Flann O’Brien was born in Strabane, Tyrone, on October 5th, 1911, and died in Dublin on April 1st, 1966. But that brief account of his life probably doesn’t do it justice, so we’ll have to start again. In the opinion of the unnamed student narrator of Flann O’Brien’s novel At Swim-Two-Birds, “a good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author”, though for this article about the highly inventive and influential late modernist and early postmodernist writer, I don’t really see any point in coming up with three openings. A failed funding application to the University of Bristol in which I structured the the start of my personal statement in a way which mirrored the starting points of At Swim (actually all true, unfortunately) has taught me that putting on my fancy dress costume straight off the bat isn’t always the best way to get the reader on board.
Flann O’Brien, Brian O’Nolan, Brian Ó Nualláin, Myles na gCopaleen … call him what you will, providing the name you choose is one of those names listed above or one of the other names that wrote under. If he had lived on past his relatively early exit in 1966, he would currently be 107 years old. That would make him old enough to be dead by now, had he been alive. As a 107-year-old man who had died in 1966 and now, in 2019, would have already died, had he lived on, Flann O’Brien would perhaps be confused by my words.
He might find my obsessive nature a nuisance and therefore consider my presence generally unwelcome. Moreover, he might be irritated by my insistence that he is both alive and dead, an absent presence, a ghostly voice which in its own existence draws attention to the impossibility of its own existence (etc. etc.). He might be wearing a hat. He might be drunk. He might also be struggling for money, still having been in effect fired from the Irish Civil Service.
If you have read the recently published collected letters of Flann O’Brien, you will know that financial struggle marked much of his life. After his father died, he worked to provide for his eleven siblings. He spent twenty years in the Irish Civil Service, whilst keeping his near-daily Irish Times column going. He carried on with this column and a number of other newspaper writing jobs for over a decade after losing his place in the civil service. During this time he battled with frequent severe injury and illness. Bearing all that in mind, our man Flann might have some choice words for those who bemoan the fact that he didn’t just pull his finger out and write loads more novels for us to read. Only experimental novels though, please. We won’t stand for the notion of someone who is in need of money deciding to pursue work which promises immediate payment! They would be better off focusing on the creative exploration of uncharted avant-garde territories!
But we don’t have to imagine what his responses would be because we can know exactly what Flann O’Brian O’Nolan thinks, for he is alive and he is dead, I think (etc. etc. suspended voices, slippages of signification, a writer who, through x, helps us to come to a more nuanced understanding of why …).
No, but aside from the rigorously perceptive academic approach, I have come to realise that he is to be seen as a figure who is, I repeat, continuously, I suggest, at once dead and alive. (Editor: A lie).
Plain People of Thailand: Hi, yep, sorry about this. So, I think there’s been a mistake here. We were called in for this job, but it looks like there might have been some kind of miscommunication.
Elliott, Myleself: No no, you’ll do. Even this kind of error will do the job of creating the right kind of atmosphere.
PPoT: What atmosphere is that?
Mills, Trinity College Cambridge, Dublin: Cacophony (etc.), competing voices, (slippages of signification) … a writer who, if I may say, helps us to-
PPoT: – I want my payment through within 14 days, otherwise this is an abuse of authorial power.
Right you are. (Editor: so, the fancy dress was never too far away, then.) Well, as rambling as they are, these somewhat disorganised thoughts and reflections on the man they like to call Flying Brian of No Land should not be sniffed at, for they come from someone who is probably the leading authority in Flann Studies and Studies thereof of Flann O’Brien Studies.
See these thoughts come from someone who, I am excited to reveal, recently met Brian O’Nolan. This revelation, which some might argue should have been placed a little closer to the beginning of this piece to have that properly, shocking, arresting, opening effect, might shock you slightly. “The man has been dead for 53 years, you fool!” I hear one of you say. “The man lives on through his writing!” Another says, more so debating with what the first person said about him dying 53 years ago than really at all addressing my exciting announcement. “I’m actually in the wrong place, I think. Is this seminar room 3094?” Another buffoon chips in, the whole thing just about falling apart. Fuck off you lot! You can all be fucked off now please!
Back to the matter at hand, though. I was dealt a bad hand there. But I think (you will agree) I handled it with care, subtlety and the kind of wit which allows me to use a range of words which extends beyond those to do with hands. But yes, I really had to hand it to Brian (shit!) – Brian O’Nolan, that is, not Brian Shit; the ‘shit’ was an involuntary reaction, a mistake of mine, as so often it is – he scared the living shit out of me.
It was very recently that I caught sight of the behatted scholar, novelist, newspaperman heading into the snug in Palace Bar, whiskey in hand. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I could barely even believe what I had seen, which is the same thing as not believing my eyes. I was, I was confused, as I’m sure you can tell even in my recounting of this chance encounter (I’m usually good at writing, see).
I wondered if it was really him, or if my mind was playing tricks on me. I was, in truth, at this stage, taking a dim view of both (of) my eyes and my mind, not to mention my mind’s eye. This is where, and I’m not one usually for poking my head into snugs to check if the person I thought I saw enter was Flann O’Brien, I simply had to poke my head into the snug to check if the person I thought I saw enter was Flann O’Brien.
As I peered in, his eyes darted up from his drink. I kept things simple (as I am actually quite able to fucking do, thanks) and said: “Your name is Brian.” Sweet God, had he actually found Flann? I thought to myself, in the words of Flann O’Brien, as he has his character Mick think to himself in The Dalkey Archive as he finally finds the whereabouts of the thought-to-be-dead James Joyce.
“No,” he said.
Shit! was my initially reaction. But then I realised that maybe he might have been choosing to speak to me through his novels too …
“Ah,” I said, “did you mean to say by saying that: ‘Quiet, please! Quiet! I am not known by that name here. I insist that you respect my affairs’?”
I offered these words as that is the response which Joyce gives in reaction to Mick initially approaching him in The Dalkey Archive. I felt as though, in saying these lines aloud, we might be able to move things on to the bit where the man reveals to me that he really is the man that I want him to be.
“Um, no … sorry what’s going on here?”
“Ah,” I said, “so you’re not Brian?”
“No.”
“Flann?”
“No.”
“Would you be Myles?”
“No.”
“Are you doing this because you want to mirror that bit in The Third Policeman where the policeman asks the unnamed narrator for his name, or because ‘No is a better word than yes’?”
“… No.”
We both looked at each other. One of us said:
“Are you going to relate to me further who you are and whether this is all some kind of joke?”
“It is true … that I will not.”
I stepped out of the snug and stood still for a moment, and the walls I looked at created a template for all that I wanted to be shaped into. I stood near the door leading out to Fleet Street, where the stag dos and hen dos flow. Rarely has there been a passage from one space to another that so starkly undercuts a feeling of connectedness with illusory visions of the past with such a fundamental reminder of today’s illusions.
Leaving Palace Bar, I head past a busker. All mic’d up, playing his acoustic guitar and singing very loudly, butchering a Van Morrison song. He seems a bit overconfident and is certainly far too loud for the occasion. Is his impression of an icon all the more endearing and entertaining for its shoddiness? Not really. He looks like he is enjoying himself, but he isn’t doing too many favours for his listeners. I mean, fair enough, he’s having fun, but I think I’ll put on my earphones so I can drown that noise out and sing more stories to you about —
