Brendan Behan: A Life [Hardcover]

Michael O'Sullivan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2000

Hailed as the new O'Casey by Irish critics in 1958, Behan is now often portrayed as the archetypal Irishman and spectacular drunk. Behind the myth lies the more compelling story of a writer who was never able to fully harness his larger-than-life personality and talent.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Irish writer Brendan Behan (1923-64) was adored unconditionally by his beloved Granny, endowed with a great love of the written word by his father, and inspired to embrace republicanism and the IRA by his mother. During his internment for the attempted shooting of two policemen, he began the writing that would bring him world renown. Once out of prison, he found literary recognition in Paris with his short stories while continuing to work as a Dublin house painter; he also launched on the legendary drinking that led to his diabetes and death. His prison drama, The Quare Fellow, was produced in Dublin in 1954, and in 1955 he married Beatrice ffrench-Salkeld, who suffered intense emotional and physical abuse at his hands. O'Sullivan, a broadcaster and the literary editor of the Irish political magazine Magill, accessed archives heretofore untouched to offer the best biography of Behan since Ulrick O'Connor's Bendan (LJ 8/71). He considers Behan in all his contradictions: both shy and spirited, he was a show-off and a vicious drunk who nevertheless possessed a remarkable ear for the language of the ordinary man. O'Sullivan also addresses Behan's rumored bisexuality. What results is a disturbing and enlightening biography.ARobert Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., IN
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Writer, playwright, braggart, wit, liar, drunkard, quarreler, shit--Brendan Behan was a mass of contradictions. Simultaneously creative and destructive, funny and offensive, charming as heck and hell to get along with, he made friends easily and enemies almost as quickly. He packed so much into his short life--smuggling bombs for the IRA in his teens, international recognition as a writer in his early 30s, death at 41--that a biographer is hard-put to contain him in a mere book. Still, O'Sullivan pressed on, valiantly collecting every scrap of information he could about Behan, including lost letters from prison, hitherto inaccessible files in Britain, forgotten articles, and personal interviews, and reporting everything of interest and then some. At times the mass of facts and memories threatens to overwhelm, and O'Sullivan, a graceful, forceful writer, labors like the devil to find order in the chaos of Behan's life. Find an order he does, though, transforming the heap of letters, manuscripts, newspaper clippings, and transcriptions Behan left behind into a life story as compelling as the one Behan actually lived. Jack Helbig --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 354 pages
• Publisher: Roberts Rinehart (October 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568331878
• ISBN-13: 978-1568331874
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,984,821 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chronicles a talented writer's near-legendary life, April 28, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brendan Behan: A Life (Hardcover)

Brendan Behan: A Life chronicles a talented writer's near-legendary life and illustrates why Behan became one of Ireland's most celebrated artists. Compiled from a wide variety of sources which included prison documents, interviews with family and friends, editors and contemporaries, biographer Michael O'Sullivan was able to present a lucid and vivid introduction to the complex personal world of a genuine literary genius. Brendan Behan: A Life is a "must" for those who appreciate the contributions, influence and work of this unusual and gifted literary figure of modern Irish literature.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brendan Behan, a (tortured) Life, April 13, 2009

By 

Byrne Hourihane "reporterbth" (Phoenix, Az. USA.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brendan Behan: A Life (Hardcover)

Pointedly brief, O'Sullivan's title for this latest biography of Brendan Behan speaks volumes about the bad boy of recent Irish letters. Not quite life tragic, yet certainly not life triumphant, O'Sullivan lets the reader plod through and decide what it was. Who would, after all, pay for worldwide literary claim and fame by spending half of their adult existence in prison?

To begin, O'Sullivan lays the blame for Behan's crippling alcoholism at the feet of his grandmother, a family matriarch who doted on Brendan and had him swilling pints of Guinness by age six. Using a curious theory of child rearing, Granny English believed that early imbibing actually prevented alcohol dependency in later life. Kethleen Behan, Brendan's mother, resented her mother's influence on the family but was inexplicably powerless to halt it.

In the background stood Brendan's father Stephen, a peripheral player for the fledgling Irish Republican Army in the Dublin of the 1920s. If nothing else Behan's father instilled in him a love of literature and a hatred of the British and their Free State cronies, a hatred which was monumentally critical in shaping Brendan's later life.

By age sixteen Brendan Behan was a young man of obvious intelligence and writing ability, yet also a young man likened by his IRA counterparts to a loaded pistol with the safety off. O'Sullivan lays bare Behan's misplaced republican idealism, idealism that saw him land in one of Britain's Borstal Correctional Institutes after docking in Liverpool with a suitcase of explosives and not a satisfactory account for them. Not one to learn a lesson, Behan fired a pistol wildly at a Free State policeman in Dublin shortly after his Borstal release and was rewarded for his poor aim with fourteen more years in a of string Irish prisons.

Some of Brendan Behan's most important literary works, Borstal Boy and The Quare Fellow, soon followed by The Hostage, emerged from his protracted incarceration, and brought him worldwide attention. After Behan's sentence was reduced under political amnesty, he was off to America where he became a darling of the media and a sideshow to those who reveled in the antics of this talented Irishman. According to O'Sullivan, Behan spent the rest of his life writing, fighting and drinking. His alcohol and institutionally-shortened existence ended on March 20th, 1964 at age 41. The official cause of death was advanced liver disease.

What might separate this biography of Behan from others is the considerable access to prison writings that the biographer had. Brendan Behan, A Life is worthwhile reading and reminds us of the great Samuel Johnson quote: 'He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.'

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Brendan Behan: A Life by Michael O'Sullivan, April 14, 2009

By 

Michael J. DeMott "Michael J. De Mott" (Silver Spring, Maryland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brendan Behan: A Life (Hardcover)

Brendan Behan: A Life was, for me, a sad and disturbing book. Brendan Behan was a writer rich in talent but a terrible alcoholic who refused help and abused those who loved and cared about him the most. While I knew Behan was a heavy drinker, his homosexuality, pornography and pimping were news to me. O'Sullivan has researched his subject well and gives readers a lot to ponder when they consider Behan's public persona and the real man. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Brendan Behan, but be prepared to learn more about him than you want to know.