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

by Anthony Cronin

Overview

First published in 1989 No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O’Brien was the first full-length biography of Flann O’Brien. Rich in background, anecdote and social history, it is an extraordinary portrait of a writer and his times, perceptive, sympathetic and authoritative. Flann O’Brien (aka Brian O’Nolan) was born in Tyrone in 1911 and worked as a civil servant for many years. He also developed an alter ego, Myles na Gopaleen, whose saitrical column in the Irish Times soon acquired legendary status.

At Swim-Two-Birds, his first novel, appeared in 1939 and was praised by James Joyce, Graham Greene, Dylan Thomas and others. His second novel, The Third Policeman, failed to find a publisher at the time but has since been acknowledged as one of the most important novels to come out of Ireland in the twentieth century. With a foreword by acclaimed author Kevin Barry and striking redesign, No Laughing Matter is an undisputed classic of Irish literary biography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781848407145
Publisher:	New Island Books
Publication date:	04/26/2019
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.45(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Anthony Cronin was a poet, novelist and critic. Among his prose works are The Last Modernist (1996), a biography of Samuel Beckett, Dead as Doornails and The Life of Riley.

Editorial Reviews

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 Bal 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 pubsmany of which still operatethat 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.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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.

Library Journal

A biography of an Irish literary genius who wrote several acclaimed novels and a long-running newspaper column. Includes b&w photos. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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