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Brendan Behan: A Life

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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.

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.'

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.

The particular achievement of this fine book, is to extractBrendan Behan from the mire of mythology in which he has been sofirmly placed since his death in 1964 at the age of 41. No easy task for any author given Behan's own willful contribution to the process. It deals fairly and honestly with Behan's homosexual leanings and does so in a non judgemental way using the evidence available rather than mere speculation. It is perceptive and the writing is as, Jack Helbig describes it in Booklist, 'graceful and forceful'. Behan was long over due such a biography.

Brendan Behan was no literary giant, but he deserves better than this -- poorly and pompously written, indifferently edited, riddled with factual errors (outrageous, considering the research), and lacking in perception and depth. In addition, the author's obsession with Behan's supposed homosexuality is wearisome. Behan isn't important enough to be on the receiving end of a top-flight definitive biography, but it's too damned bad that this is as close as he'll come.

Brendan Behan was no literary giant, but he deserves better than this -- poorly and pompously written, indifferently edited, riddled with factual errors (outrageous, considering the research), and lacking in perception and depth. In addition, the author's obsession with Behan's supposed homosexuality is wearisome. Behan isn't important enough to be on the receiving end of a top-flight definitive biography, but it's too damned bad that this is as close as he'll come.