Latest Update 2 November 2003 by Bob Ames

Publication Information

The above information is from the online catalog of the Minuteman Library Network , Amazon.com, and my own collection.---Bob

This page is dedicated to Simone Hochreiter ,who sent me several pages of research she had done on this book. I had not noticed on my first reading how chock full it is of Parker's patented quote droppings, and I saw that it needed annotation.

Cover Information

Dedication: "Since this is a book about fathers and sons, and since I am a father particularly fortunate in his sons, this book is for them, and for their mother."

From the dust jacket of the hard cover edition:

From Robert B. Parker, bestselling author of the highly acclaimed Spenser novels, comes a sprawling family saga of cops and heroes, fathers, sons, and lovers - a magnificent work that spans the whole turbulent twentieth century.

Amid the tumult and bloodshed of 1920's Ireland, Conn Sheridan, a reckless young IRA captain, begins an affair with Hadley Winslow, a Boston tycoon's wife.  This forbidden act initiates a dangerous entanglement of desire and blackmail between two families that will span three generations.

When a shattering betrayal forces Conn to flee Ireland, he begins a new life in America as a Boston cop.  In a city of paradoxes, Beacon Hill mansions, and lace-curtain-Irish neighborhoods, two worlds collide as the dynasties of power and wealth mingle with the urban underworld.  And the violence and obsessions of Conn Sheridan's past continue to hant him as he marries and has a son, Gus, who will follow his father into the police force rising to head the city's Homicide division.  Knowing equally well the backroom politics of City Hall and  the private passions of the very rich, Gus also inherits his father's daredevil toughness, dangerous obsessions - and a cool reserve softened only by his unspoken love for his own son, Chris.

Only when Gus uncovers the startling connection between a brutal child killer and a bloody Irish-American gang war does the circle of passion and vengeance that began with Conn in Ireland begin to close.  And his Ivy-league-educated son Chris, appointed by the mayor to be a special prosecutor, begins an investigation of his own - one that will uncover piece b piece the shocking truth about his family's past and even about Grace, the beautiful, sophisticated Boston woman he wants to marry.

All Our Yesterdays creates a living, breathing portrait of an era ,,, and of two families who must come to terms with their heritage, and with the violence, the obsessions, and the deceit that both define and haunt them.  

Literary References, or "The Annotated Gumshoe"

Origin of the title: "And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/The way to dusty death."  Macbeth Act V, scene 5.

Note:  Parker chose to label the chapters with character names as he shifted the point of view.  As such all I have to work with are the page numbers.  The first number is from the Dell paperback, the second from the Delacort Press hardcover.  The third, where given, is from the Penguin edition published in England and was supplied by Simone. 

• 3/3/3: "Behind the lightning, like ancestral voices, the sound of thunder came.." - As Simone points out

  "'ancestral voices, prophesying war', from Kubla Khan."

  See Poetry

• 14/12/12: "He thought of that line, was it from Virgil, he used to know it in Latin.  Something about it being fitting and beautiful for a man to die for his country." - I couldn't find it in Virgil so I turned to my Latin expert Iain Campbell:

  "The one that springs to mind is in Horace's Odes. III.ii.13 
  'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.'
  'It is sweet and fitting to die for one's native land'"

• 14/12: "Slan leat" - A short form of "Slan leat go foill "   It means "good bye for a while" or simply "bye now" in Irish.

• 22/18/17: "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks." - From Shakespeare's King Lear Act III scene 2. 

• 23/20: "No pushing up poppies in Flanders field." - He is referring to the poem In Flanders Field by John McCrae. See Poetry

• 23/21: "High deeds in Hungary." - From An Immorality by Ezra Pound.  See Poetry

• 24/21: "Loved her neither wisely not too well." - A take on Othello's last line, after killing Desdemona and just before killing himself.  "speak of one that loved not wisely but too well."  Shakespeare's Othello Act V scene 2.

• 25/23/21: "Why, what could she have done, being what she is?/ Was there another Troy for her to burn?" - From No Second Troy by W.B. Yeats.  See Poetry

• 30/27/25: "The Peeler and the Goat." - Simone found the full lyrics and a background to the song at http://ingeb.org/songs/asbansha.html 

• 31/28/26: "Foch's principle." - Simone writes:

  "It seems RPB relates to Ferdinand Foch, French Marshal at WWI who was in command at the crucial (Battle of the Marne) and did excellent strategic planning later at the battle of the Somme. 'Foch’s general principle of the ultimate need for offensive action to secure final victory'"
  http://www.waikato.ac.nz/wfass/subjects/history/waimilhist/1999/foch.htm

• 46/41/37: "And the small rain down does fall." - Source unknown.  See Oft Quoted

• 50/43/39: "He knew when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God." - Okay, this one's a gimme.  Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

• 50/44: "The myth about the guy up to his neck in water who was dying of thirst but couldn't drink because when he did the water dipped out of reach." - Not only that, but branches laden with fruit were blown out of reach when he tried for them.  That was the punishment meted out to Tantalus.

• 56/49/45: "If God is dead all things are possible."-   I tried looking this one up when he used something similar in Valediction, to no avail.  The closest I found was  that famous Dostoevsky quote "If God did not exist anything is possible" except that he never wrote it.  I found a very well done research paper on the subject at http://www.dcortesi.home.mindspring.com/unbelieving/soundbite. 

• 56/49: "Nuns fret not." - An 1806 poem by William Wordsworth.  See Poetry

• 58/52/48: "Handy-dandy, which is the justice, which the thief?" - As Simone points out it's from King Lear Act IV scene 6.  Parker used it in Small Vices.

• 52/58/51: "I know my love." - A traditional Irish song.  See Lyrics

• 65/58: "One of the Cumana na mBan girls." - The "Council of Women", the women’s section of the IRA.

• 73/65/59: "Abandon all hope ye who enter here." - Simone writes:

  "Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy [c. 1310-1321], Inferno, Canto III, line 9 'Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate.' 'All hope abandon, ye who enter here!'"

• 74/65: "They must have ground exceedingly fucking fine." - This saying has been reused often over the years but the earliest one I found was

  "Mills of the Gods, Grind exceedingly slow, But grind exceedingly 
  fine..." - Euripides, (485 - 406 BC) 

• 75/67:  "If you lived here, you'd be home by now." - An oft posted billboard advertising a new complex of buildings closer to the city than the suburbs, usually posted beside a traffic-clogged freeway. I think it started in California but have no data to back it up.
• 76/67: "Land of opportunity" - America, or what is now called the United States thereof.  It seems to have started being called that in the 18th century, when the poor in landlocked Europe were told of this vast new country where anyone could build a better life.
• 134/117: "When the stakes were mortal." - Parker likes Mortal Stakes.  See Poetry
• 156/135/120: "April is the cruelest month." - Simone points out this is from The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot.  See it here
  http://u1.netgate.net/~ricercar/worlorn/wasteland.html
• 161/139/124: "Once more unto the breach, dear friends." - Simone points us to Shakespeare, Henry V, Act II, scene 1.
• 209/181/161: "Sicklied over with the pale cast of thought." - Once again Shakespeare, Hamlet Act III, scene 1.
• 209/181: "Maybe you are not Prince Hamlet, nor were meant to be." - I can't believe this one originally stumped me.  Bill Hooker wrote in to note it's from T.S. Eliot's The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, probably the most quoted poem in the Spenser universe.  See Poetry
• 210/182: "Orphans in the storm." - Referring to the 1921 silent movie Orphans of the Storm, the last of D.W. Griffith's blockbuster epics.  It starred Lillian and Dorothy Gish as sisters caught up in the French Revolution and a whole array of tearjerking troubles.  It was based on a French stage play titled "Les Deux Orphelines."  Cutting down three pages of research let's just say:

  "The sister's search for one another creates the thread of suspense and despair that holds the audience in it's grasp.  We are never sure, until the end, if the miracle of their reunion will occur." 

  He more recently used this in Hugger Mugger.

• 219/181: "All the colleges in all the world...you had to walk into mine." - A takeoff on one of the most classic lines from Casablanca.
• 220/192/171: "The Iceman Cometh." - Simone notes the play being cited is by Eugene O'Neill.
• 225/197: "Dancing to the music of infinity." - He may be referring to a painting by Nicolas Poussin called The Dance to the Music of Time (c.1640) that depicts "the Four Seasons dancing to the music of Father Time." Take a look at it here.  He also used it in Hush Money.
• 260/227: "Never?...hardly ever." - Iain answered this one in Looking for Rachel Wallace:

  "Wouldn't you perhaps agree that this is a direct reference to H.M.S.
  Pinafore, Gilbert and Sullivan, the Captain's song, in which he claims
  that he is 'never, ever sick at sea' but when challenged by the jolly
  tars, amends that to: 'Well, hardly ever.'"

  See Lyrics

• 268/235: "Sometimes I'm so worried about you that I can't breath." - Just to remember who wrote these books, Susan said the same thing to Spenser in Valediction, chapter 26.
• 290/253/223: "The rich are very different." - Paraphrased from F. Scott Fitzgerald. "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful." - The Rich Boy [1926].
  
  To which Ernest Hemingway mockingly replied, in his story The Snows of 
  Kilimanjaro, "Yes, they have more money." 

  He's referenced this before, in A Catskill Eagle and Hush Money.

• 303/265/234: "And you'll be a man my son." - Simone had this to say:

  "If" by Rudyard Kipling (a beautiful poem, although a bit on the chauvinistic side with that last line - and what are we women going to do? ;-) )

  See Poetry

• 305/268: "More than spoken word can tell." - It's from the song The Last Farewell, words and music by Roger Whittaker.  See Lyrics  Also used in Sudden Mischief and Hugger Mugger.
• 314/273: "I am what I am." - Iain Campbell and I have been discussing this for a few books now.  It's a tossup between Exodus 3:14 (Yahweh to Moses) "I am what I am" and Popeye "I yam what I yam."  
• 321/279/246: "Katz-an-goo." - My collaborators and I have been shaking our collective heads over this one.  Obscure reference or transliteration of a foreign language?
• 354/308: "Get them by the head; the soul will follow." - I have been unable to trace this back to its source, but "capture their minds and their hearts and souls will follow" is basic strategy for winning over a population, often more powerful than warfare.  Then again it was General George S. Patton who said “If you’ve got 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
• 364/316/279: "You prepare for what your enemy is able to do, not what you think he will do." - See Oft Quoted
• 364/316/279: "reason together" - Iain Campbell notes that we have seen this before.  Indeed, Parker last quoted it in God Save the Child ch.10 where I noted the following:

"Let us reason together." - Isaiah 1:18: "Come now, and let us reason together." Lyndon Johnson popularized it in the sixties when he was president.

• 381/329: "Soon it's gonna rain." - Soon it’s Gonna Rain is from the musical The Fantasticks (1960) words by Tom Jones, music by Harvey Schmidt. See Lyrics
• 389/338/297: "Fear is the mother of ritual." - Simone came up with the following:

  "Death is the mother of beauty", isn't that Wallace Stevens? (And indeed people who are scared or think their life is in chaos often revert to rituals to bring order into chaos. A neurotic trait.)

  Yes to Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning (see Poetry) but I think there is more to it.

• 394/342: "Enough with the love talk...into the bed." - Obviously the punchline of a joke, but several years of research have not brought it to light.
• 395/343: "A fine mess you left for me, pa." - A salute to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, two comic actors who successfully passed from silent films into the talkies.  Stanley would lead the pair into some trouble, and Ollie would intone "Well, this is another fine mess you've gotten us into."
• 408/353: "Sacco-Vanzetti." - I cut and pasted the following from The Godwulf Manuscript:

  In 1920 a paymaster and his guard were murdered during a robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts.  A month later two Italians, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested and charged with the crime.  They were immigrants and anarchists, and the common opinion  nowadays is that the trial was the product of anti-radical hysteria and political persecution, but they were executed in 1927.  I can't do the subject justice here, visit  http://dept.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sacvan.html for the full story.

• 440: "until the twelfth of never." - Iain noticed this one, which was more recently used in the dedication of Potshot.  See Oft Quoted and Lyrics
• 445/383: "Get them by the head and their souls will follow." - See 354/308 above.
• 447/384: "Unless I'm just thinking pretty." - A variation on "Pretty to think so."  See Oft Quoted.
• 448/385: ""If design govern a thing so small." - The last line of Design by Robert Frost.  See Poetry
• 449/386/339: "So, my little chickadee." - From the immortal W. C. Fields.
• 458/394: "Patty, Maxine, and LaVerne." - The Andrews sisters, a popular singing trio in the 30's, 40's and 50's, who hit the big time during WWII.  Whether they or the puppies are cuter I will leave up to you.

  

   

• 463/399/350: "Two sleepy people...by dawn's early light." - Simone says:

  "Two Sleepy People", a song, words by Frank Loesser, music by Hoagy Cormichael. From the film Thanks For The Memory (1938)

  Parker used this in Walking Shadow. See Lyrics

• 464/400/351: "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." - As Simone notes:

  "it's from the Bible, the Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. Matthew 17:5"

This Page Created by Bob Ames