Flann O'Brien Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Flann O'Brien was the best known pseudonym of Brian O'Nolan (October 5, 1911 - April 1, 1966), who also published under the name Myles na gCopaleen. He was a twentieth century Irish humorous writer.
Under the name Flann O'Brien, he published a series of novels that have attracted a wide following for their bizarre humour and Modernist metafiction. At Swim-Two-Birds works entirely with recycled characters from other fiction (and legend), on the grounds that there are already far too many fictional characters in circulation, 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 philosopher in question, De Selby, is based on Giambattista Vico, who had been a fascination of James Joyce's, and the importance of the bicycle recalls Samuel Beckett. The Dalkey Archive features a character who encounters a penitent, elderly James Joyce (who never wrote any of his books) working as a busboy in the resort of Dalkey 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 Ellman 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.
At Swim-Two-Birds is now recognized as one of the most significant Modernist novels before 1945. Anthony Burgess included it on his list of 99 Great Novels. In the United States, the novel has had a very troubled publication history. In recent years, Southern Illinois University Press has set up a Flann O'Brien Center and has begun publishing all of O'Nolan's works. Consequently, academic attention on the novel has been increasing.
As Myles na gCopaleen, O'Nolan published a regular column entitled "Cruiskeen Lawn" in The Irish Times, usually in English, but sometimes in Irish, sometimes in Latin and sometimes in a strange English-Irish hybrid of his own invention.
The columns introduce a regular set of characters, such as the "PLAIN PEOPLE OF IRELAND," who periodically interrupt Myles' 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". Numerous ingenious inventions and schemes for the improvement of the Irish nation are described.
These pieces have been collected into a number of books such as The Best of Myles and Further Cuttings from Cruiskeen Lawn (an example of bilingual humour, which O'Nolan often used. His pen name means "Myles of the little horse," and Cruiskeen Lawn means "the small full glass").
O'Nolan had been one of the first proponents of the study of Irish, and yet as a newspaper columnist he consistently satirized Irish nationalists for their zeal. Some of the characters introduced in the "Cruiskeen Lawn" column (in particular The Brother) are explained in The Hard Life.
Flann O'Brien's writing is sufficiently creative that he counts as a major figure in twentieth century Irish literature. Like others whose primary output was periodical, his work has only recently been receiving wide attention from literary scholars.Novels
Journalism
