ISBN: 978-90-393-5454-4 i Brian O’Nolan’s Comic and Critical Reconception of Narratives of the Embellished Past in Independent Ireland, 1938-1966 ii Brian O’Nolan’s Comic and Critical Reconception of Narratives of the Embellished Past in Independent Ireland, 1938-1966 Brian O‘Nolan: komisch-kritische herschepping van verhalen over Ierlands opgehemelde verleden: zoals verteld na de onafhankelijkheid, met bijzondere betrekking tot de periode 1938 – 1966 (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. J.C. Stoof, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op dinsdag 2 november 2010 des ochtends te 10.30 uur door Alana Mary Rood Gillespie geboren op 8 mei 1980 te Raleigh, North Carolina, Verenigde Staten iii Promotoren: Prof. dr. P.R. de Medeiros Prof. dr. A. Rigney iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements 2 Introduction 3-26 Chapter 1: Bittersweet Gaelic on Their Tongues: Myles na Gopaleen, The Poor Mouth and the Irish Language 27-83 Chapter 2: ‗Banjaxed and Bewildered‘: Popular Understandings of Science, Cruiskeen Lawn and The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 84-124 Chapter 3: From Lower Down or Higher Up: Spectral, Sceptical Dialogism in The Third Policeman 125-169 Chapter 4: Assembling Pluralism and Dismantling Authority in At Swim-Two-Birds and The Dalkey Archive 170-216 Conclusion 217-225 List of Works Cited 226-238 Samenvatting (Dutch Summary) 239-241 Curriculum Vitae 242 1 Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the invaluable inspiration and assistance of several people. I am grateful to Paulo de Medeiros for his lively and inspiring course on Fernando Pessoa, which first ignited both my interest in literary haunting and my desire to pursue a PhD in the first place. I am doubly grateful to him for acting as my supervisor, along with Ann Rigney, whose advice and knowledge were likewise indispensable during the research and writing process. I am particularly thankful for Ann‘s assistance in helping me to ensure that my research remained in the field of Irish Studies without losing sight of its interdisciplinary footing and awnings, and for her editorial comments that were truly above and beyond the call of duty. I am also indebted to the members of the reading committee: Luke Gibbons, David Pascoe, Esther Peeren, Joep Leerssen and Peter de Voogd. Luke‘s own work on ghosts, his lectures at the Keough-Naughton Centre for Irish Studies, and a number of informal discussions have truly been an inspiration. I am also obliged to David Pascoe, Esther Peeren and Onno Kosters for their insightful comments on earlier versions of some of the chapters in this book. Peter de Voogd also deserves thanks for having pointed out to me years ago that my MA thesis proposal looked more like a PhD proposal and encouraging me to save something for later. Loving thanks go to Martijn Breman for designing the artwork and for his limitless support. I am also thankful to Paul van Buren for his unceasing encouragement and enthusiasm, and to Bev Collins and Roos van de Wardt for their editorial and translation work. The Research Institute for Culture and History (OGC) funded my PhD research and for this I cannot express enough gratitude. With their assistance I was able to travel to Dublin and Boston to conduct research, enabling me to complete this work. José van Aelst also deserves a special thank you for her coordinating role and friendly advice. Thanks are also due to Justine Hyland at John J. Burns Library at Boston College and Jim Bantin at the Special Collections Research Center at Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and the staff of the National Library of Ireland and Trinity College, Dublin. My sincere thanks go out to my family and friends who commented on drafts and patiently listened to my stories about the woes and wonders of PhD research. And finally, if O‘Nolan himself happens to be turning over in his grave at the thought of this academic attention, I must impress upon him that I too am ―[...] only fooling/and warning him/to see to it that/there is no misunderstanding/when I go home‖ (The Dalkey Archive). And plenty of that nine-letter ‗d‘ word that occurs thrice on page 186. 2 Introduction Myles na Gopaleen never actually existed, but all the same he was living in the past. Specifically, he claimed to be living in a house called ―The Past.‖ Myles‘s visitors think it is a strange name for a house, but he wonders whether it is ―so queer after all? Is it not better than, say, ―The Present‖? ―The Present‖ seems to imply that the house is the gift of some friend rather than the result of my exertions as secretary of the Gaelic League, a post which I held at a time when the language was neither profitable nor popular‖ (Cruiskeen Lawn 3 Dec. 1942).1 He loses his temper then thinking about the struggles of those times, roughly in the 1890s, but quickly composes himself and returns to the topic of his house: ―But about this house of mine. I often hear people saying: ―Ah, that poor man. Sure that poor man is living in ‗The Past.‘‖ (3 Dec. 1942). Brian O‘Nolan (1911-1966) was the man behind the masks of columnist Myles na Gopaleen and Flann O‘Brien. The former was the pseudonym that he used for his column Cruiskeen Lawn in the Irish Times from 1940 until his death in 1966, and under the latter he published four of his five novels and is better known today by this pen name than his birth name. His work was comic, satirical and light-hearted, but it was also philosophical, socially engaged and could at times be utterly spiteful. His newspaper column and his fiction each explored in different ways the tension between the past and modernity in post-independence Ireland, often by bringing disparate historical periods together in a single framework. The past features as a revenant or ghost throughout his work, often appearing where it is least expected and unsettling the temporal and historical focus and structure of his work. The fragmented temporality that characterises his writing confronts readers with a synthetic and self-conscious perspective on history which forces them to rethink the stability of their own perceptions of the course of narrative history. Throughout this study, I will refer to this writer either as O‘Nolan, or at times Myles, to differentiate the personas behind his fictional work and his journalism. Other pseudonyms he used throughout his prolific career included George Knowall, Lir O‘Connor, Brother Barnabus, Count O‘Blather, John James Doe, Matt Duffy and possibly Stephen Blakesley and Seán Ó Longáin. The work of the compound of pseudonyms attributed to Brian O‘Nolan is the main subject of my research.2 1 Parenthetical references to Cruiskeen Lawn will be abbreviated to CL where necessary. If it is clear that the column quoted is Cruiskeen Lawn, only the date will be provided. All references are to the Irish Times unless otherwise stated. Columns that have been reprinted in collections such as The Best of Myles or Myles Away From Dublin do not always provide the original date. I have provided the dates in the references, where possible. 2 John J. Burns Library at Boston College has the largest Brian O‘Nolan collection of all research libraries, including 3 This study aims to analyse O‘Nolan‘s critical and comic response to the way narratives of the Irish past were invoked and deployed in the (newly) independent Irish State after 1921 in the service of making or imagining modern Ireland‘s future and crystallising a sense of shared, national identity. Throughout his career as a journalist, novelist and civil servant, O‘Nolan comically, disdainfully, and constructively criticised the way that (literary) historical narratives of the Irish past were harnessed by the government, cultural institutions, literary writers and the masses, to validate and shape their various, often competing, visions of modern, independent Ireland from a presentist historical perspective. My main focus will be on the years 1938 to 1966, when O‘Nolan wrote most of his work. Within this temporal framework, the 1940s will receive the most attention, but I will also necessarily be referring back to historical developments that predate the establishment of the Irish Free State in December 1922. The 1937 constitution saw the name of the Irish Free State replaced by Éire or Ireland. If the current title of the Irish state is relevant to my discussion, it will be given, but in the main, my references will be to the independent state or to Ireland. In ―The War Against the Past,‖ Declan Kiberd examines how the past in Irish literature and politics was used and abused either to vindicate the past or forge the future. He argues that too often, the choice between vindication and creating the future have led ―the fighter of Irish bulls‖ to take ―one step back only to be impaled on the horns of the past and never‖ recover sufficiently ―to deliver the mortal blow‖ to his present problem (33). This explains the pathology of revivalism in Ireland, Kiberd argues, and caused the people of modern Ireland to lose the ―opportunity to become themselves‖ in exchange for empty roles in a Yeatsian tragedy which filled ―the national stage [...] with the ghosts of dead men insisting that the living simplify and abandon their daily lives, to the point of becoming agents of the dead‖ (33-4).