Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Gigantic Failures by Mark Anthony Cronin Gigantic Failures by Mark Anthony Cronin. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 66022b4719453244 • Your IP : 116.202.236.252 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. Cookie Consent and Choices. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic. This information is shared with social media, sponsorship, analytics, and other vendors or service providers. See details. You may click on “ Your Choices ” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. You can adjust your cookie choices in those tools at any time. If you click “ Agree and Continue ” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. Cronin, Anthony 1926– ADDRESSES: Home —30 Oakley Rd., Dublin 6, Ireland. CAREER: Writer and critic. University of Montana, visiting lecturer in English, 1966–68; Drake University, poet in residence, 1968–70; University of Ulster, visiting professor, 1996–2002. Republic of Ireland, cultural and artistic advisor to the prime minister, 1980–83, 1987–92. MEMBER: Aosdana (elected saoi , 2003). AWARDS, HONORS: Marten Toonder Award, Arts Council of Ireland, 1983, for contributions to Irish literature; honorary degrees from National College of Art, Trinity College, Dublin, and University of Ulster. WRITINGS: POETRY. Poems , Cresset Press (London, England), 1957. Collected Poems, 1950–1973 , New Writers Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1973. Reductionist Poem , Raven Arts (Dublin, Ireland), 1980. R.M.S. Titanic (originally published in the magazine X, 1960), Raven Arts (Dublin, Ireland), 1981. 41 Sonnet-Poems 82 , Raven Arts (Dublin, Ireland), 1981. New and Selected Poems , Raven Arts (Dublin, Ireland), 1982. Letter to an Englishman , Raven Arts (Dublin, Ireland), 1985. The End of the Modern World , Raven Arts (Dublin, Ireland), 1988. Relationships , New Island Books (Dublin, Ireland), 1994. The Minotaur and Other Poems , New Island Books (Dublin, Ireland), 1999. Collected Poems , New Island Books (Dublin, Ireland), 2004. Also author of " Acceptance Poem ," 1979. Contributor to anthologies of poetry, including The Faber Book of Twentieth-Century Verse , Faber (London, England), 1953; Mid-Century , Penguin (New York, NY), 1965; The Penguin Book of Longer Contemporary Poems , Penguin; and Irish Poets, 1924–1974 . Contributor of poetry to periodicals. OTHER. (Editor) William Carleton, The Courtship of Phelim O'Toole and Other Stories , 1962. The Life of Riley (novel), Knopf (New York, NY), 1964, reprinted, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1983. A Question of Modernity (literary criticism), Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1966. The Shame of It (play), 1971. Dead as Doornails: A Chronicle of Life (nonfiction), Dolmen (Dublin, Ireland), 1976, reprinted, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1998. Identity Papers (novel), Co-op Books (Dublin, Ireland), 1979. Heritage Now: Irish Literature in the English Language (literary criticism), Brandon (Dover, NH), 1982. An Irish Eye (essays), Brandon (Dover, NH), 1985. Art for the People? , Raven Arts (Dublin, Ireland), 1986. Ireland: A Week in the Life of a Nation (pictorial essay with text), edited by Red Saunders and Syd Shelton, Century (London, England), 1986. No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien (biography), Paladin Press (London, England), 1989, Fromm International (New York, NY), 1998. Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist , HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1997. (Editor) Anthony Cronin's Personal Anthology: Selections from His Sunday Independent Feature , New Island Books (Dublin, Ireland), 2000. Contributor to books, including Edward McGuire, RHA , by Brian Fallon and Sally McGuire, Irish Academic Press (Blackrock, County Dublin, Ireland), 1991; author of foreword, Nights without Stars, Days without Sun , by Conleth O'Connor, New Island Books (Dublin, Ireland), 1997. Weekly columnist, Irish Times , 1974–80. Contributor to periodicals, including Times Literary Supplement, Times (London, England). New York Times, New Statesman , and Nation . Contributing editor, X; past associate editor, Bell; past literary editor, Time and Tide . SIDELIGHTS: Anthony Cronin's writings, many of which draw upon his experiences in the literary bohemia of Dublin and London in the years after World War II, have earned him considerable literary stature in Ireland. Although an author of novels and biographies, Cronin was originally recognized for his work with the magazines Bell and Time and Tide and for his poetry, the first collection of which was published in 1957. Cronin is also respected as a literary critic. When his New and Selected Poems was released in 1982, critics cited Cronin for the irony, wit, and intellectual vigor of his attacks on the tendency of people to live in a state of self-delusion. The collection includes his long poem "R.M.S. Titanic" which was originally published in 1960; termed by reviewers then as an allegory of Ireland's divided society, the poem presents a vision of the way tensions between the upper and lower classes could result in tragedy to their "ship," the nation of Ireland. David Profumo, reviewing New and Selected Poems in the Times Literary Supplement , described "R.M.S. Titanic" as "an archetype of [Cronin's] work," which he characterized as "intellectual, urbane, sardonic; his effects are … sombre, his verse … formally stringent." While some critics have faulted Cronin's adherence to formal styles and political topics, his verse collections The End of the Modern World and Letter to an Englishman have been positively reviewed. Assessing The End of the Modern World , a collection of 161 sonnets on various contemporary themes, Peter Porter stated in the London Observer that Cronin's "book is a feast of reason, and should be snapped up by anyone who cares for good sense decked out in rhetoric." Letter to an Englishman , a long poem detailing the history of Ireland's political turmoil, was cited by Tim Dooley in the Times Literary Supplement for its "sometimes baggy couplets and self-indulgent or self-vaunting asides," but the critic also noted "the acuity of [the poem's] observations and the easy, amusing conversational manner [that] make Letter to an Englishman an engaged poem which also manages to be engaging." Some of Cronin's other writings draw directly on his experiences in the postwar literary circles in Dublin and London that included friends and writers such as James Stephens, Flann O'Brien, Brendan Behan, Robert Colquhoun, and Patrick Kavanaugh. First published in 1964 and reprinted in 1983, Cronin's first novel, The Life of Riley , is a comic account of the title character, a part-time poet and full-time drinker, as he moves among literary aristocrats, impoverished bohemians, and various social misfits in London and Dublin. Considered a successfully comic novel when it was first published, The Life of Riley was judged more critically by later reviewers. George Craig in the Times Literary Supplement appreciated the character of Riley but found the eccentricity of the other individuals in the book to be overly drawn. Craig insisted that "with only Riley to set against an army of knaves and fools, the novel loses direction: there are too many … slow executions for it to be really funny, there is too little of Riley for it to be satirical." In his second novel, Identity Papers , Cronin presents another look at the society of Dublin pubs with a story focusing on the Baron, an unsuccessful painter who unknowingly sells forgeries of important historical documents to the Celtic Library of Ireland. Determined to clear his name by locating the original documents, the Baron journeys through the various drinking establishments of Dublin in hopes of discovering some useful information. Along the way the Baron encounters characters based on Cronin's associates, such as Stephens and O'Brien, in an atmosphere filled with uniquely Irish attitudes and dialogue. Patricia Craig, in the Times Literary Supplement , described the book as "genuinely funny" and notable for its "distinctive narrative pattern." Cronin also has attempted to capture the spirit of his contemporaries through nonfiction writings. Dead as Doornails: A Chronicle of Life is a portrait of Cronin and his artistic peers, their struggles to get their work recognized, their reactions to such recognition, and the interpersonal dynamics between the various writers. Two figures featured prominently in the book are the boisterous and intimidating Behan and the elusive Brian [O'Brien], who also wrote under the name Flann O'Brien. Critics faulted Cronin for not providing a detailed picture of O'Brien in Dead as Doornails , but Cronin provided a full-length look at the author in his biography No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien . "In writing the life of [O'Brien], Cronin knows that he is simultaneously describing an individual, marking a psychological type, and annotating a certain historical predicament," stated Denis Donoghue in a Times Literary Supplement assessment of No Laughing Matter . Donoghue characterized the work as "a full-scale biography of Flann O'Brien…. an extremely telling document, written with the intelligence and generosity for which, not only in Ireland, [Cronin] is admired." Noted Kevin Barry in the London Review of Books: "Cronin's biography is absorbing…. Yet too much of the dreariness leaks into these pages. Cronin, as biographer, cannot detach himself from the milieu in which he grew up as a friend and acolyte to [O'Brien]. However, Cronin has achieved that distance in his more significant role as poet." Barry further commented on No Laughing Matter: "Cronin's other failure, to hunt down the pathology of [O'Brien's] satire, its purity and its cruelty, in the recesses of neurosis and sexuality, is an honourable one. What this memoir does give us is a storehouse of information about [O'Brien] at university, about the influence upon him of Niall Montgomery and his peers, about the shape of the life…. [However,] nowhere does it emerge from the pages of this book that economics, politics and the relationship of church and state were complex in these years. Many of the literary figures remain marooned in the cliches and taboos of their own dissent." Other reviewers presented contrasting assessments of No Laughing Matter , praising Cronin's sensitive documentation of O'Brien's difficult life and career. According to Edward L. Galligan in Sewanee Review , the biography has "the blessed effect of making you want to read more of what [its] subject [has] written…. I admire … Cronin's clarity and charity in relating both the difficulty of O'Brien's private life and the large achievement of his novels … to the dingy complexities of life in Catholic Ireland in the first half of this century…. [Cronin does not waste] time gassing about books or the psychology of the men who wrote them…. [The biography has] some of the free-standing quality of good novels … you don't have to have much prior knowledge of … O'Brien's work to find the [book] absorbing." David Widgery commented in New Statesman & Society: "Cronin, the poet and ex-bohemian who is now a senior figure in Irish letters, is one of the few biographers capable of dealing with a man who was simultaneously an avant-garde literary stylist, industrious civil servant, Joycean, hack journalist and voluntary inhabitant of the Grangeogorman Hospital for alcoholics…. Cronin's biography is a joyous book…. His command of source material, especially letters and anecdote, is remarkable and his own experience of the Irish literary world is sparingly but tellingly utilized." Cronin details another author in Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist . Some reviewers have compared Cronin's work to other biographies on Beckett, particularly James Knowlson's authorized Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett . Some critics praised Cronin's book, as New York Review of Books contributor John Banville put it, as "by far the most elegantly written" of the many Beckett biographies. Samuel Beckett is also positively set apart from other works because in reporting on Beckett's twenty years in France "Cronin is splendidly informative on the intellectual and social milieu of Paris in the 1930s," wrote Banville, who generally described Samuel Beckett in the following manner: "His book is aimed at the general reader … and he has an eye for the good story and the startling detail. He is cool, measured, amused, and maintains a respectful yet often wittily ironic attitude toward his subject, acknowledging Beckett's human weaknesses as well as his strengths, his artistic failures as well as his triumphs." Also comparing Cronin's unauthorized Samuel Beckett to Knowlson's "authorized biography," Lois Gordon summarized in the Times Literary Supplement that Cronin's book "has a more incisive feel for 'Frenchness' and Parisian life; more graphically describes pubs, heavy drinking, brothels and nocturnal wandering; has a more realistic grasp of the ambiguity of writer-publisher relations; and is more willing to take risks in making lively, albeit psychoanalytical, deductions, such as when he evokes Beckett's need for 'mother substitutes' or discusses the writer's friendship with Thomas MacGreevy, who was homosexual." Cronin's biography of Beckett "is a work of real novelistic flair by an Irish writer who knew both Beckett and his Dublin associates," observed Morris Dick-stein in the New York Times Book Review , noting other distinctions of Samuel Beckett: "Cronin, relying heavily on Beckett's letters and early fiction, is more attentive to the byways, hesitations and failures as they were experienced at the moment…. One virtue of [ Samuel Beckett ] is its shrewd and convincing portrayal of the many stages of Beckett's transformation from a quirky, self-conscious regional writer to a more universal one…. Cronin tries to make Beckett normal, to make him imaginable, but he is also attuned to the essential strangeness of his personality." BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: BOOKS. Cronin, Anthony, Dead as Doornails: A Chronicle of Life , Dolmen (Dublin, Ireland), 1976, reprinted, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1998. PERIODICALS. Library Journal , June 1, 1997; February 15, 1998, p. 141. Listener , July 8, 1976; October 26, 1989. London Review of Books , January 25, 1990, Kevin Barry, review of No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien , pp. 20-21; November 14, 1996. New Statesman , September 27, 1996. New Statesman & Society , November 3, 1989, David Widgery, review of No Laughing Matter , p. 38. New York Review of Books , November 14, 1996, John Banville, review of Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist , pp. 24-29. New York Times Book Review , August 3, 1997, Morris Dickstein, review of Samuel Beckett , p. 11. Observer (London, England), October 3, 1986; August 20, 1989, Peter Porter, review of The End of the Modern World , p. 38; October 22, 1989; November 11, 1990. Publishers Weekly , May 25, 1990. Sewanee Review , spring, 1993, Edward L. Galligan, review of No Laughing Matter , pp. 282-289. Spectator , October 28, 1989; September 21, 1996. Times Educational Supplement , October 3, 1986, p. 30; October 18, 1996; October 30, 1996. Times Literary Supplement , May 5, 1966, p. 388; March 21, 1980, Patricia Craig, review of Identity Papers , p. 326; August 19, 1983, David Profumo, review of New and Selected Poems , p. 886; October 21, 1983, George Craig, review of The Life of Riley , p. 1170; October 10, 1986, p. 1147; November 21, 1986, Tim Dooley, review of Letter to an Englishman , p. 1325; October 27, 1989, Denis Donoghue, review of No Laughing Matter , pp. 1171-1172; May 18, 1990, p. 522; September 27, 1996, Lois Gordon, review of Samuel Beckett , pp. 3-4. Actium, 31 BC: the beginning of the end for Mark Antony and Cleopatra. Military historian Julian Humphrys explains what happened at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and why this naval clash off the Greek coast presaged both the end of the Roman Republic and the deaths of one history’s most famous couples. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Whatsapp Email to a friend. This competition is now closed. Published: August 12, 2020 at 3:30 pm. Mark Antony’s campaign to become sole ruler of Rome was crumbling. By the summer of 31 BC, his fleet was trapped in the Ambracian Gulf, on the west coast of Greece, by the ships of his enemy Octavian. He was chronically short of men, and the spot where his army was camped was a mosquito-infested marsh near Actium, on the south shore of the gulf. Their every move was being watched by Octavian’s men from the high ground on the opposite shore. Supplies were running out, malaria and dysentery were decimating his army, and the oarsmen who powered his ships were starting to desert. Antony had to make a move, and soon – if he didn’t, before long he’d have no forces with which to fight. The Battle of Actium was the climax of 13 years of civil wars. Sparked by the assassination of Julius Caesar, they had torn the Roman world apart. Julius Caesar’s heir, Octavian, and his former right-hand man, Antony, had been two-thirds of the triumvirate, which, in 42 BC, brought down Caesar’s murderers. But once that common enemy had been tackled, their fragile alliance began to fracture and the two became bitter enemies. Octavian’s power base was in the western part of the Roman territories, while Antony controlled the eastern part – with the aid of his lover, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. That relationship gave Antony access to the riches of Egypt but it also scandalised Rome, a situation exacerbated by the fact that Antony had abandoned his Roman wife – who, significantly, was also Octavian’s sister. Octavian’s propaganda machine was soon hard at work, portraying the struggle not as one between him and Antony but as a war between virtuous Rome and decadent Egypt. What happened at the Battle of Actium? Who | Octavian and Agrippa (400 ship) versus Mark Antony and Cleopatra (500 ships, reduced to 230) When | 2 September 31 BC. Where | Ionian Sea near Actium, off the west coast of Greece. Why | Antony and Cleopatra were attempting to break through Octavian’s naval blockade. Outcome | Victory for Octavian. Antony and Cleopatra escaped with their treasure but lost most of their ships. In 32 BC, Antony and Cleopatra relocated their forces to the Ambracian Gulf. With a powerful navy numbering some 500 ships, they probably hoped to lure Octavian and his forces into Greece, before destroying his fleet in a pitched battle, thus cutting his supply lines. If so, the ploy worked. Octavian crossed into Greece with a large army. Disastrously for Antony, however, sickness ravaged his forces. Much of his land army was unfit for battle, and he could muster crews for barely half his fleet. Meanwhile, Octavian’s loyal general Marcus Agrippa led his own fleet along the coast, capturing key bases. Soon it was Antony and Cleopatra who found themselves cut off near Actium. Antony and Cleopatra, and 6 more of the best couples in history. Antony made a foray to outflank Octavian’s army by marching round the Ambracian Gulf, but his efforts came to nothing. He was left with no choice but to abandon Greece, loading up his treasure, embarking as many of his soldiers onto his ships as he could and attempting to break through Octavian’s naval blockade. He would then, he hoped, pick up the prevailing wind, sail round the Peloponnese and make for Egypt. Ordering the rest of his army north to Macedonia, Antony readied his fleet – burning many ships for which he no longer had crews – and waited for the weather, which had been stormy for some days, to improve. On 2 September his chance came. At about noon, he moved his ships out of the gulf and into the open sea – where Octavian and Agrippa waited for them, backing up to give themselves enough room to manoeuvre. Who fought at the Battle of Actium? Gaius Julius Octavius (Octavian) Julius Caesar’s great-nephew, named by Caesar as his adopted son and heir; later known as Augustus. The two couldn’t have been more different: Caesar was bold, impetuous and an inspiring leader, whereas Octavian was careful, methodical and an effective delegator. Festina Lente (‘Make haste slowly’) was his motto. He was no great general, but his old friend Marcus Agrippa was an able soldier, and commanded his forces. Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) A key supporter of Julius Caesar, he helped the great general in his conquest of Gaul. Antony was a born soldier but a rather naive politician. There’s no doubt he fell under Cleopatra’s spell, but his romantic interest in the Queen was probably heightened by her great wealth and the resources available to her. Cleopatra VII. A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, a family of Greek origin who had ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years, Cleopatra infamously had love affairs with both Julius Caesar and then Antony. Indeed, she bore them both children. Though Octavian’s PR machine portrayed her as a decadent oriental seductress and the implacable enemy of Rome, Cleopatra’s main priority was to ensure the survival of her dynasty and the independence of Egypt. What was Antony and Cleopatra’s plan? As the sweating oarsmen below decks hauled away, the two fleets began to close in on each other. Up on deck, archers drew their bows and those manning the ballistae (huge crossbows) stood ready to shoot; waiting soldiers gripped their weapons and offered silent prayers that they might not become the victims of enemy missiles. The ships’ prows were fitted with rams, but by this era ramming was a comparatively rare occurrence. Instead, helmsmen tried to manoeuvre their vessels into an advantageous position while soldiers rained arrows, javelins and ballista bolts into the ranks of their enemies, while waiting for an opportunity to board the opponent’s vessels. Antony was drastically outnumbered. His fleet, reduced by his own hand, now numbered 230 ships compared with Octavian’s 400. True, many of his vessels were quinqueremes , formidable warships powered by hundreds of oarsmen and sporting high wooden towers packed with archers. But such ships were slow, and Octavian’s advantage in numbers soon began to tell. As the navies clashed and hand-to-hand fighting surged across the decks, some of Octavian’s ships began to work their way around the flanks of Antony’s smaller fleet. To counter this, and to avoid being completely encircled, Antony’s own ships edged sideways as well – creating a gap in the very centre of the line of battle. Cleopatra made her move. The galleys under her command had been waiting in reserve, guarding transport ships laden with treasure. Now, she ordered them to hoist their sails and make straight for the gap, quickly escaping from the gulf and getting clean away. Antony followed in hot pursuit. Abandoning his flagship for a smaller, lighter craft, he sailed after his lover, followed by a handful of galleys that escaped the fighting. The face of Cleopatra: was she really so beautiful? Octavian’s ships gave chase, and the men on Antony’s fleeing vessels frantically tried to make them lighter and faster. Towers, catapults, weapons and nonessential equipment were all hastily dumped into the sea; anything that might slow them down was thrown overboard in a desperate bid to enable the ships to outrun their pursuers. Who won the Battle of Actium? Eventually, Octavian’s fleet gave up the chase. Their leader would later claim that Cleopatra had sailed off in a panic, and that Antony had abandoned his comrades in order to slavishly follow his lover. In fact, it seems far more likely that this had been a pre-planned gambit, employed to rescue Antony’s treasure and escape with as many ships as possible. Antony’s wealth was safe – but most of his fleet, left behind at the gulf, had been abandoned to its fate. Anxious to preserve these ships and their crews for his own use, Octavian sailed from vessel to vessel, shouting that Antony had fled and pointing out the futility of further resistance. Not all of Antony’s crews were convinced. As Octavian’s men approached, expecting to board the defeated ships and accept their surrender, they found themselves driven back by a barrage of missiles. Unwilling to risk their lives now that the victory had been won, Octavian’s men resorted to incineration. They circled Antony’s doomed ships, bombarding them with flaming javelins and burning arrows. Fanned by a stiff breeze, fires quickly spread through the wooden vessels – but even then, with their ships ablaze, some of Antony’s men refused to surrender. One account says that, when they ran out of water to put out the fires, they tried to smother the flames with the bodies of their dead comrades. But at when the weather took a turn for the worse and, faced with the risk of capsizing and drowning as well as burning alive, the survivors finally gave up the fight. Antony’s mighty fleet had been all but destroyed. What happened after the Actium? When news of the battle reached Antony’s eastern allies, most of them abandoned him, while the army he’d sent to Macedonia also defected. He retreated with some 60 ships to the fragile safety of Alexandria in Egypt. But the following summer, Octavian invaded. Deserted by his allies and his surviving troops, Antony committed suicide. Egypt was swallowed up by Octavian’s empire and, unwilling to face the humiliation of being paraded through Rome in Octavian’s triumphal procession, Cleopatra also killed herself. Octavian, now undisputed master of the Roman world, introduced a series of reforms that gave him control over all aspects of government. Abolishing the old republic, he declared himself emperor for life. Taking the name Augustus, which means lofty or serene, he ruled for over 40 years, until his death in AD 14. Julian Humphrys is a historian and development officer at the Battlefields Trust. MyNewsLA.com. Breaking news for greater Los Angeles and Orange County. Home » OC » This Article. OC deputies arrest New England Patriots fan on Super Bowl Sunday to protect public. A New England Patriots fan who lives in Orange County spent Super Bowl Sunday in jail for an alleged hit-and-run that occurred in Laguna Niguel after last year’s Super Bowl. Orange County sheriff’s deputies made a point of arresting 53-year-old Timothy Anthony Cronin at about 9 a.m. Sunday because they feared the Patriots fan might go out partying again and have another accident, Orange County Sheriff’s Sgt. Brian Sims said. Cronin, who grew up in the Boston area and now resides in Laguna Niguel, is accused of running over Stephen Schenkenberger, who was riding his bicycle while crossing Niguel Road from Ridgeway at about 8:50 p.m. on Feb. 5, 2017. Schenkenberger is “still undergoing treatment and rehabilitation,” Sims said. Based on interviews with people who encountered Cronin on Super Bowl Sunday last year, deputies suspect he was drunk when he hit the victim, Sims said. Cronin posted $50,000 bail Sunday night after the game was over and was released from custody, according to jail records. The Patriots won the big game in 2017, beating the Atlanta Falcons, 34- 28, but lost to the Philadelphia Eagles this year, 41-33.