Chicago Catholic Story on The Brown and White by Lawrence Norris

 Chicagoland

Mount Carmel alum writes a ‘fictionalized memoir’ of his days at the school

byline Chicago Catholic

July 17, 2017

Larry Norris was a freshman at Mount Carmel High School in 1967-1968, a year that was pivotal in Chicago’s history. He recalls that history 50 years later in “The Brown and White” (2016, Sporting Chance Press), a “fictionalized memoir,” seen through the eyes of Collin Callaghan, a freshman at what Norris calls St. Mary’s College Prep. But the school, and, indeed, the South Side neighborhoods that the eponymous “Brown and White” school bus traverses, are clearly rooted in Norris’ experiences as an adolescent in an unsettled time.

Norris answered questions about his book by email for Chicago Catholic.

Chicago Catholic: You call “The Brown and White” a “fictionalized memoir” and you changed the names of not only people, but also the high school and other Chicago landmarks. Why did you want to make some of it fictional instead of writing a straight memoir, and how much did you change?

Larry Norris: I wanted to write a book like John Powers’ “Last Catholic in America” and “Do Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up” in that the people who are characters can recognize themselves, but it would be up to them. I also wanted the book to be of interest to a wide audience.

From my publishing experience, books are more powerful when they are organic -- when each reader brings into the mix his or her own experiences as the book is being read. When I read Powers myself, I thought about our Catholic culture and some of the things were so funny, yet so true. It was post Vatican II and things were a bit wobbly.

It also seemed easier to think about Power’s fictitious Seven Holy Hills and not to get hung up on the fact that his experience was at St. Christina and Brother Rice. Sometimes when you write about a particular school, that is where your market begins and ends. I love my school, Mount Carmel, but I am hoping the book works for everyone.

Fiction also allows you to round out the edges. It might also make it easier if I get a call from Hollywood and they want to make a movie from it.

Chicago Catholic: You said you’ve been writing this book for 40 years. Why did it take so long for the story to mature? What perspective do you have now that you didn’t have when you started to think about it?

Norris: I was talking to a priest that I knew 40 years ago and he said anyone can make fun of things in writing. I took that to heart and I wanted my book to be a positive book -- although I wanted to keep it real and be funny.

I wrote the various episodes of the book over many years. I was in no hurry; the world had four books by John Powers and several more on Catholic culture. Then, about 20 years ago, I had to take another pass at the entire book because I lost the file.

I went back and spent more time examining the times to describe the setting. I wanted to make sure that the book was about my experience and I wasn't trying to extend too far beyond that. In high school and college, I read a half-dozen books about the black experience. I didn't want to pretend I was the second coming of James Baldwin. So I tried to tell my story, a white boy’s story.

Chicago Catholic: The year you write about – 1967-1968 – was a tumultuous time for Chicago, and much has happened since. How do you think that time changed the city? How did it change Mount Carmel High School, in the near and long terms?

Norris: That's a big question. I had some idea of how the city was changed, but I was very young when that happened. So I guess you could say that much of what I describe was symptoms, not cause and effect.

I wrote about a few experiences that we had and focused on family and teachers. The year's events served as the backdrop, but I kept the book focused a personal level -- not a treatise on the times.

I hope readers will especially enjoy the family stories -- I think that's the strongest part of the book. I have both male and female fans of the book and that makes me feel good.

Mount Carmel survived and not only that, it was able to continue its mission to graduate one class after another of "Men of Carmel." Huge improvements have been made with gifts by generous alumni and the school now has a beautiful campus.

It’s blocks away from the site of the future Obama library. The student body is an ethnic alchemy -- students now will get an even better education. The future looks bright. People see Carmel as an athlete’s school, but it is certainly much more than that.

Chicago Catholic: The book covers not only a time of great social change, but also the freshman year of high school – nearly always a stormy time – for your protagonist. How did the turbulence of the time affect you as you were growing up? How did your growing up change your understanding of the times you lived through?

Norris: I kept the book light and wanted to focus on the fact that we almost all survive tough times and we do so with our family, faith, friends and help from others like teachers. In high school, there is also a tendency of not taking things too seriously. Personally, I think the 1960s left many of us shaking our heads and trying to come to some kind of closure, but I am not sure we will see it.

Chicago Catholic: The metaphor of the bus – “the Brown and White” – runs through the pages until, at the end, it stops, replaced without a word. What came to an end for you that year?

Norris: The story of the first year ended with my friends stopping by my house and sitting on the front steps with my parents. The Brown and White is a pervasive metaphor: the bus, the students, school colors, etc. At the end of the last chapter, we are taking a rest after the brown and white boot camp. We saw everything in brown and white.

The epilogue is a critical part of the book's message in that it talks about teachers that gave us everything they had.

"The Brown and White" is available on amazon.com.

The Top of the Book Pyrimid: The Brown and White?

I remember years ago when a Chicago Catholic radio station was getting started it just broadcast non-stop Bishop Sheen programs all day long. I remember seeing actual programs when they first appeared on TV.  My parents loved Bishop Sheen and I don't know how to describe it, but when you watched Bishop Sheen, you were at ease and inspired at the same time.  You felt like it was really cool to be Catholic. 

When I hopped in the car in the early morning about 20 years ago and heard Bishop Sheen once again, it was little different. The signal was not very strong, but it was almost like you were hearing Bishop Sheen come from the grave--he was speaking to me one-on-one. At the time, it was during our short Chicago days of winter and I was always listening in the dark. The lights on the radio glowed on the dashboard as the Bishop talked through all kind of Chicago weather. 

As I get older, I hate to say it, but I do wonder if we will ever have a speaker quite like Bishop Sheen.  I like to think we will. 

If you were a Father Corapi fan, you remember he was excellent as well. Father Corapi could talk about Catholic doctrine and somehow make it clear, painless and interesting.

I suppose everyone has his or her favorite speakers and writers. I am always amazed to see the C.S. Lewis classic Mere Christianity on top seller lists as it approaches 70 years old. As a publisher, I have to say that kind of success is just unbelievable. 

I am an author myself and I certainly don't put myself in the same company as these great authors and speakers. But I will say that when I was writing The Brown and White I was trying to convey the emotions of Catholics at the time in the late 1960s. The world was a very scary place for many of us, but we did find comfort and faith in our homes and with our friends. 

I also tried to capture some of the Irish sense of faith and humor. I hope I did.  On Amazon, I do have some good reviews from people I respect very much. I just need a few thousand people to pay the $12.50 price for the book on Amazon and life will be very good!  

The Brown and White is a fictionalized memoir and when people express a positive view of it, I feel like they would like my family in those days. And I do find that very exciting. Of course, if it turns out I just sell a few hundred copies of the book, I will start feeling a lot smaller. 

Saint Patrick's Day Memories

I've written before about how my relatives were Irish and expressed my late-blooming appreciation of St. Patrick.  Although my father never played the Irish card here in Chicago, he was indeed an Irish cop.  His brothers would sometimes sing Irish songs at celebrations and in taverns after a few drinks.  Their off-key and essentially horrible versions of  the usual songs that Irish Americans often sing, were so bad I had little interest in anything Irish.

My dad side also had a name, Norris,  that sounded more English than Irish so the Sisters never gave me any credit for being Irish.  I suppose I also had the odd look of the north as described in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes. 

My dad had a very Irish look and as a young man would have fit in very nicely in anything John Ford might have filmed in Ireland.  Still, looks aren't everything and he often said, half jokingly,  that if he had his mother's last name, Callaghan, he would have gone a lot further in the police. 

I was probably in my 30s when my interest in being Irish hit.  My mother's side had come through Scotland--her parents had settled around Glasgow for jobs, but they died while she was young--her mother at her birth and her father about six years later.  She came over here with two of her sisters when she was about 10 years old and ended up being raised by an older brother.  Her brother and siblings seemed to be very smart and ambitious although I think her dad drank himself to death suffering deeply from the loss of his wife along with a bad case of tuberculosis that he contracted while in the service.  My mother's father's people were "Divers"  from north around Donegal and her mother was a "Lynch" from around Dublin. 

I am not exactly sure where my grandfather on my father's side came from.  We are pretty sure the Norris side came from Ireland although the name is more common in England.  There was a Lord Norris, a General I believe, who went into Ireland several hundred years ago, probably to put my other relatives in their place.  He stayed and likely had lots of children.  Whether one of them was a relative of mine, who knows! My grandmother Callaghan was born in Ireland, but spent some time in England doing a bit of housework before she came here.  The other names from both my paternal grandmother's side and my paternal grandfather's side are Irish.  While my grandfather's relatives were go-getters, my grandmother is remembered as a kind simple woman who had a number of  Irish friends here in Chicago. She and a cousin's grandmother were sometimes involved in conspiracies to see that others in the family married good Irish boys and girls so I can't see her marrying Grandpa Norris unless he had strong Irish roots.  I do believe he did have some Protestant roots and much of his family stopped communicating with him after he married my Catholic grandmother.  Like all converts, he was a very good Catholic who didn't swear or drink.  His sons on the other hand....

Anyway, St. Patrick came to me late in life after time had stripped his legacy of all those bad Irish singers, drunken parties and the like.  I've had this kind of twisted sense of myself --one minute kind of straight-forward serious and slightly confident and the next minute insecure, poetic, and emotional.  When I read Saint Patrick's prayer I felt akin to him and his insecurity.  I thought his prayer was so beautiful asking to be surrounded on all sides by Christ--of course St. Patrick had good reason to be so fearful, I frankly did not.  But I was sold on his prayer---and then sold on him--and then sold on the idea of being Irish and understanding what it might mean.  What also helped was a young woman in our area who put together an Irish band and presented great Irish music that was beautiful and sober.  Danny Boy had been about as bad a song as I had ever heard, until she sang it and the light went on in my head. One of our daughters who has a very sweet voice has taken up a few Irish songs (although with a hundred non-Irish), and hearing her sing has brought more Irish joy to me.  So once I got past some of my awful childhood memories of being Irish, I was able to appreciate it as a part of me in an honest and meaningful way.  

I do think we live in an insecure world.  As a lot of folks move away from our religious connections  here in the states and in Ireland as I understand, the world gets a little scarier.  I am not a poster boy for the faith, but I do cling to it tightly and Saint Patrick's prayer has helped.  As a young boy, I could feel God's presence and I had a constant communication with him.  As I get older, I am trying to restore that connection as best I can.