O'Brien, Flann | O'Brien, Flann 1911–1966
O'Brien, Flann 1911–1966
An Irish comic genius, O'Brien was the author of At Swim-Two-Birds and other incomparable novels, and a journalist, writing as Myles na Gopaleen, whose columns were collected for The Best of Myles. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 21-22; obituary, Vols. 25-28.)
Of [O'Brien's] very few books, The Hard Life and The Dalkey Archive are slight but funny (they have also been largely ignored by English critics), but At Swim-Two-Birds is probably a masterpiece…. Flann O'Brien did, in fact, discover a means of counterpointing myth, fiction and actuality through the device of a sort of writer's commonplace-book…. There is no feeling of recession, of one order of reality (myth or novel or narration) lying behind another: all are presented on the same level. This is what gives the contrapuntal effect.
Anthony Burgess, in his The Novel Now: A Guide to...
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