Talk:Carlo Wostry

Personal opinion - was Wostry Irish?
The de.wiki article on Wostry claims that his father was Irish, and indeed I have found sources claiming that Carlo was of Irish ancestry. However Wostry was an Austrian surname, and no source provides any further explanation of the claim that he was a Irish. My personal conclusion was that perhaps, at some point in his life, Carlo Wostry jokingly claimed his father was Irish precisely because his name was so obviously Austrian. The more I read about him the more he seemed to be very much a practical joker and a teller of tall tales (eg the one about ringing the cathedral bells). Much of the narrative of his life does seem ultimately to derive from interviews in which he told stories about himself, and he may have been tempted to embroider and embellish.

I did find a picture online of Carlo’s brother in an Austrian-Hungarian naval uniform. It is possible that his family was divided in its feelings about nationality, with Carlo a passionate Italian nationalist while other family members felt otherwise. Anyway this is all a roundabout way of explaining why I omitted any reference to Wostry being of Irish descent.

He was, incidentally, a friend of James Joyce. Mccapra (talk) 10:08, 6 November 2022 (UTC)