No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien [Hardcover]

Anthony Cronin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1998

Flann O'Brien's writing career was launched in 1939 with his brilliant first novel AT SWIM TWO BIRDS--a cult classic praised by James Joyce--quickly followed by other influential novels. But O'Brien lived a dark and tragic life, his writing obscured by various pseudonyms. Here Anthony Cronin, a member of O'Brien's intimate circle, offers a remarkable and fascinating portrait of the writer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brian O'Nolan, who used the pseudonyms Flann O'Brien (for his novels) and Myles naGopaleen (for his newspaper columns), was born in 1911 in the north of Ireland. His father, a career civil servant, was a fervent Irish linguist who educated his sons at home because he did not want them to be taught in English. O'Nolan grew up mainly in Dublin and was educated at University College Dublin and, like his father, entered the Irish civil service. His first book, At Swim Two Birds (1939), was edited by Graham Greene and greatly admired by James Joyce, who called O'Nolan "a real writer, with a true comic spirit." This was to begin O'Nolan's love-hate relationship with Joyce. He was a Joycean apostle, but, in time, he grew weary of hearing how his writing style mimicked that of the master. In 1940, O'Nolan began writing a column for the Irish Times, and in 1941 published An Beal Bocht (translated as The Poor Mouth in English), a comic novel about the Irish-speaking west of Ireland. Cronin (Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist), who was a friend of O'Nolan, focuses on many aspects of the novelist's life: his friends, who considered him a "natural celibate" (although he married later); his relationship with Sean T. O'Kelly who would become president of Ireland; how he savaged parts of his novel, The Third Policeman, to put together his later work, The Dalkey Archive; his friendships with William Saroyan and Brendan Behan; and his alcoholism, which led to the cancer that killed him in 1966. Cronin also presents a vivid picture of Dublin life in the middle of the 20th century, identifying pubs?many of which still operate?that will be of particular interest to O'Nolan aficionados. This is an intense look at one of 20th-century's Ireland's greatest writers that will appeal to fans and scholars alike. Photos. (Mar.) FYI: Dalkey Archive, the Chicago-based press, is named after the comic novel whose hero is James Joyce.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Novelist Flann O'Brien, newspaper columnist Myles na Gopaleen, civil servant Brian Nolan, and Brian O'Nolan are all one in the same brilliant writer and satirist, often compared to James Joyce. From early on, O'Brien held a bemused view of the world. He discovered his writing voice at University College in Dublin, where he often wrote under the pseudonym Brother Barnabas. Entering the civil service, writing his sophisticated column and novels, drinking heavily to disguise his shyness, O'Brien became a figure of intellectual note in Dublin. He was a devotee of the Irish language, a nationalist of sorts. He, despite his civil servant appearance, wore the wider-brimmed hat of the literary man who disdained pretension and falseness with scathing humor, variously found in his novels, The Hard Life, The Poor Mouth, and The Dalkey Archive. Cronin (The Last Modernist: A Life of Samuel Beckett, LJ 6/1/97), a friend of O'Brien's, has found in his treatment of O'Brien the essence of this troubled, accomplished, and most decidedly Irish writer.?Robert Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 260 pages
• Publisher: Fromm Intl; 1st Fromm International ed edition (March 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880641835
• ISBN-13: 978-0880641838
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #687,840 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Useful, entertaining, and occasionally frustrating, December 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien (Hardcover)

Cronin is an affectionate biographer but thankfully not a hagiographer. His personal acquaintance with Brian O'Nolan gives him insight into the various personal and artistic personae that O'Nolan adopted: Flann O'Brien, Myles na gCopaleen, etc. Cronin spends too much energy speculating as to why O'Brien never managed to fulfil the artistic potential of his first two novels. It is, perhaps, unfair to fault Cronin, as this failure frustrates anyone who has read O'Brien's early work. However, Cronin's tone occasionally becomes pious and judgemental of O'Nolan. One wishes this tone would have extended to other aspects of O'Nolan's life (specifically the personal); Cronin evokes and explains the mind set of Dublin in the early to mid twentieth century, but he seems wary of really examining it. In all fairness, that might have been another book altogether. In sum, the book is readable, often as funny as O'Brien himself (and occasionally just as sad), and useful for the student of Flann O'Brien. It fills

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for Flann O'Brien fans, August 25, 2000

By 

johnny2bad (Vienna, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien (Hardcover)

This book is the definitive biography, whatever quibbles one may have with the author's judgments, aesthetic or otherwise, about O'Nolan's life or art. Think instead about what you get with this book: an author who knew the subject personally, in-depth research into O'Nolan's origins and childhood, an intimate knowledge of the Irish literary scene in the interwar and postwar years, and the ability to show how these shaped the subject intellectually and psychologically. I disagree with a few of Cronin's assessments: I think The Dalkey Archive was the pinnacle of O'Nolan's novelistic achievements. While I agree he should have written more novels, I also feel that his time writing newspaper columns was well spent; there's more wit in most of those columns than in many novels by lesser writers. This book satisfies one of the most important criteria of a biography, that it be a good read in and of itself: Cronin is an excellent writer.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful view of Dublin literary and middle classlife, January 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien (Hardcover)

This is a beautifully written book about a brillant frustrated man, who was a great novelist, newspaper columnist and a competent bureaucrat at the same time. Interesting to an American for that insider's look at those segments of Irish life, it is also valueable to an Irish American Catholic for it is explanation of how O'Brien's convinced Catholicism limited his intellectual curiosity.