Mary Costello is the author of The China Factory, a collection of short stories which was published by The Stinging Fly Press. It has received much acclaim and renown for its intensity and sensitivity. Costello has an amazing capacity to reveal characters’ lives through understated encounters, be it the restraint of two strangers in The […]
Anyone who knows anything about Flann O’Brien knows he was a man of many names. Flann O’Brien was the pen name for Brian O’Nolan, who wrote journalism under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen. He used different spellings of his names and most of the discussion and arguments on his Wikipedia page are about how his […]
The romantic view of terrorists as misfits and lost souls, presented by Dostoevsky and Conrad in their work, is very much at odds with the practical and structured guerilla warfare that was seen during Ireland’s War of Independence
There’s a quote, from an article that Germaine Greer wrote back in the 70s,which springs back in to my mind continuously when listening to certain albums: “When Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho the walls came tumbling down. That’s revelation. The holy Ghost talking. So it can be done. The way to crack a mirror or shiver […]
Ever since, as James Joyce remarked, we have become “Jung and easily Freudened” it has become necessary, when dealing with a writer, to refer not only to his work but to his private life as well. This is particularly true in the case of Seán O'Casey, one of Ireland's great literary icons. In fact, O'Casey […]
Firing questions at anyone for a half an hour about their motivations and identity is bound to produce contradictions, but an interview with Glen Hansard, chief songwriter from Irish band the Frames, throws up more than its fair share. It’s not that he’s confused, or indeed confusing. Rather, the context that he and The Frames […]
John Banville’s new novel, The Sea, presents us with Max Morden, recently widowed (or is that widowered? as Max mordantly wonders) and returned to the sea-side resort of his childhood. While turning over fragments from his married life with Anna, Max also recalls the strange bond he formed many years ago with the dazzling Graces, […]
As the world and his wife, in Joycean terms, turn their attention to Dublin, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the fictional event of Bloomsday, it seems almost as if a lone Irish voice is reminding us that Joyce wrote most of his work outside of Ireland, and in particular a large part of it […]
Anyone who has caught “Reeling in the Years,” RTE’s knock-off of the BBC’s “The Rock’n’Roll Years”, in which contemporary music is spliced in with archive news footage would quickly be reminded that Ireland in the 1980s was a basket case. Moving statues, hunger strikes, mass emigration, and Miami Vice-style jackets all featured prominently in the […]
Tim Pat Coogan describes interviewing Flann O’Brien in 1964 after the publication of The Dalkey Archive. The interview was carefully planned. Apart from getting him to talk, there was one other main objective: to keep O’Brien away from the drink. It was to take place at 8.30 on a Saturday morning so that he could […]
