Flann O'Brien
Flann O'Brien, whose real name was Brian O'Nolan, also wrote under the pen name of Myles na Gopaleen. He was born in 1911 in County Tyrone. A resident of Dublin, he graduated from University College after a brilliant career as a student (editing a magazine called Blather) and joined the Civil Service, in which he eventually attained a senior position.
He wrote throughout his life, which ended in Dublin on April 1, 1966. His other novels include The Dalkey Archive, The Third Policeman, The Hard Life, and The Poor Mouth, all available from Dalkey Archive Press. Also available are three volumes of his newspaper columns: The Best of Myles, Further Cuttings from Cruiskeen Lawn, and At War.
At Swim-Two-Birds
A wildly comic send-up of Irish literature and culture, At Swim-Two-Birds is the story of a young, lazy, and frequently drunk Irish college student who lives with his curmudgeonly uncle in Dublin. When not in bed (where he seems to spend most of...
At War
Like The Best of Myles and Further Cuttings from Cruiskeen Lawn (both available from Dalkey Archive Press), At War is a collection of Flann O'Brien's columns written for the Irish Times under the pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen. Taken from the war years...
Further Cuttings from Cruiskeen Lawn
When The Best of Myles was published in 1968, it was hailed (by S. J. Perelman among others) as one of the supreme comic achievements of the English language. Now, in response to the clamorous demands of men of science and the arts, men of steam, of...
The Best of Myles
The Best of Myles brings together the best of Flann O'Brien's newspaper column "Cruiskeen Lawn," written over a nearly thirty-year period. Covering such subjects as plumbers, the justice system, and improbable inventions, O'Brien (whose real...)
The Third Policeman
The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a...
The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story About the Hard Life
The Poor Mouth relates the story of one Bonaparte O'Coonassa, born in a cabin in a fictitious village called Corkadoragha in western Ireland equally renowned for its beauty and the abject poverty of its residents. Potatoes constitute the basis of his...
The Hard Life
Subtitled "An Exegesis of Squalor," The Hard Life is a sober farce from a master of Irish comic fiction. Set in Dublin at the turn of the century, the novel does involve squalor—illness, alcoholism, unemployment, bodily functions, crime, illicit...
The Dalkey Archive
Hailed as "the best comic fantasy since Tristram Shandy" upon its publication in 1964, The Dalkey Archive is Flann O'Brien's fifth and final novel; or rather (as O'Brien wrote to his editor), "The book is not meant to be a novel or anything of the...
Contributions:
Context N°15
- Reading Patrik Ouredník
- Letter from Russia: Contemporary Women's Prose
- Interview with Ariel Dorfman
- Interview with Dubravka Ugresic
- Nine-and-a-Half Americas
Context N°1
- Reading Flann Brian O'Brien O’Nolan
- Reading Beckett’s Fiction
- Reading Diane Williams
- Reading David Markson
- "The Parallels!" Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges
Context N°4
- Reading Claude Simon
- Reading Thomas Bernhard
- Reading James Joyce
- Reading Carol De Chellis Hill
- "A Bash in the Tunnel"
Context N°12
- Reading Douglas Woolf's Ya! & John-Juan
- Reading Dubravka Ugresic Through Six Selected Sentences
- Reading Louis Calaferte
- Reading Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
- Reading Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Context N°18
- Reading W. M. Spackman
- Letter from Finland
- Letter from Sarajevo
- Interview with Mark Binelli
- Interview with Thalia Field