“I Was Dancing,” by Edwin O’Connor, c 1964.

The narrator of this book is Daniel, and he is 77 years old now. He refers to himself as “Waltzing Daniel Considine” (p. 48). The other people we meet in Chapter One are Daniel’s son Tom, his wife Ellen, several of Daniel’s friends, and the cleaning woman Annie. Tom’s mother died 20 years ago.

Daniel’s physician, Billy Ryan, soon comes to see his patient Daniel. Right away we read “One, two, button my shoe” (p 26). The reason I tell my readers this detail is that the book is full of sayings that we all know and maybe say to a friend. Here’s some of the other sayings:

“Home is Where the Heart is”

“The More the Merrier”

“Listen to the Mocking Bird”

“High and Mighty”

“They Had Me Over a Barrel”

They “had been tickled pink”

Daniel has been a dancer for many years, not dancing with a woman, but dancing to music himself in a way that makes him famous. In fact, he had been away from his home for 21 years. In the paragraph where we read this detail, he was staying at the Blue Devil Motel in Pasadena, CA.

Billy comes to talk with his friend Daniel about places where he danced. Three places he refers to are Melbourne, Sidney, and Toowoomba (in Australia). Already on page 48, Billy and Daniel talk about a place where an older person can live. The name of the place is Smiling Valley. This place is referred to throughout the book, but Daniel doesn’t move there until, well, perhaps the last page of the book, but the reader isn’t sure of this detail.

Daniel goes to his doctor once a month.

Another person who comes to visit Daniel often is the priest Father Frank Feeley.

Daniel’s son Tom is an attorney. We read about a divorce case he takes on. The person meeting with Tom is a friend from his college days.

Toward the end of the book, Tom and his father Daniel have a long conversation. It’s recorded from page 190 to page 234. Daniel tells his son how he sent him lots of presents when he was traveling.

How they talk with each other is sometimes arguing, and sometimes meaningful conversations. At one point Delia knocks on the door and says she’ll drive Daniel to Smiling Valley, the retirement place. Daniel says to her “Get out of here!” And he gets down on his knees to pray.

Now Father Gottlieb and Billy are knocking on the door, and when Daniel lets them in, he is dancing. The friends wonder what will happen next.

The last sentence of the book is “And for the first time in a great many years Daniel, still dancing, still shouting, wondered this too” (p. 242).

Edwin O’Connor was a Pulitzer Prize- winning novelist. “I Was Dancing” is his fourth novel and was made into a stage play with a brief Broadway run, starring Burgess Meredith, in 1964. O’Connor was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1918 and graduated from the University of Notre Dame and then was a radio announcer. He died in 1968.

I wrote in my notebook: “If I were still in college and had an assignment to write a research paper, I would use this book for my subject.”

Interested in more familiar sayings? Try “The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations” [818.217 OXF], “101 American English proverbs: understanding language and culture through commonly used sayings” [398.921 COL], “There’s a frog in my throat: 440 animal sayings a little bird told me” [J428.1 LEE] marshalllyonlibrary.org, 507-537-7003