East Side, reads to Puerto Rican cigar makers, hauls bottles for a bootlegger and composes ads on sandwich boards, finally setting up his own business with the intention of making his fortune. But he makes enemies along the way among mobsters such as Johnny No and Fast Olaf. Henry hightails it out of Manhattan with a gun at his back and Fast Olaf's hustler of a half-sister on his arm.
This was a time when America was ripe for the picking, however, and a pair of good, strong con artists could have the world at their fingertips. The Depression was sending folksto ride the rails in search of a new life and new hope, and all trains led to Chicago. As Henry's past tries to catch up with him, he takes off on a journey to the great port, where music is everywhere: wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet called Louis Armstrong. Armstrong needs a white man, and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.
The bestselling A Star Called Henry followed Henry Smart from his birth in 1902 until the age of twenty, by which time he had already had a lifetime's worth of adventures in his native Ireland. With these books, Doyle was trying in some ways to write a story like Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, starting at the beginning of his life and following him through many years of adventures. To write the new book, he had to research the vanished world of pre-war America.
"I went to Chicago, on the south side, to see if any of the old jazz clubs were still around. I was very keen to see what Henry would have seen as he'd stood outside, under the awnings. But all the jazz clubs that were along State Street, they're all gone; every one of them's gone. There's one that's still standing - it was, originally, The Sunset Cafe, where Louis Armstrong played, but now it's a hardware store. The Vendome Cinema, where he used to play during the intermissions, is now a parking lot for the local college. That I found upsetting. But on the other hand it was very liberating because in its absence I can invent."
Music, often American soul or blues, is always important in Roddy Doyle's work, often as escapism for the working-class Dubliners in the Barrytown books. Doyle grew up listening to American music and likes to write while listening to music. For Henryin America, Doyle says, "when he hears this music, he feels he's being baptized. He's new. He feels he's gotten away from Ireland. He's gotten away from the misery of it all and he's listening to this glorious celebration."

"From the Hardcover edition.

Reviews

How could the author of so spirited a novel as A Star Called Henry write a sequel as lame as Oh, Play That Thing?

All I can figure is that it's one of those cases where a writer's imagination deserts him when he lights out for new territory. The earlier novel was set during the Irish Rebellion, and its headlong, rushing narrative seemed to just pour from Doyle with poetic urgency. In the Jazz-age America of this follow-up, he thrashes around without purpose, inspiration or -- despite a profusion of dumb jokes and set-ups -- wit. He's out of his element, and it shows.

In A Star Called Henry -- a most auspicious start to this projected trilogy -- Doyle crafted a marvelously mythic figure in Henry Smart: a child of the Dublin slums who shoots, steals and fornicates his way across early 20th-century Ireland, soaking up all the wild, restless energy of a country undergoing a violent rebirth.

The son of a listless mom and a dad who made a name for himself as the violent one-legged bouncer at a local brothel, Henry takes to the streets early. Armed only with the survival instincts he inherited from his father and the wooden leg he used to crack heads, Henry grows up to become a good-looking Lothario and a remorseless killer for the Irish Republican Army.

Along with his eventual wife and co-conspirator -- a former schoolteacher he knows only as Miss O'Shea, aka "Our Lady of the Machine Gun" -- Henry travels the countryside by bicycle, picking off "peelers" (cops) and suspected spies, a wily tough who thinks he's the master of his own fate. Actually, he's just a pawn in a larger game, and he becomes a marked man when a power struggle breaks out within the IRA ranks. Henry escapes to America, leaving behind Miss O'Shea and their infant daughter, Saoirse, trusting fate to one day reunite his family.

Fate kicks in all right in the new book: Lucky for him, Henry arrives in a country where not only can anything happen, but moronic plot turns grow on trees.

Arriving on Ellis Island in 1924, Henry finds work as a sandwich-board walker and bootleg-whiskey runner. With the missis stuck in Ireland, Henry's latest chippie is Fast Olaf's half-sister, who, besides being the near sibling of a low-level mobster, is something of a philosophical hedonist. After Henry runs afoul of the mob and Fast Olaf's half-sister saves his neck, the two run off to upstate New York, where they try to scam the locals by passing her off as a palm-reader and him as a dentist. When Henry finds out that one of his more unfortunate patients has New York mob connections, he's on the run again, this time to Chicago.

Henry falls under the spell of the hot new music pouring from all the clubs and meets a young genius with a horn named Louis Armstrong. The two have a lot in common; both are outsiders, ladies' men, perpetually broke and born improvisers. Henry becomes Louis's protector, manager and No. 1 fan, and their friendship feels real, as does Doyle's love (by way of Henry) for the music: "He was puppet and master, god and disciple, a one-man band in perfect step with the other players surrounding him. His lips were bleeding -- I saw drops fall like notes to his patent leather shoes -- but he was the happiest man on earth."

Doyle's own improv solos, unfortunately, would shame a first-year writing student. When Henry and Louis, both desperate for cash, decide to break into a house, they step into the one home in all of Chicago where Miss O'Shea is working as a live-in maid. Quicker than you can say "Doesn't Doyle have an editor?" the book slips into freefall. After Henry and Louis are lured to New York with the false promise of work on Broadway, Fast Olaf's half-sister reappears as Sister Flow, a kind of pagan Aimee Semple McPherson who preaches a gospel of instant gratification. Doyle tries to weave two plot threads together by having Sister Flow and Louis record a song together called "Don't Look in the Good Book" -- a huge hit, we're told, though you'd never guess it from Doyle's lyrics.

These events and most of what follows are supposed to be comic, zany or energetic, but there's more than a hint of desperation to the proceedings. As Henry regains his family, loses them and wanders across the landscape, you can almost smell the flop-sweat as Doyle struggles to find an exit. Everything feels forced, whether it's Henry and Miss O'Shea's tiresome rebel passion for each other or Henry's sudden rediscovery of his dad's leg, after spending a whole book without it.

There's another book to go in the Henry series, and Doyle suggests that his Irish picaro will ride out the rest of the Great Depression in Hollywood. Perhaps by then Doyle will have relearned to play his own thing with more subtlety and craft.

Reviewed by Rodney Welch
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Booker Prize-winning Doyle (Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha) has taken a few missteps with his latest offering, the second in a projected trilogy. In previous books, Doyle explored the lives of down-and-out immigrants (like those of parents; see Rory & Ita, **1/2 Mar/Apr 2003). Here, he’s attempted a historical epic of early to mid-twentieth century America. Sure, there’s a lot to celebrate: Doyle’s comedic look at Depression-era immigrants’ chaos, hardships, and excitement, his "combo jazzed-up sassy poetry" style (Chicago Sun-Times). Cameos by musicians, actors, and filmmakers add to the fun. But odd pacing, lack of focus, and the extreme extravagance of both characters and plot create an overly chaotic—if wildly fun—romp through Henry’s America.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Doyle stumbles somewhat in this sequel to his excellent 1999 bestseller, A Star Called Henry. Beginning with Irish revolutionary Henry Smart's arrival in New York City in 1924, the story follows Henry's subsequent adventures in advertising, bootlegging, pornography, unlicensed dentistry and keeping ahead of the former associates who'd like to see him eat a lead sandwich. After encroaching too much on a mobster's turf—and getting lucky with another powerful fellow's kept lady—Henry hightails it to Chicago, where he becomes the unofficial manager of a young Louis Armstrong. Though serendipitously reunited with his beloved wife and the daughter he's never met while trying to rob her employer's house, Henry soon heads back to New York to help Louis make it big. While just as brash and lively as Doyle's earlier novels, this one isn't nearly as focused; the dialogue-heavy narrative is interspersed with shifts in setting, time and plot, and characters appear and disappear with little consequence, their spoken parts hasty, repetitive and often perplexing. Worse, Doyle takes Henry Smart's charm for granted; readers unfamiliar with his previous adventures may roll their eyes at his arrogance and incessant sexual encounters. There's just too much material; any of the novel's numerous strands could have been fleshed out into its own book. That said, the novel is still a lot of improbable fun.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Henry Smart, an ex-hit man who has fled Dublin, discovers that he can find trouble in New York and Chicago as easily as back home. He also finds sexual adventure and lots of good music--even becoming a friend and confidante of Louis Armstrong--in this Depression-era novel. Christian Conn gives Henry a lovely Irish lilt, which may explain why almost every woman that Henry meets is captivated by him. Conn also excels with the rest of the cast--from barmen and gangsters to women and late-night musicians, including Satchmo. Conn's Armstrong impersonation isn't perfect, but it's certainly a plausible voice for the great trumpet player. His pacing and delivery are also excellent and capture the listener's attention throughout. R.E.K. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Times may be tough in 1920s New York, but for ex-IRA assassin Henry Smart, Ellis Island seems like heaven on earth. In this ebullient continuation of the epic that began with the 2000 best-seller A Star Called Henry, Dublin-born Smart leaves behind his loving wife (whom he still calls Miss O'Shea) and infant daughter to start life anew. Donning a pearl gray fedora and a snappy suit, Henry finds a job as a sandwich-board ad man and complements his earnings by selling the bootleg liquor tucked inside the placards. As he mingles with gangsters and dolls, Henry keeps a watchful eye out for the "hard men" who know about the death warrant issued for him on the other side of the Atlantic. When his overly enterprising ways enrage his superiors, Henry flees to Chicago, where he embraces the emerging jazz scene and becomes trumpeter Louis Armstrong's right-hand man. In an era when skin color dictates status, Smart's responsibilities are clear: "My purpose was my whiteness, and my willingness to walk it beside Louis." The two return to Harlem, where the soaring music scene makes Smart's heart sing. But the past forever haunts Henry, who holds out hope for a reunion with true love O'Shea. Booker Prize-winning novelist and screenwriter Doyle displays his trademark sensitivity and wit in a tale full of adventure, passion, and prose as punchy as a Satchmo riff. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I could bury myself in New York. I could see that from the boat as it went under the Statue of Liberty on a cold dawn that grew quickly behind me and shoved the fog off the slate-coloured water. That was Manhattan, already towering over me. It made tiny things of the people around me, all gawking at the manmade cliffs, and the ranks of even higher cliffs behind them, stretching forever into America and stopping their entry. I could see the terror in their eyes.

I could stare into the eyes without fear of recognition. They weren’t Irish faces and it wasn’t Irish muck on the hems of their greatcoats. Those coats had been dragged across Europe. They were families, three and four generations of them; the Irish travelled alone. There were the ancient women, their faces collapsed and vicious, clutching bags they’d carried across the continent, full of string and eggshells and stones from the walls of lost houses. And their husbands behind them, hidden by beards, their eyes still young and fighting. They guarded the cases and boxes at their feet. And their sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, under embroidered scarves and black caps, and younger children still, and pregnant girls with scrawny boys standing and sitting beside them, all cowed by the approaching city cliffs. Even the youngest sensed that their excitement was unwanted and stayed silent, as the Reliance sent small waves against Bedloe’s Island and the big stone American woman – send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me – as their parents and grandparents shivered at the new world and tried to know if they were looking at its front or back. I was the only man alone, the only man not afraid of what was growing up in front of us. This was where a man could disappear, could die if he wanted to, and come back to quick, big life.

I had arrived.

But we turned from Manhattan and sailed, almost back into the night, towards the New Jersey shore. And the silence around me fell deeper as the island crept up in front of us. The last few square feet of the old, cruel world, the same name in all the languages on board as we were pulled closer and closer, isola delle lagrime, Tränen Insel, the isle of tears. Ellis Island.

Hundreds of shuffling feet trapped under the vaulted ceiling of the great hall, the air was full of the whispers of the millions who’d passed through, the cries of the thousands who’d been stopped and sent back. I listened for the tap of a famous leg, but I heard none. Old men tried to straighten long-crooked backs and mothers rubbed rough colour into the white cheeks of their children. Wild men ran fingers through long beards and regretted that they hadn’t shaved before they’d disembarked. Jewish women caressed sons’ ringlets and tried to push them under hats. Fragments of new language were tried, and passed from mouth to mouth.

—Yes, sir.

—No, sir.

—My cousin, he have a house.

—I am a farmer.

—Qu-eeeens.

The medical inspector stared into my eyes. I knew what he was looking for. I’d been told all about it, by a lame and wheezy anarchist who was making his seventh try at landing.

—They see the limp but never the brain, he’d said. —The fools. When they confront the fact that I am too dangerous for their country, then I will happily turn my back on it. But, until then, I commute between Southampton and their Ellis Island.

—If you could afford first or second class, I told him, —you wouldn’t have to set foot on the island.

—You think I am not aware of this? he said. —I can afford it. But I won’t afford it.

The inspector was looking for signs of trachoma in my eyes, and for madness behind them. He couldn’t stare for long – no one could; he saw nothing that was going to send me back. To my left, another inspector drew a large L on a shoulder with a brand new piece of chalk. L was for lung. I knew the signs; I’d been seeing them all my life. The man with the brand new L had already given up. He collapsed and coughed out most of his remaining life. He had to be carried away. An E on the shoulder meant bad eyes, another L meant lameness. And behind those letters, other hidden letters, never chalked onto shoulders: J for too Jewish, C for Chinese, SE, too far south and east of Budapest. H was for heart, SC was for scalp, X was for mental.

And H was for handsome.

The guards stood back and I walked the few steps to the next desk. I let my heels clip the Spanish tiles. Two beautiful sisters held each other as they were pushed back. Without parents or children they were too likely to fall into bad hands waiting for them on the Manhattan or New Jersey wharfs. If they were lucky they’d be kept on the island until relatives were found to take them; less lucky, they’d be pawed, then let through; less lucky still, they’d be deported, sent back before they’d arrived.

I handed my passport and papers to the Immigration Bureau officer. He opened the passport and found the ten-dollar note I’d left in its centre. The note was gone before I saw it missing. I’d taken it from the wheezy anarchist; its loss didn’t sting. Then came the catechism, the questions I couldn’t get wrong.

—What is your name?

—Henry Drake.

—Where are you from?

—London.

—Why have you come to the United States?

—Opportunity.

So far, so easy.

But he stopped. He looked at me.

—Where are you travelling from, sir? he asked me.

It wasn’t one of the questions.

—London, I said.

He seemed to be staring at the word as I spoke it.

—You are a born Englishman, sir?

He read my latest name.

—Mister Drake?

—Yes.

—Henry Drake.

—Yes.

—And where is Missis Drake, sir?

—She’s in my dreams.

—So you’re travelling alone, sir, is that right? You are an unmarried man.

—That’s right.

—And how do you intend supporting yourself, sir?

We were back on track.

—By working very hard.

—Yes, and how, sir?

—I’m a salesman.

—And your speciality?

I shrugged.

—Everything, and anything.

—Alright. And do you have sufficient funds to sustain you until you commence selling everything?

—I do.

He handed me a sheet of paper.

—Could you read this for me, sir?

—We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union—

And as I strolled through the literacy test, I could feel Victor, my brother, beside me, his leg pressed against mine in the school desk, and Miss O’Shea at my shoulder, my teacher and wife, the mother of the daughter I suddenly missed, her wet fingers on my cheek.

—and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of—

He took the paper from my fingers. He picked up a rubber stamp and brought it down on top of a card. I read the stamp: ADMITTED.

—Welcome to America, he said.


From the Hardcover edition.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0224074431
• ISBN 13: 9780224074438
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352