In the village of Astee in County Kerry there is a pub where thirty years ago the lavatory consisted of a sink, a hole in the floor, and an alcove whose wall was thick with black mould. When it was occupied, the patrons used the hall, which was, except for the sink and the hole, indistinguishable from the lavatory. This is one thing I remember about the pub; the other thing I remember is that the pub was called the Jesse James. Someone told me it was named for James because his people came from there. But a lot of Americans came from there, and, since James's father was a Baptist minister, it was not his Irish Catholic roots the pub celebrated. It was his notoriety as a particular kind of outlaw: a social bandit, to use Eric Hobsbawm's phrase, a Robin Hood who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.

LRB 5 June 2003 | PDF Download