This is another one of those books I’ve had in my library for 30 years. I finally took it down to read it as part of my St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. Last year, I had it out, thinking I’d read just the title story, but then time got away from me (again), and I figured I’d save it for 2023, hoping to read the entire collection. And I’m glad I did. Because if you read just “The Quiet Man,” you’re not getting the full story.
First of all, the 1952 John Ford classic, starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, is one of my favorite movies. If you’re put off by Wayne, thinking this going to be like one of his westerns (many of which I’ve also grown to love), give it a shot. I think you’ll really enjoy it. It’s full of whimsy, with a colorful supporting cast of memorable character actors. I’m sure there are some Irish who are worn out on the stereotypes, and maybe millennials, if they ever watch anything made before 1980, who would be appalled at the treatment of O’Hara’s Mary Kate; but if you meet it on its own terms, I find it very hard to believe it won’t charm your emerald socks off. I try to watch it every St. Patrick’s Day over several pints of Guinness. (One of these days I’ll have to write about “The Quiet Man” Drinking Game, if I haven’t done so already.)
But this is not a review of the movie, and if you’ve read this far, you are probably of an age that it would already be familiar to you in any case, so I’ll get to the matter at hand.
Maurice Walsh’s “The Quiet Man and Other Stories” – retitled, because of the success of the film, from “Green Rushes” – has very little in common with Ford’s adaptation. In fact, any reader who picks it up expecting the porter-fueled hilarity of that leprechaun incarnate Barry Fitzgerald is in for a shock. Because Walsh’s original tales, set during and after the Black-and-Tan War, all deal with the IRA, men and women (and the oblique manner in which they sometimes communicate), and the pleasures of fishing. It’s small wonder that Hemingway was an admirer. These stories are nothing at all like the film version, but I’d be lying if I said they weren’t fascinating. And very well written, in the manner of the day. (Walsh was one of Ireland’s bestselling authors of the 1930s.) The prose is evocative without entirely tipping its hand, so that there’s plenty to be gleaned from reading between the lines.
Basically, the screenwriters took the premise of the title short story and a couple of lines of dialogue (surely no more than two or three), and then just went with their own thing. It is amusing and disorienting to discover that many of the characters look and behave quite differently than they do in the film. Michaleen Oge Flynn is Mickeen Oge Flynn in the stories and, beyond his fondness for a pipe and his involvement with the IRA (quite subtle in the film), by no stretch of the imagination is he anything like Barry Fitzgerald.
There is no Sean Thornton. In the book, he’s Paddy Bawn Enright – named after one of Walsh’s real-life field hands – and his dark, squat-but-powerful, heavy-browed character does not in any way resemble John Wayne. Closer is Art O’Connor, an Irish-American who comes to Ireland, he says, for the fishing. Mary Kate Danaher, the Maureen O’Hara character, is Ellen Roe Danaher in the book. She’s given a lot more to do in the movie. In fact, the only character I can think of that is pretty much the same on the page as he is on the screen is Red Will Danaher, the hard-headed, closed-fisted slab of beef played by Victor McLaglen.
The primary reason I am thankful for not having simply read the title story, apart from the rest, is that the tales all interlock. The book is more like a novel, in which we learn more about the characters and events with each successive story. Moreover, the stories in themselves are like novellas, subdivided into chapters. There is nothing twee about them. The tone more realistic than fey (although there is a ghost); the stories are serious, but not without flashes of wit. Come to think of it, they all turn out to be love stories, in their understated way. And the rhythms are unmistakably Irish.
The prologue sends ripples across the rest of the book. By the end, I was compelled to go back and reread the beginning, as it wound up having more of a bearing on the conclusion than I previously anticipated. Also, the significance of the original title, “Green Rushes,” is only apparent from the final pages.
In 1954, flush with the success of “The Quiet Man,” Republic Pictures optioned another Walsh story to be made into a film, “Trouble in the Glen.” It reassembled the producers, screenwriters, composer (Victor Young), and some of the crew involved with the previous picture, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won two (including a Best Director Oscar for Ford), hoping to recapture some of that Celtic whimsy, though this time transplanted to Scotland. Victor McLaglen returns, but Forrest Tucker steps in for John Wayne, and Orson Welles, who previously adapted and starred in “Macbeth,” plays a Scottish laird.
Alas, Ford was notably absent, and the film was not a success. In fact, Walsh was so depressed by the result that he vowed never to have any more of his books made into films.
I recall, many years ago, my friendly neighborhood video shop had a copy of “Trouble in the Glen” on VHS, but I never got around to renting it. The box had a picture of Tucker beating the tar out of McLaglen, in true “Quiet Man” fashion. For some reason, the film doesn’t appear to be available for streaming anywhere online, but you can watch a couple of clips at the link below. In particular, the opening credits hew closely to those for “The Quiet Man,” right down to Victor Young’s score.
https://www.silversirens.co.uk/productions/trouble-in-the-glen-1954/
Interestingly, I learn even as I write this that a stage musical, “Castle Gillian,” is supposedly in development, based on another one of Walsh’s books. A musical of “The Quiet Man,” called “Donnybrook,” was produced in 1960, but flopped.
At any rate, if it sounds appealing, and you can find a copy, you might consider giving Walsh’s “The Quiet Man and Other Stories” (or “Green Rushes”) a whirl. I picked mine up off a remainder table at Borders bookstore back in the early ‘90s. My library is full of books purchased over the past 40 years that I have not read and I am very glad not to have traded them off or sold them outright! But what’s the purpose of a library, if not to stock it with future dreams and hidden treasures?
