Putting It On

MYLES NA GOPALEEN (alias Flann O'Brien, born. Brian Nolan, self-Irished to Brian O'Nolan, Gaelicized by his publishers to Brian O'Nauallain) notes sadly in the foreword to the third edition of An Beal Bocht that few are still interested in preserving Gaelic tales and tradition, as proved by the fact that no one reads his book. Non-Gaelic-speaking Gaeligores (those enthusiastic about Irish language and literature) should be glad An Beal Bocht, first printed in Ireland in 1941, is finally available in an English translation true to the mocking wit of the original.

We (any reader of The Poor Mouth will convert to Gaeligorism) we owe this Irish luck to the growing influence of the Flann O'Brien cult, though Flann had little to do with this book of Nolan's. The Irish have known Flann, Myles, and Nolan for a long time, but though more Ph.D. dissertations have been written on Flann O'Brien since O'Nolan's death in '66 than were written on Joyce in the first ten years after his death, the reading public in this country rarely encounters O'Brien's four English novels: At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), The Hard Life (1961), The Dalkey Archive (1964) and The Third Policeman (1967) only the first and the last deserve the title "Modern Classics," with which they have now been honored with by Penguin. Stories and Plays, published posthumously this year, is a dish of leftovers, most of which have long since gone stale, offered up by O'Brien's publishers to feed the now-open mouth of American literati.

In the introduction to Stories and Plays, Claud Cockburn apologizes for the scantiness of O'Brien's oeuvre. He tries to explain the 22-year gap between the enormously successful At Swim and O'Brien's next novel by blaming the Irish intellectuals, the Dublin critics of the 40's and 50's who imposed incessant political and literary demands on promising Irish writers of the time. Reviews of Stories and Plays concur; Bernard Bernstock said "the fault (for O'Brien's laspe in productivity)...lies in the political and intellectual life of northern Ireland." He notes that O'Nolan, unlike Joyce or O'Casey, did not leave Ireland to be free to write about his country without "being expected to dance attendance on the critics."

CRITICS LIKE BENSTOCK, Cockburn and even Niall Sheridan, mutual friend of O'Brien and Joyce, seem to regret O'Nolan's other identities: as Myles na Gopaleen, columnist for the Irish Times, and as Brian O'Nolan, civil servant (until he was fired for his opinions in the Times). Sheridan wrote of O'Nolan that perhaps "the demands of journalism syphoned off piecemeal his enormous creative vitality."

They did. The Best of Myles (1968) a selection of na Gopaleen's columns in Irish, French and English, gathers together some of the funniest and most incisive pieces of creative vitality ever in newsprint. Critics and fans of Flann resent Myles, O'Nolan's 'unfortunate literary identity,' a jester who distracted the aforementioned Dublin politicoaesthetes while the creative artist tried vainly tc work behind the scenes in his spare time. But perhaps O'Nolan himself, whose writing is always for and of the Irish public, thought his journalism as valid as his novels.

Adding The Poor Mouth ("edited" by na Gopaleen) to The Best of Myles, it's an open question whether Myles isn't the best of O'Nolan. The Gaelic novel is not only written for and of the Gales, but also purports to be by one-a certain Bonaparte O'Coonassa. But the credit transparently belongs to Myles, the columnist concerned about the so-called preservation of Gaelic Ireland, and the satirist who could mock things Gaelic as he lamented their passing, even making fun of his own concerns. All simultaneously, and in the language of the issue, the "Gaeltacht".

The Poor Mouth defines, explains, satirizes and defends "Gaelic". Pick up the book for the simple pleasures of the story and in the two hours it takes to read it you'll come to abominate the word Gaelic but identify with the essence. Na Gopaleen's wit cuts through the affectations and facile enthusiams of all Gaeligores and gives a glimpse of "the world as seen by the folk in Corkadoragha", a remote "Gaeltacht". Though in the preface to the first edition, "The Editor" cautions that Corkadoragha is "without compare" and not to be taken as representative of the Gaelic community as a whole, in fact the town where the author-narrator of An Beal Bocht, O'Coonassa, was born and lived, does stand for all the Gaeltacht of West Ireland that O'Coonassa can see from his "small, lime-white and unhealthy house situated in the corner of the glen": from the bare Rosses and Tory Iland "like a great ship where the sky dips into the sea"-visible out the right hand window-to Connemara and Aranmore, seen out the door, to the left-hand view of the Great Blasket "forbidding as an otherworldly eel, lying languidly on the wavetops". O'Nolan-na Gopaleen-O'Coonassa pulls the world in to the heart of Gaelic country and idiom. A chain of personae is a trademark of O'Nolan's literary career--in At Swim, as in O'Nolan's life, there is a writer who creates a writer who creates a writer. But in The Poor Mouth the technique has a specific function: to carry the Gaeligore and/na Gopaleen enthusiast a step away from the Irish Times and from a facile understanding of "Gaelic." The perceptions of Corkadoragha become the enveloping reality; an existence composed largely of "spuds," "spirits," "rain," "eternity" and "true Gaelic misery."

O'Coonassa relates the story of his life in a succession of hilarious vignettes, beginning with his birth, which took place in a time and place when things "Gaelic" traditionally occur: "the middle of the night in the end of the house." Darkness, and the pigs and people lying in the rushes in the end of the house create the atmosphere of the novel throughout. The pigs, especially, make atmosphere; one chapter describes a near-fatal smothering of the O'Coonassa family due to the smell of the pigs, "and a certain Ambrose, in particular."

SUCH IS THE ACCIDENTAL and chaotic existence of "every poor Gael in this side of the country," as the "old Grey-Fellow," Bonaparte's grandfather, tells the young boy. Largely responsible for Bonaparte's eduction, the Old-Grey-Fellow tries to preserve the ways of the past. "When I was a child growing up," he says, "I was (as is clear to any reader of the good Gaelic books) a child among the ashes." Bonaparte's mother wants to rear her child as a true Gael; she puts back the ashes "and for five hours," Bonaparte writes, "I became a child among the ashes...Later at midnight I was put to bed, but the stench of the fireplace stayed with me...it was a foul putrid smell and I do not think the like will ever be there again."

O'Coonassa bemoans the passing of Gaelic tradition in the same breath as he describes the "Gaelic misery" that that tradition mean. Such phrases of lament parody the writings of self-styled "Gaelic" authors, cliche-ridden and whining. The mix of serious statement, humourous presentation, and learned parody characterizes Myles' satire. Though O'Coonassa writes his story "to provide some testimony of the diversions and advintures of our times...because our types will never be there again," a great deal of the book pokes fun at the Gaeligores who come to study Corkadoragha-but leave because the reality of tempest, poverty, Gaelicism and tradition is "too tempestuous putrid, poor, Gaelic and traditional." The "distinguishing marks of the true Gael" emerge more slowly out of the humour of the story. He is identified by the various oppressions inflicted on him by the English, the Dublin Irish, and fate, listed in order of decreasing responsibility and increasing blame. Myles' satire is funniest and most bitter here; on O'Coonassa's first day of school the master beats a new name into him: "Jams O'Donnell." When he gets home his mother explains that such is fate: "It was always seen and written that every Gaelic youngster is hit on his first day of school because he doesn't understand the foreign form of his name. ...There's no other business in school that day but punishment and revenge and the same fooling about Jams O'Donnell."

At the end of the book, Bonaparte, on his way to prison, Finds His Father and Recognizes Him--as every Irish hero since Telemachus and Daedalus has done. O'Coonassa has no trouble; he recognizes his father by his poverty, his fate (he is leaving the prison) and his name-Jams O'Donnell. But The Poor Mouth is as much pretence as plaint. In Gaelic putting on the poor mouth means complaining (according to the dictionary) and feigning suffering to get the advantage in a deal. O'Nolan's humour is as elusive and many-faceted as his name, but The Poor Mouth hides a smile, sure. sure.