Until now scholars of Flann O’Brien have been dependent on two biographical accounts of his life that were written in the nineteen eighties: Peter Costello and Peter van de Kamp’s Flann O’Brien: An Illustrated Biography (1987) and Anthony Cronin’s No Laughing Matter (1989). Anne Clune’s 2009 entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography and Ciarán Ó Nualláin’s memoir Óige an Dearthár (1973) can be added to this list of biographical approaches to the life O’Nolan, yet no work has offered the author the sustained attention to familial and contextual background that other major Irish authors have received. Drawing on extensively researched primary materials, Ó Conchubhair’s new biography provides a detailed documentary portrait of O’Nolan that equals in scope and depth the biographies of Ellman on Joyce and Wilde, or Knowlson on Beckett. In Myles na gCopaleen agus Flann O’Brien: An Saol Bocht Ó Conchubhair sets himself the task of bridging the more than thirty-year period since these last biographical pieces with the inclusion of new material and scholarship, addressing some of the gaps in the available record of O’Nolan’s life. Ó Conchubhair—professor of Irish Language and Literature at the University of Notre Dame, and author of (inter alia) another prize-winning text Fin de Siècle na Gaeilge: Darwin, An Athbheochan agus Smaointeoireacht na hEorpa (2009)—is certainly equal to the task and has produced a fine, scholarly biography.

Written in Irish, An Saol Bocht integrates the two competing linguistic and literary dimensions of O’Nolan’s career—his bilingual practice, as well as his stylistic play across Irish and English. Ó Conchubhair’s study is 712 pages long and comprised of 2 sections, 24 chapters, 4 appendices, bibliographic material, and an index. The preliminary material contains several pictures, a timeline, a list of archives, acknowledgements, an extended epigraph, a family tree, and ‘Cár chóir tosú? Treoir don léitheoir’ (Where to start? A guide for the reader). The first section ‘Na Nuallánaigh’ (The O’Nolans) consists of a detailed biographical account of O’Nolan’s extended family over six chapters. The second section ‘An Nuallánach’ (O’Nolan) focuses on O’Nolan over 13 chronological chapters, each with a descriptive metaphorical or epigraphic title. The biography is richly embellished with pictures of the author, his family and abode, and facsimiles of important archival documents and long quotations from the archives or scholarship to support aspects of the material under discussion. An Saol Bocht is structurally clear, and the writing is accessible, although some indication of the approximate years covered by each chapter title would be a useful addition as signposting for the reader.

Excavating a literary life—particularly that of O’Nolan, who was a notorious fibber and wrote under a conglomerate of pseudonyms, and whose canon in two languages is now spread among many collections—requires meticulous attention to detail and significant archival detective work. In this, Ó Conchubhair succeeds splendidly with the sort of deep archival retrieval of a life that we see in Ellman. Ó Conchubhair lists no fewer than 26 individual archives in the preliminary material, and the biography is both supported and illuminated by excerpts from these archives. As noted above, much of the scholarship on O’Nolan has been based on two previous biographies published in the eighties, which, as Ó Conchubhair observes, do not fully or accurately portray certain aspects of O’Nolan’s life or background, despite their excellent use of archival material and their pioneering work. Ó Conchubhair points out that in the more-than-thirty years since these biographies have been published, the availability of archival material on the life of O’Nolan has broadened, and he sets himself the goal of bringing to light the life of O’Nolan and addressing these elisions (26).

One thing Ó Conchubhair does not address is the role of biography in contemporary critical discourse. The National Center of Biography at the Australian National University asks its graduate students to consider the essence of a life while also questioning whether the biographer can truly access, retrieve or represent that essence. In addition to providing factual details of a person’s life and character, biography plays a role in tracing the genealogy of intellectual histories and can provide fresh insights into received narratives of history, politics, and sociocultural change. Sean O’Faolain, for example, used biography to question the dominant contemporary narratives of Irish history, most particularly, through his biography of Daniel O’Connell, to make the (contested) case that Gaelic Ireland had disappeared in the eighteenth century and modern Ireland was the result of O’Connell’s nineteenth-century democratic politics.

Ó Conchubhair refers to Keith Hopper’s mention of the ‘speciousness of biographical criticism’ (27) in Hopper’s Flann O’Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-Modernist (1995). This might have been an opening to a theoretical discussion of biography as a genre, and of the present biography’s place in the contemporary critical conversation; but Ó Conchubhair does not take that route, short of saying that his volume will not be the last word on O’Nolan. Referencing Hopper again he notes that while biography may uncover ‘textually relevant themes’ it does not contain a ‘context in which to explore these issues’ (27). In fact, Ó Conchubhair frequently explains thematic issues raised by the biographical material and offers generous contextual explanation from historiographic and socio-cultural perspectives. This approach strengthens the strategic use of biography as a means of learning about a period and imbues it with a vitality sometimes missing in historiography, as can be seen, for example, in Diarmaid MacCulloch’s biography of Thomas Cromwell. Recent work on biography questions overarching ‘birth to grave’ approaches and analyses of biographical material and An Saol Bocht could be stronger for entering into a theoretical discussion with recent work on biography writing as a genre, such as, for example, Caitríona Ní Dhúill’s Metabiography: Reflecting on Biography (2020). The lack of engagement with this exploration or critique of the genre of biography does not detract from this work’s overall scholarly achievement, however, it could be interpreted as taking established methodological and writing practice for granted. This raises questions about Ó Conchubhair’s text in relation to Cronin’s biography, for example. Cronin, a contemporary of O’Brien, captured his life and spirit beyond an archival representation of a personality in the aforementioned No Laughing Matter. This criticism notwithstanding, An Saol Bocht succeeds in its stated aims and should be considered a treasure trove of information about O’Nolan (that we would not encounter were it not for the Ó Conchubhair’s meticulous archival work).

A particular strength of the text, given the notable absence of female characters in O’Nolan’s literature, as well as misogynistic comments such as the pronouncement that women ‘make our breakfast, and they make our beds, but they are not really formative,’¹ is the inclusion of the women who were formative in the author’s early life. Ó Conchubhair dedicates the first 157 pages of his biography to the O’Nolan’s familial influences. While the majority of this content is dedicated to male influences on the young O’Nolan, there are sections on his grandmother Jane Mellon (1846–1920), two chapters touching on his mother Aignéas Ní Ghormlaith (Agnes Gormley, 1996-1956), and references to his wife Evelyn McDonnell (1909–1955) as well as his sisters. Agnes’s family were close to the O’Nolans and as journalists, musicians and dramatists served as role models for the young Brian (141). While writing on Ní Ghormlaith, Ó Conchubhair highlights the archival lacunae that scholars often face when trying to piece together archival material on women, especially after they have married:

Is annamh a luaitear iad seachas mar mháthair linbh nó mar leathbhádóir a fir ag ócáid éigin foirmiúil ach lasmuigh de sin titeann brat ciúnais ar a saol go gcailltear í. Is ansin a thugtar a hóige chun cuimhne agus moltar í mar dhea-mháthair. Ach in ainneoin an chiúnais agus bhearna na cartlainne, is cinnte go raibh ról lárnach ag mná na tíre in oideachas, in oiliúint agus i dtógáil leanaí. Is cinnte leis go raibh a deartháireacha agus a muintir lárnach i múnlú intinne agus i gcothú cultúrtha an teaghlaigh (160).²

The author notes that despite this archival gap, we can be sure that women played a central role in the formation of children. Ó Conchubhair also includes references to O’Nolan’s relationship with Evelyn. He draws on Cronin’s work and correspondence with Úna Holly to point to O’Nolan’s misogynistic tendencies: shouting at Evelyn in a restaurant (507) or letting her out of the car when she complained about his driving (511), while noting that there was a difference between his performative public persona and his private familiar one. It is clear that Evelyn was an able intellect who could stand her ground and enjoyed ‘a good debate/argument’ (509–510), that she was fond of her husband (511) and that despite the negative aspects of his alcoholism she wrote to Tessa Shaw to disagree with her description of O’Nolan as ‘brutal’, stating that she ‘would never apply that word to the man’ (footnote, 539).³ Including this aspect of O’Nolan’s life goes some way to addressing the dissonance between his misogynistic comments about women, his literary neglect of female characterisation, and the role played by strong, educated, intellectually able women in his life. This work poses questions that scholars such as Maebh Long have already touched upon, and that Ó Conchubhair or future scholars may return to in later research.

That the scholarship is in Irish can be interpreted as another key strength of this text, with a copious use of archival material in two languages. This linguistic pluralism opens new avenues for understanding O’Nolan’s life and writing in a manner that does justice to his bilingual experience, where it might otherwise be situated in scholarly linguistic silos. Anglophone scholars who have studied some Irish should be able make use of the material, perhaps with the aid of one of the many digital resources available for Irish-language study and translation. The wealth of material included in the biography should be reason enough for any scholar to arm themselves with this text before undertaking a serious project on O’Nolan. In contextualizing this new archival material, Ó Conchubhair invites historiographical and sociocultural questions about its significance, rendering the biography a particularly inviting read for historians of the period, Irish-language scholars, Irish Studies scholars more broadly, as well as the large community of O’Nolan readers and fans. Ó Conchubhair mentioned that his biography will not be the last word on O’Nolan, but it will surely kindle many more conversations and illuminate paths towards new scholarly work. All scholars of Brian O’Nolan will benefit from reading this biography and would do well to keep a copy at hand as a rich compendium of his life. The book will add to our understanding of O’Nolan’s family and cultural context, his literary career, and his epistolary nemeses for years to come.

Notes

1. John Cronin, ‘Brother of the More Famous Flann: Ciarán Ó Nualláin,’ New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua 3, no. 4 (1999): 16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20557600. [^{^}]
2. My translation: They are seldom mentioned other than as mothers or partners of men at some formal occasion, but outside of that a cloak of silence surrounds her life until she passes [the original moves from the third person plural to third person singular, referring presumably to Agnes. I have left this intact in my translation]. Then her youth is remembered and she is praised as a good mother. Yet, inspite of the silence and the archival gap it is certain that the women of the country had a central role in the education, training, and raising of children. It is also certain that her brothers and her family were central in the intellectual formation and cultural nourishment of the family. [^{^}]
3. While a B.A. student at the University of Reading, Tessa Shaw interviewed Evelyn in January 1978. Upon receiving a copy of Tessa’s unpublished essay, Evelyn wrote back on July 19, 1978, correcting some minor points, including reference to the work ‘brutal.’ [^{^}]

References