Flann O'Brien
1911-1966

Flann O'Brien is the pen-name of Brian O'Nolan (or O Nuallain), known also to readers of The Irish Times as Myles na Gopaleen (or gCopaleen). He was born into an Irish-speaking family in Strabane, Co. Tyrone, on 5 October 1911, and was the son of an excise officer who prospered in Dublin following the establishment of the Irish Free State.

O'Nolan studied at University College, Dublin, where his comic talents became apparent in a student publication, Comhthrom Féinne, and in 1934 he helped to set up a short-lived humorous magazine, Blather. Billiards, poker and alcohol also figured strongly in his life. In 1935 he joined the Irish civil service.

When O'Nolan submitted his comic novel At Swim Two-Birds to Longmans, the author Graham Greene praised it as being in the line of Tristram Shandy and James Joyce's Ulysses. 'We have had books inside books before but O'Nolan takes Pirandello and Gide a long way further', Greene wrote. 'The screw is turned until you have (a) a book about a man called Trellis who is (b) writing a book about certain characters who (c) are turning the tables on Trellis by writing about him.'

The book was published in 1939 under the pen-name Flann O'Brien, which O'Nolan had previously used in Irish Times letters criticising Sean O'Faolain and Frank O'Connor. It sold poorly and much of the first edition was destroyed in 1940 during an air raid on London.

Further correspondence in The Irish Times led to an invitation to contribute a regular column, and the first 'Cruiskeen Lawn' (little brimming jug) appeared in 1940. The pen-name Myles na Gopaleen (Myles of the little horses) was drawn from Gerald Griffin's The Collegians. The mythical Myles lived in Santry, on the edge of the city, and regular appearances were made by 'the Brother', the bibulous Keats and Chapman, whose stories ended in tortuous puns, and the Plain People of Ireland. Myles's Research Bureau invented emergency trousers with long pockets for storing bottles of stout while his Escort Service provided ventriloquists so that the ignorant could appear to make intelligent remarks at parties. If At Swim-Two-Birds owed an unacknowledged debt to Joyce, whom he called 'that refurbisher of skivvies' stories', Cruiskeen Lawn had a flavour of Beachcomber in the Daily Express.

O'Nolan was cynical about attempts to restore the Irish language, and in 1941 parodied an autobiography he admired, Tomás Ó Criomhthain's An t-Oileánach (The Islandman). An Béal Bocht appeared under Myles's authorship and was translated as The Poor Mouth in 1973. In a letter to Sean O'Casey O'Nolan described Irish as an unknown quantity enabling writers to transform the English language even if, like Joyce, they had little knowledge of it.

In 1940, Longmans had rejected Flann O'Brien's second novel, The Third Policeman. A nightmarishly comic vision of hell, the book is notable for a theory that the exchange of atoms between men and bicycles on rocky roads means that many people are half bicycles. The author considered turning it into a play, but instead Myles wrote Faustus Kelly (1943) for the Abbey Theatre. Kelly sells his soul to the devil for a seat in the Irish parliament, and the play reflected O'Nolan's low opinion of politicians. His adaptation of The Insect Play (1943) by Karel and Josef Capek played briefly at the Gate Theatre.

In 1953 O'Nolan retired from the civil service on grounds of ill health, a consequence of his heavy drinking. His departure was hastened by sour and irascible Cruiskeen Lawn columns which overstepped the bounds permitted to civil servants. He supplemented a modest pension with freelance journalism.

At Swim-Two-Birds had long been cherished by a coterie of admirers, and in 1960 it was republished to acclaim. Despite his drinking, Flann O'Brien settled down to write The Hard Life (1961), a bleak comedy set in Joyce's Dublin, and The Dalkey Archive (1964). O'Nolan died in Dublin on 1 April 1966. The Third Policeman was published in 1967.

From the Appletree Press title: Famous Irish Writers.
Also from Appletree: Irish Museums and Heritage Centres.