No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien

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During his all-too-brief lifetime, Flann O'Brien was read by a small but fanatically faithful coterie of readers, including James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Graham Greene, and William Saroyan. He is one of the most difficult writers to pin down, partly or primarily as a result of his having carefully carved himself into three people, all of whom he used, when necessary, to hide behind. As Flann O'Brien he wrote several novels that for their technical precocity, exuberant prose, and sparking invention, have been ...
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Overview

During his all-too-brief lifetime, Flann O'Brien was read by a small but fanatically faithful coterie of readers, including James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Graham Greene, and William Saroyan. He is one of the most difficult writers to pin down, partly or primarily as a result of his having carefully carved himself into three people, all of whom he used, when necessary, to hide behind. As Flann O'Brien he wrote several novels that for their technical precocity, exuberant prose, and sparking invention, have been proclaimed among the finest of the modern period; as Myles na Gopaleen ("Miles of the Little Ponies") he wrote for twenty-five years a wildly imaginative newspaper column for The Irish Times called Cruiskeen Lawn; as Brian O'Nolan, the name on his birth certificate, he held down a responsible job in the bureaucracy of the Irish Government. No Laughing Matter is the first full-length biography of this remarkable man.
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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Brian O'Nolan, who used the pseudonyms Flann O'Brien (for his novels) and Myles naGopaleen (for his newspaper columns), was born in 1911 in the north of Ireland. His father, a career civil servant, was a fervent Irish linguist who educated his sons at home because he did not want them to be taught in English. O'Nolan grew up mainly in Dublin and was educated at University College Dublin and, like his father, entered the Irish civil service. His first book, At Swim Two Birds (1939), was edited by Graham Greene and greatly admired by James Joyce, who called O'Nolan "a real writer, with a true comic spirit." This was to begin O'Nolan's love-hate relationship with Joyce. He was a Joycean apostle, but, in time, he grew weary of hearing how his writing style mimicked that of the master. In 1940, O'Nolan began writing a column for the Irish Times, and in 1941 published An Bal Bocht (translated as The Poor Mouth in English), a comic novel about the Irish-speaking west of Ireland. Cronin (Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist), who was a friend of O'Nolan, focuses on many aspects of the novelist's life: his friends, who considered him a "natural celibate" (although he married later); his relationship with Sean T. O'Kelly who would become president of Ireland; how he savaged parts of his novel, The Third Policeman, to put together his later work, The Dalkey Archive; his friendships with William Saroyan and Brendan Behan; and his alcoholism, which led to the cancer that killed him in 1966. Cronin also presents a vivid picture of Dublin life in the middle of the 20th century, identifying pubsmany of which still operatethat will be of particular interest to O'Nolan aficionados. This is an intense look at one of 20th-century's Ireland's greatest writers that will appeal to fans and scholars alike. Photos. (Mar.) FYI: Dalkey Archive, the Chicago-based press, is named after the comic novel whose hero is James Joyce.
Library Journal
Novelist Flann O'Brien, newspaper columnist Myles na Gopaleen, civil servant Brian Nolan, and Brian O'Nolan are all one in the same brilliant writer and satirist, often compared to James Joyce. From early on, O'Brien held a bemused view of the world. He discovered his writing voice at University College in Dublin, where he often wrote under the pseudonym Brother Barnabas. Entering the civil service, writing his sophisticated column and novels, drinking heavily to disguise his shyness, O'Brien became a figure of intellectual note in Dublin. He was a devotee of the Irish language, a nationalist of sorts. He, despite his civil servant appearance, wore the wider-brimmed hat of the literary man who disdained pretension and falseness with scathing humor, variously found in his novels, The Hard Life, The Poor Mouth, and The Dalkey Archive. Cronin (The Last Modernist: A Life of Samuel Beckett, LJ 6/1/97), a friend of O'Brien's, has found in his treatment of O'Brien the essence of this troubled, accomplished, and most decidedly Irish writer.Robert Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind.
Booknews
A biography of an Irish literary genius who wrote several acclaimed novels and a long-running newspaper column. Includes b&w photos. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780880641838
  • Publisher: Fromm International Publishing Corporation
  • Publication date: 1/1/1998
  • Edition description: 1ST FROMM
  • Pages: 260
  • Product dimensions: 6.32 (w) x 9.35 (h) x 1.02 (d)

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