Genius under many guises

‘A satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham,’ in an opinion Flann O’Brien (1911-1966) shared with one of his fictional characters, ‘to which the reader could regulate the degree of his credulity’. Furthermore, the inhabitants of novels should be allowed ‘a private life, self-determination and a decent standard of living’.

The distinction between reality and fantasy in the author’s life was nebulous. His own identity, by choice, was often unclear. One of 12 children, as an adult he preferred seclusion, hiding behind the interchangeable masks of a multiple persona. Keith Donohue introduces him as a ‘serial pseudonymist’, Brian O’Nolan (his baptismal name), Myles na Gopaleen (the newspaper columnist) and Flann O’Brien (the novelist) , and an uncertain number of others. At University College Dublin, he wrote for the college magazine as Brother Barnabas. Later, when urgently pressed for funds, he contributed to various Irish provincial newspapers as George Knowall. He became most famous as Myles na Gopaleen, for a quarter of a century the writer of a column in the Irish Times called ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’ (The Overflowing Little Jug). Countless thousands of readers were devoted to its brilliant humour and scurrility, even as it became increasingly acidulous.

Myles was a misanthropic alcoholic with a superiority complex. In fact, linguistically at least, he really was superior. The son of a Catholic nationalist who insisted that his family spoke only Gaelic at home, Brian added English, Greek, Latin and some French and German to his vocabulary. During 18 years as a civil servant, he honed his written English with the pedantic precision of an erudite foreigner, investing his prose with the edge of a razor.

‘Variously self-described as the uncrowned King of Ireland, the archetypical Dublin man, ageless confidant of everyone from Synge to Joyce,’ Donohue writes, ‘Myles was a cross between the comic stage Irishman embodying every known stereotype and a savage critic of clichéd language and thinking, bureaucracy, mendacity, and other social foibles.’