Dublin Day 7: The Men of Oscars at Night

This evening, after an afternoon of tending to clients, revisited Oscars Cafe and Bar.

And I’m glad I did. Unlike my Sunday afternoon discovery, today I got to experience it at night.

I got to sit in the tall, red, corner chair next to the bookshelf and while roaming the various titles came across the very author whose books made the 2012 best-selling shady trilogy feel very underwhelming to me. Because if you’ve read Harold Robbins novels, starting in your late jr. high/early high school years, then the bar’s been set on what makes for an interesting adult story. And no one told an adult story better than Mr. Robbins.

All excited to see which novel this was, looked at the copyright date and realized there’s no possible way, it’s too new. Upon closer look, learned it’s a book about Harold Robbins. Written by Andrew Wilson.

Robbins’ childhood, his background, his loves, his losses. A book written about one of my favorite modern authors? How brilliant.

So, as the natural light dimmed and as atmosphere took over, I ordered my soup and my salmon (which were both fantastic) and dug in. Apparently the man completely fabricated his childhood. For him, the line between his fictional characters and his actual life was blurry – truth in the former, embellishment in the latter. He told everyone he was a Catholic orphan raised by an adoptive Jewish family. But, really, his biological parents were both of Russian Jewish lineage. Including Odessa. As in the Ukraine.

No wonder I loved his books, not just for the highly descriptive and raw details, but, also, because his stories often included the rags to riches, immigrants in America, rediscovering identity themes. In real life, his biological mother died shortly after childbirth. In his books, Harold Robbins often wrote about adult orphans and family loss. And, of course, in between, lots and lots of sex.

Tonight, between reading each chapter, I’d pick up my journal and write. Something about Oscars fuels and taps into an energy that just lets the words flow. It doesn’t hurt that the soundtrack coming form the speakers includes poetic troubadours like Eddie Veder, Damien Rice and Jeff Buckley.

But it was when I was walking out of the washroom, that I heard it. And then everything shook me to the core. Leonard Cohen’s “So Long, Marianne.” Nearly two decades of my life have intertwined with this song and so many things – personal, professional, financial, creative, geographic – that led from it, because of it, around it, for it.

And, so, as a stranger with his newspaper joined me at my table and as I leaned my head against the padded corner of the tall, red leather reading chair and, to candlelight, continued to read and write and write and read, I couldn’t have asked for better company then the men at Oscars.