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O’Brien, Flann

the novels of, [41] 49; The Best of Myles, [80] 59

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20231201093020 William Palmer on Myles na Gopaleen, Slightly Foxed 80

Bore-Hunting in Dublin

William Palmer on Myles na Gopaleen, The Best of Myles

Most fiction writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries know the form and understand that they will meet the same fate: good reviews for a first novel, a larger advance for the second, severely reduced advances for any subsequent volumes, poor sales, the casting adrift by their publishers, full-time jobs in cardboard box factories or part-time jobs in academia, then oblivion. My own fantasy, as an ageing cuckoo nesting in various universities in the early part of this century, was to find a beautiful and energetic student to front my works so that I could enjoy a new career by proxy. Perhaps not: he (or she) might have been praised for their ability to satirize the politically regrettable thought patterns of men and women of previous generations, but surely the trick would only work once. Perhaps the answer would be to dream up a suitable pen name and start afresh.
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A Quare One

Patrick Welland on the novels of Flann O’Brien

I sensed him looking at me as I sat in the tobacco fug of the Palace Bar in Dublin’s Fleet Street back in the ’60s engrossed in Joyce’s Dubliners. His scrutiny from the adjacent bar stool was unsettling. Suddenly, without apology, he tapped his finger on the page and nodded at me, signalling silent approval of my choice of book. Fixing my eye, he asked: ‘Did you ever hear of O’Brien?’ I shook my head. ‘Now there’s a hard man who runs Joyce close,’ he said. Then, pausing for dramatic effect, he added portentously: ‘And it was in this very bar he’d be drinking.’ Flann O’Brien, who loved to parody pub conversations, would have relished the bathetic conclusion. But I owe to that chance acquaintance a great debt. Over the next hour, he introduced me to the writing of a drunk and waspish comic genius who stretched the boundaries of literary invention and became a legend of Irish letters.

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