Flann O'Brien

Flann OBrien (Brian ONolan, aka Myles na Gopaleen) adopted not only a new name (George Knowall) for these rarely seen pieces, but also a new persona. Writing his column Bones of Contention for the Nationalist and Leinster Times, he took on the character of the quizzical and enquiring humorist who might be found in a respectable public house in Carlow: erudite, urbane and informative, he is the country cousin of the Myles of Dublin, yet still a facet of the complex character who wrote The Third Policeman and At Swim-Two-Birds. His delight in words, his uncanny ability to see through humbug, are unparalleled. Writers as disparate as James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Graham Greene and Anthony Burgess have marvelled at his talent. New readers will discover that he is one of the funniest writers in any language, at any time. Brian ONolan, who also wrote under the pen names of Flann OBrien and Myles na Gopaleen, was born in 1911 in Co Tyrone. A resident of Dublin, he graduated from University College after a brilliant career as a student briefly edited -- and largely wrote -- a comic magazine called Blather, and joined the Civil Service, in which he eventually attained a senior position. His career as a writer extended from his student days, and through his years in the Service and the years following his resignation. He died in Dublin on 1 April 1966. His novels include: A S-2-B, The Dalkey Archive, The Third P, The Hard Life and The Poor Mouth (originally published in Irish as An Beal Bocht).

Using a play by Karl and Josef Capek as source, Flann OBrien locates his insect drama in Dublin, his most familiar stalking- territory. His adaptation is a vehicle for ridicule and invective, targeting race, religion, greed, identity and purpose. With his extraordinary ear for dialogue, OBrien creates his own fantastical world, and the outcome is a hilarious satire of Irish stereotypes - as Orangemen, Dubliners, Corkagians and culchies become warring ants, bees, crickets, dung-beetles, and other small-minded invertebrae. The lost text of this play, Hilton Edwards prompt copy from the 1943 Gate Theatre performance, was discovered in the archives at Northwestern University, Illinois. A play by Irelands most celebrated comic writer, Flann OBrien, lost for fifty years, has been discovered in the archives of Northwestern University, Illinois, by an American academic. The OBrien play, Rhapsody in Stephens Green, was put on in Dublin by the Edwards-MacLiammoir company at the Gaiety Theatre during Lent in 1943 with a cast of 150 - representing millions, as is obligatory with an insect play. But, presumably because of the offence it gave to Catholics, Ulster Protestants, Irish civil servants, Corkmen, and the aspersions it seemed to cast on married life and the superpatriotic Fianna Fail party, it only ran six days and was never again performed ... However it and the context in which it was born - and rapidly snuffed out - gives intriguing insights into neutral Ireland of the 1940s, suffocating in puritanism and insular politics. Peter Lennon, The Guardian, 17th of November 1994.

«Quien vive sin patatas no goza de buena salud» o «Nunca pudo mantenerse de pie quien pasó mucho tiempo sin patatas» son algunas de las sentencias que leeremos en La boca pobre, uno de los tres títul

En Nadar-dos-pájaros es un libro tan sorprendente y original como su propio título: tan incomprensible para el lector español como lo es para el inglés. Esta novela está considerada una de las obras maestras de la narrativa del siglo xx y quien se adentre en ella se encontrara con el maravilloso mundo de OBrien Es literatura en estado puro. Una satira, una comedia, una farsa, un truco de magia, un birlibriloque narrativo todo eso, y mas, es esta novela.Es dificil intentar describir lo que es esta novela de novelas de novelas de novelas OBrien juega con el lector y con la literatura, asume su condicion (como escritor) de creador de verdades, de mago que convierte lo irreal en real, la mentira en verdad, lo falso en autentico, lo novelado en verdadero, para confundirnos en su papel de dios sobre lo creado, lo muerto, lo contado y lo callado.

Myles Before Myles is a wonderfully funny selection of writings from the pen of Brian ONolan (aka Flann OBrien, Myles na Gopaleen, George Knowall). In this fun-filled extravaganza he is, above all, an entertainer, a gas man. Like much of ONolans most entertaining work, the pieces in this did not originally appear in book form, but in periodicals and newspapers that are now almost impossible to find. Myles Before Myles reveals that some of his wittiest and most unusual were published years before Myles na Gopaleen (or Flann OBrien) had even been born, and were destined to lie in almost complete obscurity for many decades. Flann OBrien is a cult hero whose comic genius has been praised by anyone who is anyone -- from James Joyce to Graham Greene, Dylan Thomas to Anthony Burgess, Bendan Behan to S.J.Perelman. Old addicts (lucky enough to have discovered Flann in previous hilarious guises) will rejoice at the rediscovery of lost laughter and new readers will revel in one of the funniest writers in any language. Here is a feast for them all: a book full of the joys of Myles as student, as blatherer, as romancer, as Irishman, as poet -- as Myles! With an intelligent and amusing introduction from the compiler, John Wyse Jackson, Myles Before Myles (which has been out of print for some twenty years) is a brilliant addition to the OBrien canon. Its reappearance has been well worth waiting for.

Audiolibro.

En las cinco novelas de mayor escritor cómico de Irlanda, podemos explorar toda la gama de su invención, de la locura de varias capas de "At Swim-Two-Birds" al realismo penetrante de "la vida dura" y la lógica surrealista de "El tercer policía". Este es un mundo donde las bicicletas escuchar las conversaciones, los inventores de la búsqueda de métodos de 'diluir' el agua y los caracteres de hacer novillos, mientras que los novelistas del sueño, un mundo donde las hadas rencorosos causar estragos y los héroes de la leyenda error en los suburbios salas de estar. Esto es reconocible la Irlanda de Joyce y Beckett - ruidosa, alegre, por momentos sensual y cerebral-transformada por la visión única de O'Brien.

A lo largo de esta insólita e ingeniosa novela el autor nos introduce a la manera de Lewis Carroll, de un modo más cercano a lo infernal que a lo maravilloso, en el territorio de las grandes pregunta

"Esta es la novela póstuma de Flann O Brien, pero sus páginas están tan vivas que ese calificativo, Ópóstumo", parece fuera de lugar aplicado a un texto que no es en absoluto zombi y que, inconcluso, tiene todo el encanto de las promesas felices. Hay mucho en ella que la acerca al Swift de Los viajes de Gulliver y de Una humilde propuesta, con la critica de costumbres, el cientifismo bizarro y la filantropia descacharrada. Esta es una satira de los Estados Unidos al tiempo que de Irlanda e, incluso, a traves de la protagonista e ideologa de una peregrina revolucion alimentaria, una caricatura de las formas puntillosamente moralistas del protestantismo, que no es solo escoces de nacion, como ella, sino que, trasplantado como los mismos orangistas, llega al Ulster en que nacio nuestro escritor (en Strabane, condado de Tyrone)." Asi presenta el traductor, Antonio Rivero Taravillo, en su prologo, esta divertidisima novela del genial Flann O Brien sobre las patatas, el petroleo y las relaciones entre Irlanda y Estados Unidos. "Una divertida novela sobre las patatas, el petroleo y las locas relaciones entre Irlanda y Estados Unidos, escrita por el autor de El tercer policia"

Joyce salua flann o''brien comme son égal. Les rares romans de ce dernier - considéré par ses pairs comme " l''écrivain irlandais le plus irlandais de tous les temps " - sont un régal pour tous ceux qui goutent, dans la fiction, le genre devoye. Ce qu''explique a merveille linda le, prefaciere de l''ouvrage dont il est ici question : " ecrit en 1940, refuse par tous les editeurs et publie seulement apres la mort de flann o''brien. le troisieme policier inaugure un nouveau genre de thriller : le " veli-velo insoluble " " . Ou l''on croise des policiers philosophes partisans d''une theorie selon quoi " les gens qui passent leur vie a bicyclette voient leur personnalite confondue avec celle de l''engin (. ) et dont la principale obsession est de traquer les bicyclettes avant un taux eleve d''humanite ". Le polar metaphysique a son sommet.

Flann O'BrienFirst published as a column in THE IRISH TIMES, the hilarious escapades of Keats and Chapman (based on the Romantic poet and the translator of Homer respectively) that comprise this volume illuminate the extraordinary talent of the Irish modernist Flann O'Brien. Labelled by the author 'studies in literary pathology', the vignettes - each concluding in a terrible, bathetic pun - are the work of a extraordinarily funny mind exploring the limits of the shaggy dog story. Many have attempted their own Keats and Chapman story, but, in O'Brien's own words, 'Nearly all the stories that reach me from the outside are, for one reason or another, pretty bad - bad in the sense that they are too good...'