1. Glassie reveals that he himself is of Irish heritage, though at first he was not aware. This fact ties into the thought that Glassie shares about feeling at home in Ireland and it also ties into what his “drinking companion” says about finding the way home. I think his goal is to record and observe both stories and tradition without altering them so that when someone reads his work they will almost be able to experience it for themselves. Glassie briefly describes how he found his way into folklore through a paper he wrote that eventually caused him to lose a good friend. This loss caused him to turn his focus from people to their material items as a way to continue his writing but hopefully without offending anyone else.
2. Glassie says that his writing style or approach could be most clearly defined as structuralism. To me it seems that most informational books are organized in a similar manner but his book has a certain warmth about it that the other informational books lack.
3. I think this particular story means a lot to him personally and so he puts it in the Preface not only to show the reader the hospitality and kindness of the Irish but to also use it as a way to say thank you to all those who showed him similar acts of hospitality and kindness.
1 comment:
I think that another motivation of explaining his past writings in the preface, and the depth of the preface as well is to express to his friends and teachers from Ballymenone how much he cares for them and desires not to offend any of them or lose them as friends.
As for the warmth in his descriptions, well his style is so descriptive that he paints the picture of his own very valued experiences with the people and landscape of Ballymenone and in that delicate description it it only natural that his own warm feelings about the place and the people is reflected in his writing.
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