And the Nobel Prize goes to …

Posted on: October 6, 2011

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Tomas Transtromer

Tomas Gösta Tranströmer

 

A brief but inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion of his work, and a read­ing of his poetry:

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Mary Karr and Christopher Robinson

 

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For a taste of his poetry in English, this web­site pro­vides The Great Enigma in translation:

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Fintan O’Toole on Flann O’Brien

Posted on: October 5, 2011

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An excerpt from his fine arti­cle on the man, the myth, the legend …

 

The ban­ning of almost every seri­ous Irish con­tem­po­rary novel also cre­ated the strange lit­er­ary cul­ture in which O’Brien rev­elled, one in which offi­cially approved read­ing was nar­rowed to the­o­log­i­cal reflec­tions, Gaelic sagas and peas­ant nar­ra­tives while the thirst for con­tem­po­rary sto­ries was slaked by imported cow­boy sto­ries and cheap crime thrillers.

O’Brien’s main nov­els draw much of their humour from the absurd con­junc­tions implicit in this unlikely mix. At Swim sets heroic and folk­loric fig­ures (Finn MacCool, Sweeny, The Good Fairy, The Pooka MacPhellimey) lit­er­ally along­side the cow­boys Slug and Shorty. The Third Policeman draws on detec­tive sto­ries and sci­ence fic­tion as well as Catholic the­ol­ogy and medi­ae­val Gaelic literature.

More impor­tantly, O’Brien’s nov­els draw their dark energy from the sex­ual repres­sion that lay behind the censorship.

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Happy Birthday, Flann!!

Posted on: October 5, 2011

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Centenary morn­ing, to ya!!

A great, great author, full of wit and whimsy and a native Irish speaker, Flann O’Brien would be a hun­dred years young today, if he hadn’t met the fate of the Third Policeman.

From the Dalkey Archive’s author’s page, an except:

 

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.

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