From the multiple award-winning author of The Master and Brooklyn, an illuminating look at Irish culture, history, and literature through the lives of the fathers of three of Irelandâs greatest writersâOscar Wilde's father, William Butler Yeats's father, and James Joyce's fatherââThrilling, wise, and resonant, this book aptly unites TĂłibĂnâs novelistic gifts for psychology and emotional nuance with his talents as a reader and critic, in incomparably elegant proseâ (The New York Times Book Review).
Colm TĂłibĂn begins his incisive, revelatory Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know with a walk through the Dublin streets where he went to university and where three Irish literary giants came of age. Oscar Wilde, writing about his relationship with his father stated: âWhenever there is hatred between two people there is bond or brotherhood of some kindâŠyou loathed each other not because you were so different but because you were so alike.â W.B. Yeats wrote of his father, a painter: âIt is this infirmity of will which has prevented him from finishing his pictures. The qualities I think necessary to success in art or life seemed to him egotism.â Jamesâs father was perhaps the most quintessentially Irish, widely loved, garrulous, a singer, and drinker with a volatile temper, who drove his son from Ireland.
âAn entertaining and revelatory book about the vexed relationships between these three pairs of difficult fathers and their difficult sonsâ (The Wall Street Journal), Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illustrates the surprising ways these fathers surface in the work of their sons. âAs charming as [they are] illuminating, these stories of fathers and sons provide a singular look at an extraordinary confluence of geniusâ (Bookpage). TĂłibĂn recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors. âThis immersive book holds literary scholarship to be a heartfelt, heavenly pursuitâ (The Washington Post).