A Life Spent Making Merry

By Paul Gray

A FLANN O'BRIEN READER, edited by Stephen Jones; Viking/ Richard Seaver; 447 pages; $15

Once there were these three Irishmen. Brian O'Nolan joined the civil service as a young fellow and retired 18 years later with a small pension and a sharp tongue. Before he was 30, Flann O'Brien had published a novel (At Swim-Two-Birds) that won praise from no less a boyo than Jimmy Joyce. Myles na Gopaleen took up writing the odd play now and then but spent close to 25 years doing funny pieces for the newspapers. Now here's a strange thing. All three of these lads died at the same instant on April Fools' Day 1966.

All three lads were, of course, one and the same. If it is still not clear exactly why Brian O'Nolan had the impulse and gall to divide himself into three parts, something else unquestionably is: the unholy trinity of Brian/Flann/Myles added up to one of the most gifted comic writers of this century.

A Flann O'Brien Reader aids and abets this judgment. Flannophile Stephen Jones has collected samples from four novels, a long Gaelic tale, stories, essays, teleplays and reams of humorous journalism. Jumbled together in this manner, the pieces gradually reveal a single mind behind the pseudonyms, one that was drunk with words and more than ready to defend fair language at the drop of a solecism.

It did not much matter which language, either. Flann was comfortable in German, French and Latin, although his English prose style was most thoroughly affected by his knowledge of Gaelic. He regularly mocked those nationalists and bicycling anthropologists who made the preservation of Gaelic a sacred mission. In The Poor Mouth (1941) a long tale written in the old language, O'Brien shows a linguist from Dublin religiously transcribing the grunts of a western Irish pig. Flann even joked about the impulse that led him to learn his native tongue: "Having nothing to say, I thought at the time that it was important to revive a distant language in which absolutely nothing could be said." Yet in a letter to Sean O'Casey, O'Brien turned temporarily serious about the language that "enables us to transform the English language and this seems to hold of people who know little or no Irish, like Joyce. It seems to be an inbred thing."

This gift sustained him through all his diverse careers. Nothing fades faster than newspaper humor, and some of the Myles na Gopaleen columns that Editor Jones resurrects should have stayed in the morgue. Many pieces, though, seem remarkably fresh. Humbug and absurdity have not gone out of fashion, and Myles was keenly aware of both. When a local judge levied a stiff jail term on a woman who had been caught shoplifting, the journalist commented: "I suppose he was right when he said there was far too much shoplifting in Dublin but I am not clear how one calculates what is the right amount of shoplifting for Dublin." He took figures of speech literally and then offered advice on solving problems that only he could discern: how to keep blood from curdling, what to do about Ireland's excessive-burning of midnight oil.

He kept on the alert for "all that is nauseating in contemporary writing" and led his readers through catechisms of cliches: "What, as to the quality of solidity, imperviousness, and firmness, are facts? Hard. And as to temperature? Cold. With what do facts share this quality of frigidity? Print ..." He loved puns, the more outrageous the better, and invented elaborate stories to justify them. After rain and inept planning ruined a fundraising church bazaar, according to Myles, one of the guests was asked to describe the party. He replied: "A fete worse than debt." Myles made the "Plain People of Ireland" a regular chorus in his column, and often treated this entity harshly. It is hard to imagine any columnist now at work who would call his readers the "ignorant self-opinionated sod-minded suet-brained ham-faced mealy-mouthed streptococcus-ridden gang of natural gobdaws."

This collection shows why Myles' column in the Irish Times attracted fans such as James Thurber and S.J. Perelman. It also undercuts the myth that Flann O'Brien's youthful promise was somehow blighted by newspaper hack work. At Swim-Two-Birds did indeed suggest the arrival of an important Irish novelist. The 21-page excerpt included in A Flann O'Brien Reader barely hints at the novel's exuberant wordplay and cleverly connected plots. But Flann never wrote a book like it again, not because he was burdened with newspaper work but because he repudiated his own first novel. No one knows exactly why, but O'Brien may have sensed that someone, somewhere, was going to call him the new Irish genius. Geniuses are supposed to take themselves seriously, and that O'Brien could never do. "I regard myself as an accomplished literary handyman," he wrote in 1955, and the estimate seems fair. Perhaps it is sad that he did not spend his career making masterpieces. It is anything but sad that he spent his life making merry.

Excerpt

"Any reader who feels he or she would like to meet myself and family should write to the Editor asking for particulars as to when I am at home, the best time to call, and whether it is necessary to leave cards beforehand. You will find us, I fear, just a little bit formal. My wife, for instance, keeps her hands in a handbag. This, however, need not disturb you. Again, if it happens that you come to dinner, you must be prepared for certain old-world customs--outmoded if you like, but still capable of imparting grace and charm to a gathering of those who knew the vanished world of yesteryear. First a glass of pale sherry, exquisite in its thin needle-like impact oil the palate, potent of preprandial salivation. Then fine-tasted bouillon in china bowls, served with white rolls, those clandestinely-sieved American cigarettes. My jewelled hand has now strayed to the Turkish bell-tassel and the great triple peal that calls for the dinner proper rings out in the distant servants' hall This is where the guest who is accustomed to the rougher usage of today may receive a slight surprise. When the dinner is brought in, he will note that it is ... well... in a dinner jacket. Big mass of roast beef in the breast, sleeves stuffed with spuds, sprigs of celery up through the buttonholes, gravy sopping out everywhere." --Paul Gray

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