Author-Musician Robbie Byrne talks about his novel Mulligan's Pennies - By N.L. Belardes
Peeling fact from fiction:
Sometimes it’s hard to peel fact from fiction. Especially when delineating the fine line between a novelist and a semi-autobiographical work of art. Sure, the art could be entirely built on a truth. But such a truth might just be a philosophic idea, like a meaningful brush stroke—the confidence and truth in artistry is there, but the reality compared to such truth might be somewhere else. I ask myself when meeting certain artists if there are aspects of life where the line of illusion practically fuses with reality, as in the case of intriguing novelist Robbie Byrne.
Sometimes authors present readers with the challenge of figuring out just where a fictitious character in a novel may separate from the tangible person on which a character is based. In the life of author Robbie Byrne, real life is intertwined with a novel loosely based on reality in a character named Eddie Mulligan. Reality then becomes an exploration to prove or disprove events uncovered from the pages of a book.
A table full of pennies at Jags Coffeehouse...
Novelist was once an elite soldier on the streets of Northern Ireland...
Byrne sat at a table covered with mostly glued pennies, a fitting spot to talk about his novel, Mulligan’s Pennies. Other coins were glued to the tabletop, but for the most part the surface reminded me of the main themes of his work: that life is filled with discovery and experiences. It’s like what happened to Byrne himself. In real life he stepped off an airplane in America and saw a shiny penny on the ground, his inspiration for the novel, Mulligan’s Pennies. Such discovery was a symbol that life is what it is—whether shiny or tarnished depending on the moment—and if worth anything at all, should be pocketed with the rest of life’s pennies of experience to sort over.
A story about Irish tragedy and triumph:
I had just finished reading Byrne's novel the day before. I was drawn into the story because I knew the book was autobiographical to an extent: a story as tragic as it is hilarious, a journey within a harsh Irish childhood, and the naivety of Irish youth becoming an Irishman amongst a predominantly British Scots Guard (British elite division of soldiers deployed to Northern Ireland several times in the 1970s). Mulligan's Pennies is also a love story, a tale of Irish struggle and survival with specific Irish Protestant-Catholic issues that range from spiritual to political and psychological, all wrapped within tragedy of losing loved ones in a world often more tarnished than pennies left in the cold for months.
But what was the real story about Robbie Byrne? Could I separate story from tangible fact in an hour’s time? Impossible. It’s not that Byrne needed to prove himself to me. Not at all. I just believe it’s sometimes important to peel the layers of fiction from truth and vice versa. But in one hour? That was barely time to sip our coffee.
A friend of Robbie’s put his book down after reading a few pages. Sure, Mulligan’s Pennies has a disturbing beginning. So does Lords: Part One. Both depict children in ungodly circumstances.
“Some people can’t get into it. A friend of mine just put the book down. Later she picked the book back up and loved it."
I agreed, the beginning of Mulligan's Pennies is a bit misleading. The reader might think the book is going to be a very dark journey, but really, the beginning scenes just help the reader understand a fuller perspective of the main character.
"You see, if the characters take over, it’s beautiful writing,” said Bryne.
“Sure, people wonder if the entire story is going to dwell on a molestation or on developing characters,” I added. As for Mulligan’s Pennies, such a story takes a drastic turn, and strays far from such subject matter, though becoming an illustrative defining point for understanding the character of Eddie Mulligan who feels such intense pain throughout the novel.
Byrne began writing Mulligan's Pennies while visiting his sister in Bakersfield for three months. He had a tremendous urge to write after seeing a bright penny when getting off the plane. He wrote for those months, got a blood clot in his leg from sitting for long hours. “I tell people the book nearly killed me,” he said in his heavy Irish accent and letting out a laugh. It was 2005, and after his three months in the States, he left for England, then some time later came back to America and finished Mulligan’s Pennies.
A raw novel, a playwright and an Irish education:
“I love writing for plays. Every word you put there has to work. You get the scene done. You get out. You need that immediacy. I do that automatically in my novel. I get right to the action.” Yes, Robbie Byrne is a playwright. The Spotlight Theatre is currently looking into possibly putting on his Nightswimming script.
Mulligan’s Pennies is partly about a kid who hates school. What turned such a person whose character in the novel is very anti-educational into a man of writing literature and plays?
“I started college at 30,” said Byrne. “As a boy I was a great speller and a good reader even though I didn’t care much about school. My dad wasn’t a neat writer. He was a scribbler and asked me how to spell words. I hated school because I was like a caged lion. I was like Huckleberry Finn.” Perhaps the truth is there was always a novelist hiding in the real version of the character Eddie Mulligan, Robbie Byrne, once a young boy whose intellectual nature rivaled his own prowess to survive Irish city streets.
An Irish British soldier in 1970s Northern Ireland:
Mulligan’s Pennies depicts the chaotic conditions of riot-torn Northern Ireland in the 1970s as faced by an Irishman in a British uniform. It was a condition of survival for some soldiers, firing rubber bullets into crowds, policing streets and scanning rooftops for possible snipers. “For all I knew a cousin could have been in one of those crowds,” Byrne said. He talked about being wounded and running up stairs from one crowd as bullets passed over he and his friend’s heads, a story much different than the murder of a British soldier in his novel. I asked if his soldier friend died in real life. He indicated he hadn't but that he lost contact with the soldier over the years.
Although Mulligan's Pennies has a few typo flaws and not the most attractive cover on the planet, the story of Eddie Mulligan's transformation to a British soldier is an incredible journey through a pocketful of shiny and tarnished experiences. Pennies provides a peek into a non-American Celt and British culture that grabs the reader with a rawness as hopeful as it is abrasive.
Part of the reality of the Mulligan's Pennies is that Byrne performed the bagpipes for the Queen of England at various banquets for heads of state. That is a truth almost impossible to imagine. When reading the novel and meeting Byrne you can't help but think here is a man who truly lived a remarkable life, even if his book takes his life and spins it into fictitious directions that suit the plot.
You can hear Robbie Byrne perform on Wednesday nights at Murphy’s Tavern on Monterey and Union at 7pm.
He’s also doing a book signing at Barnes and Noble on June 17th from 1-3pm. Mark your calendar, and buy his book from Publish America.
I have also written about Robbie Byrne at a Writers of Kern luncheon, and at a piper gig with Whiskey Galore at Lengthwise Brewery.
Sometimes it’s hard to peel fact from fiction. Especially when delineating the fine line between a novelist and a semi-autobiographical work of art. Sure, the art could be entirely built on a truth. But such a truth might just be a philosophic idea, like a meaningful brush stroke—the confidence and truth in artistry is there, but the reality compared to such truth might be somewhere else. I ask myself when meeting certain artists if there are aspects of life where the line of illusion practically fuses with reality, as in the case of intriguing novelist Robbie Byrne.
Sometimes authors present readers with the challenge of figuring out just where a fictitious character in a novel may separate from the tangible person on which a character is based. In the life of author Robbie Byrne, real life is intertwined with a novel loosely based on reality in a character named Eddie Mulligan. Reality then becomes an exploration to prove or disprove events uncovered from the pages of a book.
A table full of pennies at Jags Coffeehouse...
Novelist was once an elite soldier on the streets of Northern Ireland...
Byrne sat at a table covered with mostly glued pennies, a fitting spot to talk about his novel, Mulligan’s Pennies. Other coins were glued to the tabletop, but for the most part the surface reminded me of the main themes of his work: that life is filled with discovery and experiences. It’s like what happened to Byrne himself. In real life he stepped off an airplane in America and saw a shiny penny on the ground, his inspiration for the novel, Mulligan’s Pennies. Such discovery was a symbol that life is what it is—whether shiny or tarnished depending on the moment—and if worth anything at all, should be pocketed with the rest of life’s pennies of experience to sort over.
A story about Irish tragedy and triumph:
I had just finished reading Byrne's novel the day before. I was drawn into the story because I knew the book was autobiographical to an extent: a story as tragic as it is hilarious, a journey within a harsh Irish childhood, and the naivety of Irish youth becoming an Irishman amongst a predominantly British Scots Guard (British elite division of soldiers deployed to Northern Ireland several times in the 1970s). Mulligan's Pennies is also a love story, a tale of Irish struggle and survival with specific Irish Protestant-Catholic issues that range from spiritual to political and psychological, all wrapped within tragedy of losing loved ones in a world often more tarnished than pennies left in the cold for months.
But what was the real story about Robbie Byrne? Could I separate story from tangible fact in an hour’s time? Impossible. It’s not that Byrne needed to prove himself to me. Not at all. I just believe it’s sometimes important to peel the layers of fiction from truth and vice versa. But in one hour? That was barely time to sip our coffee.
A friend of Robbie’s put his book down after reading a few pages. Sure, Mulligan’s Pennies has a disturbing beginning. So does Lords: Part One. Both depict children in ungodly circumstances.
“Some people can’t get into it. A friend of mine just put the book down. Later she picked the book back up and loved it."
I agreed, the beginning of Mulligan's Pennies is a bit misleading. The reader might think the book is going to be a very dark journey, but really, the beginning scenes just help the reader understand a fuller perspective of the main character.
"You see, if the characters take over, it’s beautiful writing,” said Bryne.
“Sure, people wonder if the entire story is going to dwell on a molestation or on developing characters,” I added. As for Mulligan’s Pennies, such a story takes a drastic turn, and strays far from such subject matter, though becoming an illustrative defining point for understanding the character of Eddie Mulligan who feels such intense pain throughout the novel.
Byrne began writing Mulligan's Pennies while visiting his sister in Bakersfield for three months. He had a tremendous urge to write after seeing a bright penny when getting off the plane. He wrote for those months, got a blood clot in his leg from sitting for long hours. “I tell people the book nearly killed me,” he said in his heavy Irish accent and letting out a laugh. It was 2005, and after his three months in the States, he left for England, then some time later came back to America and finished Mulligan’s Pennies.
A raw novel, a playwright and an Irish education:
“I love writing for plays. Every word you put there has to work. You get the scene done. You get out. You need that immediacy. I do that automatically in my novel. I get right to the action.” Yes, Robbie Byrne is a playwright. The Spotlight Theatre is currently looking into possibly putting on his Nightswimming script.
Mulligan’s Pennies is partly about a kid who hates school. What turned such a person whose character in the novel is very anti-educational into a man of writing literature and plays?
“I started college at 30,” said Byrne. “As a boy I was a great speller and a good reader even though I didn’t care much about school. My dad wasn’t a neat writer. He was a scribbler and asked me how to spell words. I hated school because I was like a caged lion. I was like Huckleberry Finn.” Perhaps the truth is there was always a novelist hiding in the real version of the character Eddie Mulligan, Robbie Byrne, once a young boy whose intellectual nature rivaled his own prowess to survive Irish city streets.
An Irish British soldier in 1970s Northern Ireland:
Mulligan’s Pennies depicts the chaotic conditions of riot-torn Northern Ireland in the 1970s as faced by an Irishman in a British uniform. It was a condition of survival for some soldiers, firing rubber bullets into crowds, policing streets and scanning rooftops for possible snipers. “For all I knew a cousin could have been in one of those crowds,” Byrne said. He talked about being wounded and running up stairs from one crowd as bullets passed over he and his friend’s heads, a story much different than the murder of a British soldier in his novel. I asked if his soldier friend died in real life. He indicated he hadn't but that he lost contact with the soldier over the years.
Although Mulligan's Pennies has a few typo flaws and not the most attractive cover on the planet, the story of Eddie Mulligan's transformation to a British soldier is an incredible journey through a pocketful of shiny and tarnished experiences. Pennies provides a peek into a non-American Celt and British culture that grabs the reader with a rawness as hopeful as it is abrasive.
Part of the reality of the Mulligan's Pennies is that Byrne performed the bagpipes for the Queen of England at various banquets for heads of state. That is a truth almost impossible to imagine. When reading the novel and meeting Byrne you can't help but think here is a man who truly lived a remarkable life, even if his book takes his life and spins it into fictitious directions that suit the plot.
You can hear Robbie Byrne perform on Wednesday nights at Murphy’s Tavern on Monterey and Union at 7pm.
He’s also doing a book signing at Barnes and Noble on June 17th from 1-3pm. Mark your calendar, and buy his book from Publish America.
I have also written about Robbie Byrne at a Writers of Kern luncheon, and at a piper gig with Whiskey Galore at Lengthwise Brewery.
This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on
Friday, June 02, 2006.
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What an interesting article about an author and his book, I have to read that book now!
Just finished Robbie's book tonight. Now I'm able to understand him better, I believe. He & I have more in common than I originally thought. After jamming with him these past few months, I better understand his intensity playing the music. I get like that myself sometimes when I play.
Playing music takes us both to a higher plane, a better place, somehow.
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