Sean O'Rourke MAT '68 (Author, A BRIEF HISTORY OF HARVARD EATERIES & WATERING HOLES)
By D. Dona Le '05
Sean O’Rourke is quite the character. Perhaps even more of a character than the colorful lives featured in his latest work, A BRIEF HISTORY OF HARVARD EATERIES AND WATERING HOLES.
A delightful phone conversation with O’Rourke the day before Thanksgiving reveals that he is warm, witty, and full of literary anecdotes and uncommon bits of knowledge and history. From his home in Cambridge, O’Rourke can look out the window at Annenberg and the Fogg Art Museum; the Yard is shielded from his view, but its treetops are visible. O’Rourke has remained close to his graduate alma mater.
A Connecticut native, O’Rourke majored in economics in college, before receiving his Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) from Harvard in 1968. In between, he joined the army and was stationed in France and Germany as a radio technician and controller.
Why the army? "When I graduated from college, I didn’t know what the heck I wanted to do,” confesses O’Rourke. "I did not want to have anything to do with school ever again. I was so disgusted with the whole thing, I joined the army!”
Ironically, O’Rourke went on to become a Latin, French, and English teacher at high schools and local colleges in the New England area. He applied to Harvard’s MAT program at his mother’s suggestion; she had sent him a newspaper clipping about the program.
"Like a good little boy, I sent my application off. There was also a financial aid application, but I didn’t even bother to fill it out because I knew I’d never get in,” O’Rourke confides. "And what happened was—I got in!”
Throughout his teaching career, O’Rourke wrote articles that appeared in such publications as the Journal of Modern Literature and The Hemingway Review. During his spare time, he devoted himself to his first book, GRACE UNDER PRESSURE: THE LIFE OF EVAN SHIPMAN.
O’Rourke completed the research for the Shipman book over a 19-year period. The idea was originally born out of O’Rourke’s stint in the army when he was stationed in Fontainebleau.
"I spent a lot of time in Paris, and since I didn’t have much money, my principal amusement was walking around. And when I came back, I read Hemingway’s Paris memoir, A MOVABLE FEAST, and of course, I could see it because I had been in these places,” he explains. "In A MOVABLE FEAST, he is extremely unkind to just about everyone—Gertrude Stein, Scott F. Fitzgerald—but he is so nice to Evan Shipman. So I thought, ‘Who the dickens is Evan Shipman, and what the heck happened to him?’”
That project took O’Rourke to libraries around the country—including Kentucky, Illinois, and New Jersey—and even across the Atlantic, to the Sorbonne. His more recent work, however, about food and drink establishments in Harvard Square was much closer to home.
In fact, O’Rourke himself took the photographs that are featured in A BRIEF HISTORY OF HARVARD EATERIES AND WATERING HOLES. He completed the book in an astonishing three months over the summer of 2011. To gather information about such places as Elsie’s Sandwich Shop and the Tasty—a favorite of Matt Damon and many others—O’Rourke found The Crimson to be one valuable resource.
"I also interviewed a few people, and I found that takes a lot of time. And I used Yelp, and many of the restaurants have informative Web sites,” he reveals.
Despite the high-tech nature of his research, O’Rourke’s writing habits have remained the same for the past 40+ years.
"When I want to write something halfway interesting, I have to do it in longhand on pen and pad. I’ve been using the same pads and pens since I was a grad student,” he laughs.
O’Rourke purchases his writing supplies exclusively from Bob Slate, which he informs me has recently closed in the Square.
"But before they closed, I stocked up. I use 8.5 x 11, quarter-inch ruled yellow pads, fifty pages to a pad, and Paper Mate Flair pens. The pads are lined in blue across, no margin lines; I put the margin lines in pencil myself,” O’Rourke says. "Then I put a date in the left-hand margin, and I just go at it.”
O’Rourke isn’t the only writer to have very particular writing habits. He somehow knows that Hemingway could only write in pencil standing up, a habit he picked up from his editor, Max Perkins. As for Max Perkins?
"In the process of researching Shipman, I also researched Perkins. He always went to afternoon tea at the Ritz at 4pm—that was a euphemism for getting smashed on martinis!”
O’Rourke’s ability to showcase these minute details and personal quirks enlivens his real-life figures and makes his historical accounts unique.
"I don’t invent anything, but what I really try to do is recreate the scene and put the reader in the situation.”
Those who are familiar with Harvard Square will have no problem transplanting themselves to the restaurants and bars that O’Rourke describes in his book. Some places he describes remain in business, such as Grendel’s Den and Algiers, while others are long gone.
"I don’t think there’s a single place in Harvard Square you wouldn’t take your mother today, but at one point, it was full of dives. One of the worst was the Old Spaghetti Factory—I couldn’t find anybody who was willing to admit they’d seen the inside of the place!”
To those who are wondering, as I did, Mr. Bartley (of his namesake burger joint) still takes orders on the sidewalk where people stand in line waiting to enter the restaurant.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HARVARD EATERIES AND WATERING HOLES is full of fascinating tidbits that will interest anyone who ever stepped off campus to take a break from dining hall fare. Readers will no doubt reminisce about their own awkward first dates, blurry bar crawls, and formal graduation dinners at Harvard Square fixtures, past and present.
Now, O’Rourke is collaborating with a filmmaker to write the script for a documentary about Shipman. He is also compiling the research for an upcoming book about George Rublee, a lawyer and diplomat, and Rublee’s close-knit circle of friends and colleagues.
"Writing is hard enough,” says O’Rourke, "but getting a publisher is harder.”
Thanks to Harvardwood and Unlimited Publishing LLC, and to the delight of readers, that’s no longer a problem. O’Rourke’s A BRIEF HISTORY OF HARVARD EATERIES AND WATERING HOLES will be released this month, an excellent holiday gift option for nostalgic foodies and alumni craving Elsie’s roast beef special.