THE FLANN O'BRIEN PAGE

In his lifetime, Flann O’Brien was most well known as his alter-ego, Myles na gCopaleen, or Myles na Gopaleen to make it easier on his English readers’ mental pronunciation.  He was primarily a columnist for the Irish Times, a job he performed to supplement his wages as a civil servant in the Customs House.  He was Born, Brian O’Nolan (Brian Ó Nualláin; my few Irish readers will please forgive me for my lack of diacritical marks) in Strabane, County Tyrone in 1911.  He resorted to the name Myles to write Cruiskeen Lawn, a column for the Irish Times, as it was illegal to publish work under the same name as one appeared as a Civil Servant.  O’Brien (as I will refer to him for the remainder of this paper when speaking in general), however, required no obligation to put on names for his own bemused mischief.  As a student at University College Dublin, he assumed the name Brother Barnabas in order to heckle anything that struck his fancy.  His letters were a regular submission to the college paper Comhthrom Féinne (again, forgive me) as they attempted to rile even the president of the college.  Speaking and writing more accomplished Gaelic than even his professors at times, O’Brien had little difficulty joking his way to notoriety.
 Along with his letters, his weekly appearances at the Literary and Historical society that took place at St. Stephen’s Green, certified his mastery of impromptu speech and colorful wit.  He often poised himself at the door of the auditorium where he might be heard by both the audience inside, and the loitering crowd of students outside.  He heckled speakers until he upstaged their efforts, and then continued on hilarious rants likely about the absurdity of the speakers topic.  These were often fueled by a stop at the pub, which began his lifelong tenure as wit and drunk. (The English Writings of Flann O'Brien)
Nearing the end of his time at UCD, he and a friend, Niall Sheridan, published several issues of a magazine they wrote and illustrated called Blather.  The endeavor was more of the same as was in the college paper: they chose public figures and the Irish situation as targets for harassment.  The magazine was not popular, nor was it successful.  Soon his friends put a cap on their loans and the magazine was lost.
 This did not end the relationship between O’Brien and Sheridan.  In the following years the two teamed up to wreak havoc on the Irish Times letters page.  Their first correspondences were on the subject of a play review criticized by the conspicuous writer, Sean O’Faoláin.  The two used assumed names such as, Grandfather, An Irishman from Aberdeen, A Glaswegian from London, Earnest Christian, Watchman, A Lay Woman, Father of Eight, X-Ray, Commonsense, and others to incite offended or quizzical responses.  Often they would pit their own personalities against each other to obliterate any suspicions.  This went on for roughly a year before O’Brien accepted the responsibility of writing a column and becoming Myles.
 Shortly after beginning at the Times, O’Brien published his first book At Swim-Two-Birds, which received good reviews, but was an utter failure for the publisher.  O’Brien said of the matter:

   Adolf Hitler took serious exception to it and in fact loathed it so much that he started World War II in order to torpedo it.  In a grim Irony that is not without charm, the book survived the war while Hitler did not (“Cruiskeen Lawn,” February 4, 1965, 4).

With a humorous comment, O’Brien wisps away the failure of his book, as he would an insect;  however, O’Brien reacted poorly to failure.  In 1941, when his manuscript for The Third Policeman was rejected by Longman’s in London, he developed a catalogue of scenarios for his friends in which the manuscript was either lost or destroyed.  He actually saved the manuscript throughout his life, and it was published after his death.  In 1941 he did succeed in publishing a book, though in Gaelic.  An Beal Bocht (The Poor Mouth) exists as a hilarious satire of the Gaelic League, who used the language primarily as a political rallying point.  This book was followed by a long lapse of novel writing.  In 1961, O’Brien published The Hard Life: An Exegesis of Squalor,  and became disappointed at its failure to be banned, a trait befalling all great Irish literature due to stiff censorship laws of the new republic.  In 1964 O’Brien published his final book, The Dalkey Archive, which sadly ransacks the brilliant material in The Third Policeman.
 Between writing for the Times and other publications, writing novels, and writing plays, O’Brien turned occasionally in the 60s to writing for television and radio.  Most of these remain unpublished in the Rare Book Room of the Morris Library in Carbondale, IL.
O’Brien worked at the Times nearly until his death in Dublin on April Fool’s Day, 1966.