The American Golfer

Written By: Astoria Pointe Date: August 1st, 2010. Topic: Member Profile Article.

Astoria Pointe Business Development Director, Jenny Robinson, is proud to feature her father’s new book, “The American Golfer”.

By Ann Gibbons
Freeman staff

People who think they hear their arteries hardening when watching championship golf should just get over it and put some intrigue into their lives. That’s what Charlie Kingston does in author Anthony Robinson’s new novel, “The American Golfer” by Bluestone Books.

The novel is not a how-to on improving your score, but life-lessons about love, honor, intrigue and betrayal, learned the hard way – by messing up, on and off the course. A certain, amazingly talented American golfer who messed up big time, on and off the course, might come to mind, but Robinson’s protagonist plays the game in the shadow and remnants of the 1920 Irish struggle for independence. Some pain never goes away, especially for the survivors.

In the story, Charlie, a PGA Tour golfer, flees his disorderly American past for a respite in his grandmother’s tiny village in Ireland where everyone knows everyone’s grimy, tragic, sordid heritage and reputation. The Irish, despite their reputation for glib tongues loosened by drink, keep their secrets. And, when all is said and done, behind that genial countenance, is a shrewd intellect assessing one’s vulnerability and gullibility.

Naturally, there’s a beautiful, wealthy woman, Lora, with a stiff husband, with whom Charlie falls in love, setting off a spree of infidelity, menace and making hard choices, all of which the American golfer is ill prepared.

In Ireland, past is present, and Charlie finds himself plunged into an unexpected and inexplicable adventure of conflict and peril in the Emerald Isle’s ever-simmering political stew where friend is enemy and enemy friend. Charlie needs to exchange his spiked golf shoes for toe slippers to keep on dancing between and across an ever-widening gap of deception.

What’s immediately apparent to the non-golfer is the author’s authority about golf, courses and language that Robinson explained away readily.

“I’ve been on golf courses, since the age of 12, when I began to caddy” at the Woodstock golf course, he said in a recent interview, adding with a wry smile, “I was paid $1 back then and was glad to get it.”

Robinson, a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz, where he taught American literature for 35 years and also directed the Creative Writing Program, is a life-long golfer. He attended Kingston High School for one year. His family has lived in Woodstock since 1926, where he was raised.. He now lives in New Paltz, with his wife, Tania.

In the story, Charlie is asked for advice about a certain problematic hole on the private course reserved for guests of Lora’s wealthy husband. Robinson said he loosely based that part of the story on a certain hole at the New Paltz golf course that was a long par that curved to the right with a slope that could cause the ball to roll into the nearby pond. He used the pro’s fix at the course in the story.

Robinson is an author by genes and by education. His father, Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the controversial best-seller, “The Cardinal,” in 1950. Robinson himself is the author of six novels; one of them, “The Member-Guest” is also about golf.

Asked how he could write and teach, Robinson said very little gets in the way of writing. “I get up very early, 6 a.m., come down to my office and keep working at it.” Sometimes, the writing does not come easy.

“I had completed one novel that I was never satisfied with,” he said. “I had given it many tries, but it was giving me a hard time, so I put it away.” He said he went back to the material and decided he had not told the story properly. “I needed to get to the deep root of what I wanted to say.” He reworked it. “I think I’ve got it now,” he said with satisfaction.

“I have written many stories, but not all of them are a novel,” he said.

The characters in this current novel are solid and believable – but made up. “Yes, I made them up,” he said, explaining that he wrote the story in the third person to keep a solitary point of view – Charlie’s. He explained that, in this instance, jumping from character to character would disrupt the unity of the story line.

Although the characters in the novel are fictional, the historical figures, like Michael Collins, hero and martyr of the revolt against Britain, were real. “I did a lot of research on Ireland, especially its history,” Robinson said to cast a sense of real time on the plot.

The story opens subtly, but significantly on April 10, 1998, the day of the acceptance of the Good Friday Agreement, during which all disparate parties agreed to the six doctrines of The Mitchell Principles, brokered by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell. Mitchell was Special Envoy to Northern Ireland then, and now is Special Envoy for Middle East Peace for the Obama administration.

The Agreement created an uneasy truce among Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain. In the shadow of the Agreement, was and is, the Irish Republican Army, formed in 1919 to battle England for Ireland’s independence. The bombings have ceased, but the bitterness remains.

Robinson said he works steadily on a book because he’s a careful writer, taking two and a half to three years to complete this novel. “I changed the original outcome,” he said. “I didn’t like the way I ended it, so I rethought it.”

He acknowledged that readers don’t know how much thought goes into the writing of a novel. He said he writes on a computer because it helps keep the story line consistent and allows him to find minor discrepancies as the story moves forward.

Asked what the reader should take away from “The American Golfer,” Robinson thought for a moment, then said, “Well, it’s always fun to find out how the story ends. A good story entertains and the reader is moved by the decisions, good or bad, that the characters make. It’s a cathartic experience, and the reader gets pulled deeper into the story by what’s happening.”

In the end, Robinson said, he wants the reader to say what he said when he put the period at the end of the last sentence, “Damn, that’s a good story!” And, it is.

The book is now available at Amazon.com. Further information may be obtained by visiting www.arobinson.net or robinsoa@newpaltz.edu.

This article was previously published at http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2010/08/05/life/doc4c5a42a3f2fe9764550346.txt

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