Opinion

Remembering the wildly original Myles na Gopaleen

From 1940 to the year he died, Myles na Gopaleen turned out the Cruiskeen Lawn column for the Irish Times, wildly original, over many years several times a week
From 1940 to the year he died, Myles na Gopaleen turned out the Cruiskeen Lawn column for the Irish Times, wildly original, over many years several times a week From 1940 to the year he died, Myles na Gopaleen turned out the Cruiskeen Lawn column for the Irish Times, wildly original, over many years several times a week

MYLES na Gopaleen died on April 1, 50 years ago: also Flann O’Brien, Brian O Nualláin/Brian O’Nolan, all the same person, born in Strabane.

Hard to introduce if someone hasn’t heard of him, but worth it. Alcoholic, fierce smoker, suffering throat cancer, he was 54.

Not that young to die, said the poet Anthony Cronin, his later biographer and a drinking companion, now 88. But his face was sad. In an intriguing TG4 documentary on Saturday, Dara Ó Briain made the point best that Myles was a very funny writer.

From 1940 to the year he died he turned out the Cruiskeen Lawn column for the Irish Times, wildly original, over many years several times a week.

To call it a mere column, though, is cheek. When newspaper layout made a virtue of drabness he broke up print with diagrams, grainy sketches, serial jokes, an occasional finger pointing to the editorials on the same page, often in disapproval.

Turned in no matter the state of him, it had style and variety beyond quick description. Literary critics praise the novels.

But the wit and daring he wove into the pages of a heavy-footed conservative paper, still the daily of the remaining Anglo-Irish upper-class, had as much inventiveness and added up to as many words.

Many of them in Irish: Cruiskeen Lawn began in Irish, alternated for a while, settled eventually into English though with swatches of Latin, French, German, often for the sake of intricately-set-up puns.

The TG4 film had a contributor suggesting that RM Smyllie, Irish Times editor and fellow heavy-drinker, recruited Myles to ‘connect’ the Old Lady of Westmoreland Street with the independent Ireland.

Another version is that Myles with some help peppered the letters page with spoof complaints under several aliases, so Smyllie thought best rope him in.

Lucky new readers might start with a collection, The Best of Myles, much reprinted. The section headings don’t reveal much in advance: The Brother; The Plain People of Ireland; Research Bureau. The Plain People ask questions, say ‘Whaa? and try awful puns. But he keeps them off-balance.

A column might start with a heavy description of the war in Russia, the masterly strategy of General Koniev. The PPofI interrupt to ask is this not an editorial? ‘Myself’ confirms that it is, misplaced: ‘Some fool has blundered.’

The PP say but surely he doesn’t also write the editorials? He says he does, usually. ‘We have another man who comes in when I am ‘indisposed’, if you know what that means. And there is no reason why you shouldn’t, red-snouts.’

If you don’t like the sound of that, you might enjoy his invention of a way round people coming in late and pushing past you at a play.

Trap-doors at every seat, the audience arriving from below, pleasant sights, a bald head appearing in one row...and should someone still insist on being late, pushing at your trap-door, you wait until they’re halfway up and then feet hard down, satisfying thump as they hit the ground, back to the play.

‘The Brother’, tales of, quotations from, is beyond swift presentation. The lovely actor Eamon Morrissey does them to a turn, giving every Dublin syllable its value.

And beyond the imagination and wordplay of the columns, there are the novels, admired by serious people and other major authors. An Béal Bocht (The Poor Mouth) may not be the satire some think it but he surely despised long-faced language revivalists, and skewers the breed.

The Hard Life careers with dark laughter past church history, a set-piece Papal interview. Themes re-told sound deranged, manic.

But the best books – At-Swim-Two-Birds, the Hard Life, the one that probably broke his heart because the publisher rejected it, The Third Policeman - spool out with logic and pace.

His timing was off. The Irish Times had a small readership. The first book impressed Joyce and others but came out in 1939. Hitler the literary critic, said Myles, bombed the publisher’s warehouse and burnt the stock.

Drink defined many of his characters, much of his subject material. The spirit of Denis Bradley’s beautifully-written diatribe last Friday about Irish drinking hung over the excruciating TG4 footage of soberer friends guiding a reluctant, stumbling Myles towards a taxi. Someone sang ‘Get me to the church on time.’ Nobody laughed. Ah, not his wedding day?

Eamon Morrissey tried telling him in a pub how he loved At-Swim-Two-Birds ‘and he ate the face off me.’ Not an easy man. But a genius, and a lovely writer.