-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Brooker, Joseph. Flann O'Brien. Tavistock: Northcote House (Writers and their Work), 2005. viii + 120 pp. £35.00 (hardback); £10.99 (paperback). ISBN 0–7463–1013–7/1081–1, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 43, Issue 4, October 2007, Page 471, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqm074
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
Flann O'Brien to readers of his novels, Myles na Gopaleen to readers of the Irish Times, Brian O'Nolan published under many names. Joseph Brooker's slim volume provides a highly useful introduction to this protean figure. He connects O'Nolan's slippery authorial identity to a fluid understanding of literature, language and identity. Even skits in a student magazine called Blather are shown to demonstrate a keen awareness of the “essential superfluity” of writing (p. 26). The result is a constant literary experimentation, witnessed by the multiple layers of narrative in At Swim-Two-Birds, the games of logic and disorder in The Third Policeman, and the manipulation of cliché in An Béal Bocht. Brooker is good, too, on some of the national and political implications of such stylistic play. He is also open about O'Nolan's failings. That he came after Joyce was O'Nolan's luck and his downfall. “There is,” Brooker notes, “a fine line between a badly written novel and an anti-novel” (p. 85), and he judges the late works The Dalkey Archive and The Hard Life as less successful. O'Nolan did not enjoy much fame in his lifetime, but Flann O'Brien is an excellent starting point for students of his work.
