There’s Mickey Spillane, the “gentleman gangster” of New York’s West Side who reminded some of the Tom Hanks character in Road to Perdition and who was mysteriously killed. There’s Kansas City’s Tom Pendergast, described alternately as a dictator and dogooder, who helped Harry Truman rise up the political ranks. “I think what I wanted to do with the book was draw a line from the Famine right up to Whitey Bulger.”īulger is just one of a wild, criminal cast of characters English explores in Paddy Whacked.
“What seized upon and appreciated was that their own history was being placed in context,” said English. They are finally beginning to look at the dark side of their history in the U.S., but with much less guilt or shame than before. “There was no resentment or resistance at all,” he said of the readings he gave in Boston, at which attendance was twice as large as in New Orleans, Chicago, New York and other cities.Įnglish believes Irish Bostonians are undergoing a process that Irish-Americans all across the U.S. And perhaps stirring up resentment against this writer who has yet again revisited Irish Boston’s dark side.īut, English explains, that was not the case. Prior to English’s trip up to Boston, the Boston Herald ran a lengthy excerpt from Paddy Whacked, further drumming up interest in the book. Then there is the perception that Irish Boston remains hostile to any and all outsiders, particularly those who are taking notes or have written books that name names. But more than a handful of his old soldiers and associates remain in and around Boston. The man who remains one of the FBI’s most wanted has been on the run for years. “Boston is the one place where this story is still a contemporary story, because of South Boston and the way Irish-American culture has been preserved in South Boston like no place else,” said English.īoston, of course, is Whitey Bulger’s old stomping grounds. English didn’t quite know what to expect when he went up to Boston earlier this year to promote his eye-opening new book, Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster.
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