Last Night's Fun: In and Out of Time with Irish Music

by Ciaran Carson

Overview

Last Night's Fun's is a sparking celebration of music and life that is itself a literary performance of the highest order. Carson's inspired jumble of recording history, poetry, tall tales, and polemic captures the sound and vigor of a ruthlessly unsentimental music. Last Night's Fun is remarkable for its liveliness, honesty, scholarship, and spontaneous joy; certainly there has never been a book about Irish music like this one, and few books ever written anywhere about the experience of music can compare with it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780865475311
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	03/17/1998
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.48(d)

About the Author

Ciaran Carson was born in 1948 in Belfast and works for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. He is the author of The Pocket Guide to Irish Music, The Star Factory, as well as five collections of poetry, one of which, First Language, was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize.

What People are Saying About This

Russell Hoban

After only a few pages it became clear to me the Devil has not got the best tunes-this man writes like an angel, a recording angel unreeling from his memory such a sweetly rumbustious beguilement of Irish music, food, drink, nights, days, and portable metaphysics that this book is simply not to be done without.
#151; Author of Riddley Walker

E. Annie Proulx

Ciaran Carson is a class of centaur-a flute-playing poet and a word-rich musician. Last Night's Fun is a cracker of a book, pure pleasure, stuffed with anecdotes, memories, wit and humor and deep knowledge of traditional Irish music. The reader is transported into the smoke and warmth of certain rooms in Northern Ireland where a glass of whiskey stands on the table, the black, cast-iron pan sputters on the burner, and a tune falls canted and sly out of the instruments.
—Author of The Shipping News

Editorial Reviews

Ciaran Carson is a class of centaur-a flute-playing poet and a word-rich musician. Last Night's Fun is a cracker of a book, pure pleasure, stuffed with anecdotes, memories, wit and humor and deep knowledge of traditional Irish music. The reader is transported into the smoke and warmth of certain rooms in Northern Ireland where a glass of whiskey stands on the table, the black, cast-iron pan sputters on the burner, and a tune falls canted and sly out of the instruments.” —E. Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News

“Last Night's Fun is an uproar.” —Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times

“This whole beautiful little book is... full of metaphor and observation and side trip and word-juggle and anecdote. It could well be the ideal book to read before a trip to Ireland, offering, instead of maps of highways, a deep drink of what the place is really all about.” —Charles M. Madigan, Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher

There is a traditional Irish tune called Last Night's Fun, and this is a book about Irish traditional music. However, in the assured hands of CiaranCarson, poet and flute-player, the narrative eases and teases its way into all kinds of nerve centres, sidetracks and fluent disquisitions. What we get isa series of musings, not only on music but on innumerable fragments and figments retrieved from the past: anecdotes from musicians and singers, the dereliction on Arranmore island, the Irish fried egg, the manufacture of poitin, many mornings after the night before. One thing exuberantly leads to another. . .. There are 31 short chapters, each one named for a reel or jig or song ('It Goes As Follies', 'The Dead Man's Breeches', 'The Ould Orange Flute')--a structure that accommodates snippets of autobiography, along with abundant learning and lore. -- New Statesman

Patricia Craig

Belfast-born flute player and poet Carson (The Pocket Guide to Irish Music) has four collections of poetry, including First Language, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize. Now he applies his poetic prose to mapping the terrain of his Belfast childhood, his early struggles learning music and his travels through Ireland and America, finding friends and fun at a ceili ("an evening visit, a friendly call"), at dances, parties, Sunday soirees and spit-and-sawdust pubs. Each chapter takes the title of a tune, and each tune leads into another: "Every day, tunes float into my head unbidden; I am caught up in their ingrained patterns. The tune is not a story, but stories cling to it." For Carson, "time itself is a chameleon," and thousands of stories, literary references, quotes and musical moments resurface. His words express a love of language, of names, musical instruments, cooking, drink and forgotten songs. A spinning LP evokes one tale, and a lost tape recording unreels more memories. A passage on Bob Dylan and Delta bluesmen leads into "the mythology of trains and the blues," then segues into cinematic trains and train wrecks. Here is a book piled with "unspeakable, archaeological layers of things strewn and assembled," all cascading forth in a scintillation of music and life. It is an endless pub crawl in the labyrinthine soul of a remarkable writer who dares to play unfamiliar tunes. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this collection of 31 interconnected essays, poet and musician Carson takes the reader into the heart of Irish folk music's culture and ritual. The fine art of the Irish fried egg, the wonders of poteen (homemade Irish whiskey), and Chicago's former police chief Francis O'Neill are just a few of the wide-ranging essay topics, but Carson's impressionistic prose links them all to his experiences as a participant in the traditional Irish music scene. The musicians Carson writes about play on buses and in smoky pubs, learning and passing tunes on by ear and adding their own signature to the ever-evolving music each time a piece is played. Readable and enjoyable, this is nonetheless a book for purists. Those expecting to read about Enya, Altan, or the other recent stars of Celtic music will be disappointed, and general readers may find Carson's earlier Pocket Guide to Irish Traditional Music (Appletree, 1986) more useful. Still, this is well recommended for larger public libraries and for ethnomusicology collections.-Lloyd Jansen, Stockton-San Joaquin Cty. P.L., Cal.

Library Journal

Last Night's Fun is an uproar.
— Los Angeles Times

Richard Eder

"This whole beautiful little book is... full of metaphor and observation and side trip and word-juggle and anecdote. It could well be the ideal book to read before a trip to Ireland, offering, instead of maps of highways, a deep drink of what the place is really all about."— Charles M. Madigan, Chicago Tribune.

Chicago Tribune

"Ciaran Carson is a class of centaur-a flute-playing poet and a word-rich musician. Last Night's Fun is a cracker of a book, pure pleasure, stuffed with anecdotes, memories, wit and humor and deep knowledge of traditional Irish music. The reader is transported into the smoke and warmth of certain rooms in Northern Ireland where a glass of whiskey stands on the table, the black, cast-iron pan sputters on the burner, and a tune falls canted and sly out of the instruments."— E. Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News

E. Annie Proulx