Tag Archive: Dubliners


The life and times of Flann O’Brien

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Humour — Leave a comment
August 29, 2018

NO LAUGHING MATTER by Anthony Cronin (First published by Grafton Books, 1989)

984085There are certain novels, like Robert Musil’s ‘The Man Without Qualities’, that I find too daunting to even attempt and others, such as Malcolm Lowry’s ‘Under The Volcano’ that I have tried but failed to complete.

‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ by Flann O’Brien was, until this year, gathering dust in my unfinished pile. I have Anthony Cronin’s candid and informative biography of O’Brien to thank for finally completing this short, comic but notoriously challenging novel.

Cronin skillfully puts the work into a literary and historical context while bluntly presenting the man behind it as a sad character. Continue reading →

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THE BEST SHORT STORY EVER WRITTEN

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Movies — 2 Comments
December 10, 2011

What is the best short story ever written?

For me the answer is James Joyce’s The Dead, the closing story in Dubliners, written in 1907.

You can read the complete story online and it is the closing paragraphs that make it so memorable as Gabriel contemplates love and death and the motif of falling snow is somehow in synchrony with his own melancholy thoughts.

John Huston’s 1987 film version of The Dead starred his daughter Anjelica and was released posthumously.

Huston wisely opted to keep most of the words from this moving sequence as they were written by Joyce.

I remember when I saw the movie in a London cinema, it is one of the few movies where practically everyone stayed to watch all the closing credits. It would have seemed disrespectful to make a quick exit and I think the audience wanted time to properly absorb the beauty and the sadness of the words. Continue reading →

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