Flann O'Brien

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Flann O'Brien (October 5, 1911, Strabane, County Tyrone Ireland – April 1, 1966 Dublin) is a pseudonym of the twentieth century Irish novelist and satirist Brian O'Nolan (in Irish Brian Ó Nuallain), best known for his novels An Béal Bocht, At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman. He also wrote many satirical columns in the Irish Times under the name Myles na gCopaleen (later angliscised to Myles na Gopaleen).

Most of O'Nolan's writings were occasional pieces published in periodicals, which explains why his work has only recently come to enjoy the considered attention of literary scholars.

Contents [hide] 1 Early writings 2 Novels 3 Journalism 4 See also 5 Further reading 6 External links

[edit] Early writings

O'Nolan wrote prodigiously during his years as a student at University College Dublin, contributing to the student magazine Comhthrom Féinne (Fair Game) under various guises, in particular the pseudonym Brother Barnabas. Significantly, he composed a story during this same period entitled "Scenes in a Novel (probably posthumous) by Brother Barnabas", which anticipates many of the ideas and themes later to be found in his novel, At Swim-Two-Birds. In it, the putative author of the story finds himself in riotous conflict with his characters, who are determined to follow their own paths regardless of the author's design. For example, the villain of the story, one Carruthers McDaid, intended by the author as the lowest form of scoundrel, "meant to sink slowly to absolutely the last extremities of human degradation", instead ekes out a modest living selling cats to elderly ladies and becomes a covert churchgoer without the author's consent. Meanwhile, the story's hero, Shaun Svoolish, chooses a comfortable, bourgeois life rather than romance and heroics:

'I may be a prig', he replied, 'but I know what I like. Why can't I marry Bridie and have a shot at the Civil Service?'

'Railway accidents are fortunately rare', I said finally, 'but when they happen they are horrible. Think it over.'

In 1934 O'Nolan and his student friends founded a short-lived magazine called Blather. The writing here, though clearly bearing the marks of youthful bravado, again somewhat anticipates O'Nolan's later work, in this case his Cruiskeen Lawn column as Myles na gCopaleen:

Blather is here. As we advance to make our bow, you will look in vain for signs of servility or of any evidence of a desire to please. We are an arrogant and depraved body of men. We are as proud as bantams and as vain as peacocks.

Blather doesn't care. A sardonic laugh escapes us as we bow, cruel and cynical hounds that we are. It is a terrible laugh, the laugh of lost men. Do you get the smell of porter?

[edit] Novels

Flann O'Brien novels have attracted a wide following for their bizarre humour and Modernist metafiction. At Swim-Two-Birds works entirely with borrowed (and stolen) characters from other fiction and legend, on the grounds that there are already far too many existing fictional characters, while The Third Policeman has a superficial plot about an Irish country youth's vision of hell, played against a satire of academic debate on an eccentric philosopher, and finds time to introduce the atomic theory of the bicycle. The Dalkey Archive features a character who encounters a penitent, elderly James Joyce (who never wrote any of his books and seeks only to join the Jesuit Order) working as a busboy in the resort of Skerries and a scientist looking to suck all of the air out of the world. Other books by Flann O'Brien include The Hard Life (a fictional autobiography meant to be his "misterpiece"), and An Béal Bocht, (translated from the Irish as The Poor Mouth), which was a parody of Tomás Ó Criomhthain's autobiography An t-Oileánach .

As a novelist, O'Nolan was powerfully influenced by James Joyce. Indeed, he was at pains to attend the same college as Joyce, and Joyce biographer Richard Ellmann has established that O'Nolan, fully in keeping with his literary temperament, used a forged interview with Joyce's father John Joyce as part of his application. He was none the less sceptical of the Cult of Joyce which overshadowed much of Irish writing, "I declare to God if I hear that name Joyce one more time I will surely froth at the gob."

Flann O'Brien is rightly considered a major figure in twentieth century Irish literature. The British writer Anthony Burgess was moved to say of him: "If we don't cherish the work of Flann O'Brien we are stupid fools who don't deserve to have great men. Flann O'Brien is a very great man." Burgess included At Swim-Two-Birds on his list of 99 Great Novels.

At Swim-Two-Birds is now recognized as one of the most significant Modernist novels before 1945. Indeed it can be seen as a pioneer of postmodernism, although the academic Keith Hopper has persuasively argued that The Third Policeman, superficially less radical, is actually a more deeply subversive and proto-postmodernist work. At Swim-Two-Birds was one of the last books that James Joyce read and he praised it to O'Nolan's friends - praise which was subsequently used for years as a jacket blurb on reprints of O'Brien's novels. The novel has had a troubled publication history in the USA. Southern Illinois University Press has set up a Flann O'Brien Center and begun publishing all of O'Nolan's works. Consequently, academic attention to the novel has increased.

O'Brien influenced the science fiction writer and conspiracy theory satirist Robert Anton Wilson, who has O'Brien's character De Selby, an obscure intellectual in The Third Policeman, appear in Wilson's The Widow's Son. In both works, De Selby is the subject of long pseudo-scholarly footnotes. This is fitting, because O'Brien himself made free use of characters invented by other writers, claiming that there were too many fictional characters as is. O'Brien was also known for pulling the reader's leg by concocting elaborate conspiracy theories.

[edit] Journalism

The third of twelve children, O'Nolan became a civil servant like his father. Under the pen name of Myles na gCopaleen ("Myles of the little horses" or "Myles of the ponies"), O'Nolan published a regular column in The Irish Times, titled "Cruiskeen Lawn". That Myles na gCopaleen was the pen name of a civil servant was no secret, and O'Nolan was eventually forced to retire for satirising Patrick Smith, a government minister to whom he was secretary, in the column. Anne Clune/Clissman has suggested that his worsening alcoholism was also to blame. The middle aged O'Nolan proved unable to make profitable use of his enforced leisure, so that he never regained the heights of his early work.

"Cruiskeen Lawn", meaning "Little Brimming Jug," is an example of the sort of bilingual humour O'Nolan frequently employed. "Cruiskeen Lawn" was usually written in English, but sometimes in Irish or Latin, and sometimes in a strange English-Irish hybrid of his own invention. Because O'Nolan's first language was Irish, he felt free in "Cruiskeen Lawn" to ridicule linguistic nationalists and their delusions of independence. He also described numerous seemingly ingenious inventions and schemes for the improvement of the Irish nation.

"Cruiskeen Lawn" featured a number of regular characters, such as the "PLAIN PEOPLE OF IRELAND" [sic] who periodically interrupt Myles's flights of fancy to demand clarification or explanation, the poets Keats and Chapman whose adventures always end in an elaborate pun, "the Brother," and "the Da". Some of these characters (in particular "the Brother") are explained in his book The Hard Life.

Brian O'Nolan was one of Ireland's most influential satirists. Cruiskeen Lawn was used by O'Nolan to interrogate -and ultimately reject- key policies of the Fianna Fáil Government in the early 1940s (at a time when he was a senior civil servant). O'Nolan's satirical attack on the proposed introduction of vocational organisation within Ireland, together with his attack on proposals for an Irish Welfare State, exemplify how the column could engage with issues of national importance.

The "Cruskeen Lawn" pieces have been collected into a number of books, such as The Best of Myles and Further Cuttings from Cruiskeen Lawn.

[edit] See also

• Myles na gCopaleen
• List of Northern Ireland writers

[edit] Further reading

• Clune, Anne, and Tess Hurson, eds., 1997. Conjuring Complexities: Essays on Flann O'Brien. The Institute of Irish Studies, The Queens Univ. of Belfast. ISBN 085389678X
• Cronin, Anthony, 2003. No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien. New Island Books. ISBN 1-904301-37-1
• Curran, Steven ‘“No, This is Not From The Bell”: Brian O’Nolan’s 1943 Cruiskeen Lawn Anthology’, in Éire-Ireland, 32, 2 & 3 (Summer/Fall 1997), pp.79-92.
• Curran, Steven ‘Designs on an “Elegant Utopia”: Brian O’Nolan and Vocational Organisation', Bullán, V, 2 (Winter/Spring 2001), pp.87-116.
• Curran, Steven ‘“Could Paddy Leave Off from Copying Just for Five Minutes?”: Brian O’Nolan and Éire’s Beveridge Plan’, Irish University Review, 31, 2 (Autumn/Winter 2001), pp.353-76.
• Guinness, Jonathan 1997. Requiem for a family business. Macmillan, London. ISBN 0-333-66191-5 at pp.8-9.
• Hopper, Keith, 1995. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Postmodernist. Cork University Press. ISBN 1-85918-042-6
• Wappling, Eva, 1984. Four legendary Figures in At Swim-Two-Birds. Uppsala. ISBN 91-554-1595-4

[edit] External links

• Flann O'Brien: Reviews
• Flann O'Brien: A Biographical Introduction
• The Modern Word: Flann O'Brien
• Picture of Flann O'Brien
• Flann O'Brien: Comic Genius
• Flann O'Brien: Shameless Hijack
• Three Beginnings from 'At Swim-Two-Birds'
• The Gaelic from 'The Best of Myles'
• Far Amurikey from 'The Third Policeman'
• 'The Workmans Friend' The Pint of Plain...
• De Selby Canned Darkness...
• The Third Policeman and the TV show Lost
• About De Selby (Polish language)...