Flann O’Brien: Acting Out, Paul Fagan, Dieter Fuchs (eds.)
Flann O’Brien: Acting Out, Paul Fagan, Dieter Fuchs (eds.), Cork, Cork University Press, 2022, 450 p.
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1This substantial 450-page-long collection of essays coedited by Paul Fagan and Dieter Fuchs finds its roots in the fourth international Flann O’Brien Conference, which took place at Salzburg University, from the 17th to the 21st July 2017. The reader is reminded of this important moment in the fruitful existence of the by now worldwide Flann O’Brien studies community by the front cover, which features a picture of a performance by comedian David O’Kane first presented during this conference and entitled “Old Philip Mathers” (i.e. Noman’s victim in O’Brien’s posthumously acclaimed 1967 masterpiece The Third Policeman). Precisely, this cover image is a vivid encapsulation of the main themes and questions fuelling the academic investigations contained in the volume. The image displays masks, surrounding the performer. These masks lie on top a whole circular set of manuscripts echoing back to Flann O’Brien’s, Brian O’Nolan’s, Myles na gCopaleen’s personas – to quote but a few of the numerous pen names used by Brian Ó Nualláin (1911-1966) (see p. 3 for a longer list). The whole book thoroughly explores the roles of performance, theatricality and illusion in and around O’Brien’s work. In other words, it focuses closely on the problems that prove inherent in the very notion of persona, be it socially or narratively, individually or collectively, consciously or unconsciously constructed or donned. In that respect, it is astonishing that Erving Goffman should not be mentioned in the final index, though the latter turns out to be quite helpful and (nearly) exhaustive.
- 1 The Collected Letters of Flann O’Brien, Maebh Long (ed.), Victoria, Dalkey Archive, 2018.
2The whole volume powerfully interrogates different repertoires and movements that affected O’Brien’s rich literary career: from melodrama and pastiche to modernism and avant-garde, from realism to lyricism. A whole variety of different formats are involved, not just drama, ranging from plays to short stories and novels without omitting poem translations and of course the An Cruiskeen Lawn column published in The Irish Times, relying on the latest archive material, research and discoveries, notably a large part of O’Brien’s correspondence. The book falls neatly into five wittily entitled different parts or “acts” to spin the theatrical metaphor. Precisely, the first one aptly called “Stage Irish” explores different intertexts ranging from Dion Boucicault’s Colleen Bawn – deftly scrutinised and contextualised by Richard Barlow – to Shakespearean motifs identified by Dieter Fuchs via John Millington Synge. The contribution by Maebh Long (p. 19-37) is exceptionally enlightening and further delves into the mysteries of fragmented authorship as regards the An Cruiskeen Lawn column and also major novels by O’Brien. These include The Third Policeman, whose plot and atmosphere featuring odd policemen and bicycles may have been partly inspired by O’Brien’s long-standing University College Dublin friends, namely the two Nialls: Sheridan and Montgomery. This part of the book also casts new critical light on the notion of plagiarism. Let us repeat in passing the importance of The Collected Letters of Flann O’Brien,1 edited by the same Maebh Long, which is a treasure trove for all Flanneurs.
3The book’s second section is more concerned with the international theatrical contexts and intertexts. Joseph LaBine peruses the epistolary material between Armenian-American author William Saroyan (1908-1981) and O’Brien to shed light on the tension between O’Brien’s mundanely commercial and aesthetic disjunctive drives all along his literary endeavours. Neil Murphy’s piece identifies the resonances between Luigi Pirandello’s metatheatre and O’Brien’s work in general. Kerry Higgins Wendt does the same relying on Bertolt Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt, where pastiche and irony also allow for some metafictional space oscillating between modernism and magical realism, spanning Irish mythology and social critique in a more often than not undecidable fashion. The Bakhtinian carnivalesque is also aptly summoned by Noam Schiff to account for the way O’Brien’s text willy-nilly dissolves the traditionalist gendered Catholic nationalist doxa and agenda, echoing the ambivalence of theatrical audiences analysed by Alana Gillespie in the first section of the book.
4In the volume’s third part, self-referentially entitled “Myles en scène” (p. 139-211), Joseph Brooker contrasts O’Brien’s work with the modern Irish performative theatrical tradition illustrated by William Butler Yeats and John Millington Synge. Similarly, Tobias W. Harris reassesses the actual earnestness that ultimately lies within O’Brien’s once neglected forays into dramatic writing. New readings promoting zoopoetics, thanks to Lisa Fitzgerald through The Insect Play, or a rewriting of the Grand Guignol tradition – well spotted by Jack Fennell –, also prove to be thought-provoking and allow scholars to reposition O’Brien’s oeuvre beyond the usual critical landmarks to scout and reconnoiter new critical grounds.
5The fourth part is about transmediality and translatability. Paul Fagan demonstrates there are whole new avenues for O’Brien studies bearing on his teleplays as well as problems raised by screen adaptations. While Fagan aptly uses posthumanism to shed light on the eeriest segments of O’Brien’s canon, Eglantina Remport explores the recycling of the visual arts through ekphrastic parody.
6Last but not least, the final section interrogates the contradictory social and / or artistic masks O’Nolan has been made to wear in his posthumous public, critical and theatrical receptions. Let us quote in passing: “the eccentric and the civil servant; the antiquarian and the modernist; the clown and the truth-teller; the popular entertainer and the avant-garde innovator; the local boy in the paper and the deracinated postmodernist” – as neatly summed up by Fagan in his own introduction (p. 16).
7To conclude, one can quote from Stanley E. Gontarski who draws a nuanced parallel between O’Brien’s perspective from “bog-bound” home and Beckett’s “urban cosmopolitan” stance (p. 295), as a stereotypical Irish exile. Quite in keeping with the spirit prevailing in this volume, Gontarski delineates fascinatingly contrarian portraits of an artist – O’Brien –, whose multifarious work allows new generations of readers to deconstruct narrow-minded visions of any given nation. To do so, we can quote, as humorously as he does, from William Inge’s caustic definition of a nation “as a society united by a common delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbours” (p. 303). Let us ponder over these wise words more than ever, given the present dark circumstances in Eastern Europe, and let us thank yet again the editors for this most stimulating volume.
Notes
1 The Collected Letters of Flann O’Brien, Maebh Long (ed.), Victoria, Dalkey Archive, 2018.
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Thierry Robin, « Flann O’Brien: Acting Out, Paul Fagan, Dieter Fuchs (eds.) », Études irlandaises, 48-2 | 2023, 132-134.
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Thierry Robin, « Flann O’Brien: Acting Out, Paul Fagan, Dieter Fuchs (eds.) », Études irlandaises [En ligne], 48-2 | 2023, mis en ligne le 06 novembre 2023, consulté le 17 juin 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/17656 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesirlandaises.17656
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