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Article: No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien.(Review)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- September 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Anthony Cronin No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien. Fromm International, 272 pages, $29.95
My guess is that the phrase "the luck of the Irish" is of American origin. When one contemplates the lives that some of the best Irish writers have led in and out of the pubs of Dublin during the past half-century or so, "curse" comes to mind as a better word than "luck." Hence the sobering title of Anthony Cronin's superb biography, No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien, published in London almost a decade ago and recently released here.
O'Brien, a novelist and satirist, was actually three in one--an entity the novelist ...