THE MOUNTAIN OF THE WOMEN: Memoirs of an Irish Troubador

"It is difficult to imagine now how innocent a twenty-year-old boy could be in a small town in Ireland in the fifties, but I had one foot in the twentieth century, the other in the Middle Ages," writes Clancy in this entertaining memoir. But times change, and by the end of the book he is living in Greenwich Village, watching gay men kiss on the street and listening to the young Bob Dylan play in coffeehouses until he becomes a cultural phenomenon himself as one of the famous Irish folk music group, the Clancy Brothers. In the first half of this autobiography, Clancy describes his childhood in a small Irish town, the 11th child of a loving family who attended strict Catholic school and rabble-roused with his friends. There are moving scenes—the death of his older sister from TB and his mother's crisis of faith—but his story really takes off when he gets a small part in Cyril Cusack's celebrated production of The Playboy of the Western World. He met Diane Guggenheim, who was collecting Irish folk songs, and eventually went to New York, where, with Guggenheim money they started Tradition Records to record folk music. Clancy's style is mirthful and funny, and while the chronology is sometimes difficult to follow, it is the storytelling, not the story itself, that impresses. The book's second half is filled with fascinating sketches and portraits of the incredible arts scene in New York and Boston at the time—the famed Poet's Theater in Cambridge, Mass.; Jose Quintero's renowned production of Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow; and Lenny Bruce—that is both lovingly evocative and engrossing. There is so much great material here that the memoir, at times, feels cursory, but what it lacks in detail it makes up in charm. (Feb.)