Green dreams

by Michael Gregory Stephens

In Michael Stephens's words, "the net these pieces fall into is that world of the Irish American, the mick, the monkey face, the potato picker, the bog man." More to the point, it is the Irish of Stephens's youth, of Brooklyn's working-poor slums, under whose influence he composed these essays. In each of the book's three sections, he looks back on his life as he ponders a legendary quality - or, sometimes, proclivity - of his people as writers, fighters, or drinkers. Searching for the truths in the stereotypes, Stephens finds himself in what he discovers. Schoolyard bullies, surly longshoremen, boxers, and gangsters populate the opening section. On the subject of gangsters, Stephens takes a measure of their Hollywood renditions and finds them wanting. Those old James Cagney movies and such recent films as State of Grace have their moments, he says, but they can't touch the real thing - the vengeful, chaotic despots of Hell's Kitchen and the Manhattan waterfront. The lucky punch and it