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Award-winning author Patrick Tracey recalls his Rhode Island roots
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Patrick Tracey may be enjoying his new career as a writer, but the former Rhode Islander once spent his days sneaking into the Met Cafe and tearing his bike through the Providence bus tunnel. Tracey now lives in Boston, where he cares for his mentally ill sisters, who were the inspirations for his book, Stalking Irish Madness. The book explores the roots and ramifications of mental illness within his Irish ancestory, and serves as a sort of family memoir. It garnered him the 2009 New England PEN award, and was named one of the best books of 2008 by Slate.com.
We recently asked Tracey to talk with us about his familial roots right here in Providence, and to tell us what he loved best of his time in Lil' Rhody.
How old where you when your family moved to Providence, and how long did you stay?
I was nine years-old, in the summer of 1967, and I stayed for nine years, through the summer of 1976.
What neighborhood/street did you live in/on?
The East Side of Providence, on 197 Taber Avenue.
Do any Tracey’s remain in the Ocean State?
Yes, I have family on both sides. On my mother’s side too, I have a ton of cousins. In fact, Jim White has followed in our maternal grandfather’s footsteps. He’s Rhode Island’s top teamster, at Local 57 on Gano Street, and a terrific guy too. The Tracey family has done enormously well too. Still running the family business that goes back to the Great Depression, they live on the East Side.
What's your favorite memory of the state?
Late night hot dogs at Haven Brothers, the blizzard of ’78, Marvin Barnes and Ernie D.
What is the biggest difference between living in Boston and living in Providence?
They are hard to compare since Providence is about a quarter the size of Boston. Providence feels more Italian, Boston more Irish.
Ever consider moving back?
Not really. My sisters with schizophrenia are severely disabled, unable to work, destitute of all opportunity like so many of America’s 2.4 million people diagnosed with this biological disorder of the brain. They live in group homes and I need to be here to be near to them.
Now for obligatory ones:
When you lived here, what was your favorite…
-place to eat?
Well, of course, it was a restaurant on Washington Street called Patrick’s. My father owned the place. It was a very classy place but behind the scenes there was a whole other story. It had all male waiters who were all like uncles to me. Guys named Mario and Frank Cafferty, who was actually the father of the Beaver Brown Cafferty. These guys were all characters and I got to peek behind the curtain. For one thing they were all pros, his world-class pinochle playing partners, so they had no need to jot food orders down on a note pads. This added to the class of the place. Too bad Patrick’s restaurant didn’t survive Dad’s gambling jones. His bookie, a nice guy named Cousin, never left the register. That’s why he got cut out of his family will.
-hangout?
We were more into bars than clubs. I’d have to say the original Met Café, a small dive bar that just exploded three or four nights a week, a true modern day juke joint. That and the original Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel. I was 16 years old and they’d lowered the drinking age from to 18 so we could pass with a fake ID. We got over on Rich Lupo. It was 1974, we were the youngest kids allowed in, and everything was out of control, this little Valhalla of sex, drugs, rock and blues. Everything I ever really needed to know, I learned in those two joints. Another rich vein for fiction.
-getaway?
Block Island, Narragansett, Matunuck, Watch Hill, Little Compton, Westport
-recreational activity (fishing, Seekonk speedway, train tracks, ect.)
We were the first generation on the stingray bikes with the long banana seats. We rode them like demons through the bus tunnel that goes under College Hill up to Thayer Street. On Halloween we pulled all the fire alarms and covered the whole East Side in hurled eggs and rolls of toilet paper. We were bad kids, very bad kids.
-are any of them still your favorite? They are all still my favorite, if only in memory.
Yes, I tore ass through the bus tunnel last fall. Haven’t had so much fun since I grew up
Now to the book.
Tracey, a former Rhode Islander, won the 2009 PEN award for his book, Stalking Irish Madness
Stalking Irish Madness chronicles your journey back to Ireland, “shaking the family tree.” What incident made you go back, and why did it take so long?
I have one of the most schizophrenic families ever documented. For the longest time, we were told there was nothing that could be done for it. My two sisters have lived for the 30 years on the sharp end of “it’s nothing,” forgotten wards of the state. When a gene link was discovered in Ireland—and in blood samples taken from a few hundred people with schizophrenia in County Roscommon, home of my so-called lunatic ancestors--it piqued my curiosity. I had to look into it, and I got sucked in.
I wanted to know more about it, not simply because it had devastated my family. Here was an illness the World Health Organization has dubbed the world’s fourth most disabling, and it was the world’s most prevalent mental illness, but nobody seemed to know much about it. Certainly all other mental illnesses are prime TV fodder, but schizophrenia remains one step beyond the culture’s comfort zone. Just have a look at Oprah Winfrey’s web site. She does it all, but not schizophrenia. I hope this new film The Soloist can help shift things.
When you were young, did you think all families occasionally went “to the fairies,” or did you recognize it as unique?
No, I did not. I thought it happened in some families and in our family it happened unusually often. But even then it was just something that happened to crusty old relatives. It didn’t become personal until it hit home in my immediate family. Like most people who develop schizophrenia, my sisters exhibited no sign of underlying psychological problems. If anything we felt it was our parents who could’ve used some counseling. I was caught completely off guard when two sisters went mad in their early twenties.
You quit drinking years ago. Did that play a role in your decision to heed your grandfather’s advice and return to Ireland?
Indirectly. I was living in London at the time, Ireland was right next door, and I was finally sober when I learned about this gene link. So it was more coincidence if you believe in such things. When I put the drink down, I felt called to write this book.
Did Ireland change you in any way, and will you go back?
Yes, because the results of my book have been blinding, and not just in terms of the awards it’s winning. The book re-dignifies our family in a way that was not otherwise possible. I do intend to go back. I have a great idea for a documentary in Ireland, if I can find funding in this credit drought. I have to say, it’s one of those quote-unquote great ideas. If I didn’t think of it, I’d say in regret, now why didn’t I think of that? This film would re-dignify all families afflicted with schizophrenia. We’ll see where it goes.
You say famine and late fathering help breed madness amongst the Irish. What role does alcohol play?
Alcohol plays some role, but it’s a much smaller factor than maternal malnourishment from the mother and mutated sperm cells from older fathers. These were the two biggest legs of my three-legged-stool theory of this epidemic of Irish madness. The other, of course, is drink, but in the case of the Irish, that’s a real no-brainer, pardon the pun.
Is alcohol a root cause, or is it in any way a medicinal tool for battling madness? Does it exacerbate it?
You don’t have to be alcoholic to be schizophrenic, but it does help. And you don’t have to be Irish to have a head-start on madness, but at one time this was advantageous too. Remember that one in four of us at any one time is suffering from some sort of mental health problem. So if you’re talking to three other people and they’re okay, then it’s you. I reckon booze is the crudest med for far too many, Irish or not.
Did you know you wanted to chronicle your trip in this book from the get go, or did it just happen?
It evolved naturally. I tooled around in a rental a bit, and knew I had to get a camper van to do it right. Before long I was living in the thing, looking for some old Druid to draw the veil.
Have you ever stopped and asked yourself, “Am I going mad?”
Yes, I felt I was losing my grip eight years ago, so I quit drinking and got sorted.
You’ve said that some of your sisters’ incidents were left out of the book because they were so outrageous no one would believe them. Could you share one with us?
No. I’ve shared enough in the book. The ones in the book are hard to beat. I’d challenge any family to match my family’s story, but why compare tragedies? Sorry.
What was the hardest part of examining your family?
The feeling that I might be throwing my sisters under the bus for the sake of an art project.
What are your plans for your next book?
I am fast at work at it now on a satirical novel, a roman à clef called Bartender's Confidential, and am so pleased with my progress. In the wake of the PEN New England Award for my family memoir, I am hoping to snag a decent-sized contract for this one. It is literary fiction nonfiction—faction, if you will--and to me it’s just laugh-out-loud funny with big commercial legs. After so serious a subject as schizophrenia, it’s nice to be tickling the funny bone for a change.
Finally, I grew up in an Irish family as well. Any advice?
Yeah, marry out of it. Nature prizes a diverse gene bank. As the Irish say, goes west for a horse, go east for women.
For more on Patrick Tracey, including an experpt from the book and video discussion, click here.
To visit the book's webstite, go to: www.stalkingirishmadness.com
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