Flann O'Brien centennial

[nwhyte]

Today is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Flann O'Brien / Myles na gCopaleen / Brian O'Nolan, unassuming civil servant by day, inhabitant of The Palace Bar (and elsewhere) in the afternoon and evening, destroyer of comfortable reality by night.

My favourite quote from The Third Policeman:"Now take a sheep," the Sergeant said. "What is a

Comments

[major_clanger]

I first encountered O'Brien's works via a 1970s Christmas edition of New Scientist, which reprinted as a stand-alone article the footnotes from The Third Policeman regarding that great scientist and independent thinker, de Selby.

[communicator]

Thank you for the reminder. I haven't read him for years, but I love his work. The atomic sheep quote is fabulous.

[chilperic]

That's a lovely story about the man who was a character in Joyce; thanks for that one!

[nwhyte]

He probably worked in the same institution as you, 60 years ago!!!!

[drasecretcampus]

There was an interesting half hour documentary on Radio 4 yesterday - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015ck96

(I might have misheard, but it featured someone from Liverpool Brookes University. As opposed to Oxford John Moores, I presume.)

[barnacle]

My favourite story about him - a snapshot of the man taken when he was at the most hilarious and most quietly upsetting extreme of the kind of hard-drinking Irishry he often parodied in his own writing - remains the one involving the Tim Pat Coogan interview and the bottle in the cistern.

I've got ancient Picadors of most things I can find, stretching out towards things like The Dalkey Archive and the English translation of the The Poor Mouth. But they're all suffering spinerot, so although Further Cuttings came out more recently it'd still be lovely if some of his work got re-released this year.