by Kira Petersons
HERE, IN A RARE GLIMPSE into the artist’s process, twenty-one writers share inspirations and samples from their short stories, novels, poems, and nonfiction in progress. The writers have given richly from their desktops, and what follows will take you on a tour of Irish pubs, to a TV newscast live from hell, and into the first full-scale biography of Raymond Carver, as well as to many other coming attractions in yet-to-be published works. If you’ve ever wondered how your favorite writers create their works, you’ll find answers in the serendipity, intent, genius, imagination, and paradoxes the artists’ notes and excerpts reveal here.
BILL BARICH
BILL BARICH IS FINISHING a book about the Irish pub as a social and cultural institution. It’s a subject that he has arrived at by careful study, beginning with the pints of his college years in New York and of his young adulthood in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he wrote his first, much-loved book, Laughing in the Hills. For his most recent book, A Fine Place to Daydream: Racehorses, Romance, and the Irish, Barich followed the Irish steeplechase circuit for a year, a project that provided ample opportunity to research his book in progress, A Pint of Plain. “What I’ve discovered,” Barich says, “is that the traditional pub is vanishing from Ireland, and its disappearance reflects great changes, some for the better and some not.” American-born Barich, who is the author of five other works of fiction and nonfiction, lives in Ireland.
A PINT OF PLAIN
You could say my fascination with the Irish pub began long before I ever set foot in Ireland, when I was a wayward college student trapped in snowbound upstate New York and majoring in boredom. Whenever the boredom got too acute, I hitched a ride to Manhattan and wallowed in the beery charm of such famous bars as McSorley’s Old Alehouse and P. J. Clarke’s. For me, the word Irish acquired a special meaning. It stood for fun, laughter, talk, and a release from ordinary cares. There was an intriguing literary angle too. If Joyce had once knocked back pints with abandon, maybe the same routine would work for me. The poems I scribbled on napkins certainly improved with each round, and soon I couldn’t pass a place called Clancy’s, say, or even a lowly Blarney Stone without feeling a twitch of inspiration.
When I moved to San Francisco after graduation, I landed in the foggy Richmond District not far from the ocean, where I hung out in a string of entrenched pubs with names like The Abbey Tavern, The Plough and the Stars, and Ireland’s 32. They were rougher around the edges than those back East, occasionally gloomy and penitential, and devoted to the Republican cause. At times they resembled a set for The Informer, with secretive guys huddled in corners and muttering in whispers, although a session of music could liven things up.
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