The Irish Anatomist: A Study of Flann O'Brien

The most full length critical and biographical studies of Flann O'Brien(the nom de plume of Brian O’ Nolan an otherwise inoffensive Irish public servant) tend to push asid e the leviathan of Cruiskeen Lawn, a commodious, encyclopedic work of some two million words and focus instead on his novels in English. Dr. Donohue in this important new study considers all of O'Nolan’s work including college writings, letters to the editor(raised to a form of national genius by F O'B.) and works in Irish. It draws upon the research and biographical material of Anthony Cronin’s No Laughing Matter, along with new research and criticism and takes issue with some of the conclusions reached in Keith Hopper’s A Portrait of a Postmodernist. By tracing O'Nolan’s development as an artist over time, this new study uncovers the relentless anatomist and post modernist in Flann O'Brien, a man of genius dissecting and exposing life and custom in mid 20th century Dublin. O'Nolan’s views on the arts and the novel are carefully discussed along with his relation to the literary Ireland of the deValera years.