Books in Brief: The Poor Mouth

The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story about the Hard Life, by Flann O’Brien (Viking, 128 pp., $7.95). You would eagerly buy and read Patrick Power’s translation of Flann O’Brien’s An Béal Bocht (The Poor Mouth) if you had read At Swim-Two-Birds (O’Brien’s best) or The Third Policeman. If you have not previously read O’Brien’s English novels, you might still be interested in The Poor Mouth’s subject, the Gaelic language movement and its effects on the Irish. But even if you aren’t, the treatment of this subject deserves the attention of all punsters, tail-tale lovers, fanciers of farce, enemies of cliché, and just plain people who like a good laugh. O’Brien’s comic style, here as in his other works, is incredibly elastic. It stretches characters and events to their utmost— and then goes further. Gaelic is as intelligible as pig Latin? Well then, who should speak “Gaelic which was so good, so poetic and so obscure” but a drunken piglet in breeches? Of course the poor true swindling Gaels in O’Brien’s alwaysraining Corkadoragha all live like swine and eat potatoes. As Flann O’Brien in his novels and as Myles na gCopaleen in his Irish Times columns, Brian O’Nolan was a satirist who saw that the Irish habit of mythmaking is destructive when it aggrandizes and glorifies the unworthy. But he could also see that these myths, taken as works of language art, are glorious testaments to the continual supremacy of the Irish way with words. James Joyce forged an Irish myth to capture the conscience of his race and in so doing he captured many other men’s consciences as well. O’Brien’s works strongly affirm such achievements and they further them too. “A real writer, with the true comic spirit,” Joyce says in a rare dustjacket puff. It’s too bad that for 25 years very few have paid attention. Do read O’Brien. He’s a really funny writer. Believe me if you don’t believe James Joyce.

RC

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Rosa Cumare

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The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story about the Hard Life, by Flann O’Brien (Viking, 128 pp., $7.95). You would eagerly buy and read Patrick Power’s translation of Flann O’Brien’s An Béal Bocht (The Poor Mouth) if you had read At Swim-Two-Birds (O’Brien’s best) or The Third Policeman. If you have not previously read O’Brien’s English novels, you might still be interested in The Poor Mouth’s subject, the Gaelic language movement and its effects on the Irish. But even if you aren’t, the treatment of this subject deserves the attention of all punsters, tail-tale lovers, fanciers of farce, enemies of cliché, and just plain people who like a good laugh. O’Brien’s comic style, here as in his other works, is incredibly elastic. It stretches characters and events to their utmost— and then goes further. Gaelic is as intelligible as pig Latin? Well then, who should speak “Gaelic which was so good, so poetic and so obscure” but a drunken piglet in breeches? Of course the poor true swindling Gaels in O’Brien’s alwaysraining Corkadoragha all live like swine and eat potatoes. As Flann O’Brien in his novels and as Myles na gCopaleen in his Irish Times columns, Brian O’Nolan was a satirist who saw that the Irish habit of mythmaking is destructive when it aggrandizes and glorifies the unworthy. But he could also see that these myths, taken as works of language art, are glorious testaments to the continual supremacy of the Irish way with words. James Joyce forged an Irish myth to capture the conscience of his race and in so doing he captured many other men’s consciences as well. O’Brien’s works strongly affirm such achievements and they further them too. “A real writer, with the true comic spirit,” Joyce says in a rare dustjacket puff. It’s too bad that for 25 years very few have paid attention. Do read O’Brien. He’s a really funny writer. Believe me if you don’t believe James Joyce.