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A review by daviddavidkatzman
Poor Mouth: A Bad Story about the Hard Life by Flann O'Brien
5.0
I have quite the man-crush on Flann O’Brien. Call it a bro-mance if you wish. I’m making my way through all his work, including his newspaper columns. There’s something so anti-twenty-first-century about his use of multiple pseudonyms and personas in our look-at-me-age of “FACEBOOK STATUS: Pooping right now.” Here we have Brian O’Nolan who wrote his novels as Flann O’Brien and his newspaper column as a character Myles na Gopaleen (think mid-century Stephen Colbert). He even allegedly wrote letters to the editor under further pseudonyms complaining about his own writing.
He was a civil servant helping to support 10 brothers and sisters, and I believe never married. I picture him in grimy pubs, listening quietly to the voices around him as he drinks far too many tumblers of whiskey and smokes his teeth to the gums before walking steadily home, one foot in front of the other.
Above all, O’Brien is so goddamn funny he breaks the rules of goddamn respectable literature. Middle finger to conformity! And yet Joyce loved him. I think one element of his humor is a stoic acceptance of the unacceptable. Life is just so fucked up, and yet the likes of it shall never be seen again. Another element is a keen eye for the ridiculous in human nature.
Another quality that endears me to O’Brien: He was a risk-taker. He was an experimentalist who somehow kept one foot grounded in dirty reality. Most of his novels have meta-fictional qualities that pre-date post-modernism (or post-date pre-modernism, as the case may be.) Whether it’s acknowledging the author, reusing scenes or characters from previous novels, having characters who admit they’re fictional, or fictionalizing real people, O’Brien pushed the boundaries. Realistic narratives and characters are difficult to pull off, yes, great job. But I admire even more the author who can pull off an original form…i.e. ART…without being cold, abstract and irritatingly confusing.
He was also a lover of language who crafts his grammar and language with precision. The book in question here, The Poor Mouth, was originally written in (so the translation indicates) beautiful Gaelic. There is an effable quality of the punch in the mouth from O’Brien. His love and anger come across in every sentence. And yet, there is a sense of humility as well. That steady walk home that we all take, walking steadily to our deaths.
The Poor Mouth is one of O’Brien’s less meta-fictional novels although it definitely exceeds realism into a state of satire. It’s couched as the autobiographical story of one of the poorest Gaels in all of Gaeltacht, one Bonaparte O’Coonassa. Although, everyone in town is so poor that …well, that they’re Irish. It’s ridiculously funny until at the very end when the weight of the poverty sinks into tragedy at the hands of the English. It rains every day and night, they sleep with the pigs and cows, and they eat nothing but spuds. It’s a Gaelic life for me.
Here is a sample to whet your appetite:
I was born in the West of Ireland on that awful winter’s night—may we all be healthy and safe!—in the place called Corkadoragha and in the townland named Lisnabrawshkeen. I was very young at the time I was born and had not aged even a single day; for half a year I did not perceive anything about me and did not know one person from the other. Wisdom and understanding, nevertheless, come steadily, solidly and stealthily into the mind of every human being and I spent that year on the broad of my back, my eyes darting here and there at my environment. I noticed my mother in the house before me, a decent, hefty, big-boned woman; a silent, cross, big-breasted woman. She seldom spoke to me and often struck me when I screamed in the end of the house. The beating was of little use in stopping the tumult because the second tumult was worse than the first one and, if I received a further beating, the third tumult was worse than the second one. However, my mother was sensible, level-headed and well-fed; her like will not be there again.
I leave you with the same recommendations I made in my other O’Brien review (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/984107.Stories_and_plays). If you only have time for one book, At Swim-Two-Birds is his masterpiece. If I could read them all over again like a virgin, touched for the very first time—I’d read The Dalkey Archive first, followed by The Third Policemen (where he gets supremely weird), followed by At Swim. The Hard Life is quite hilarious too…oh, see I can’t stop.
He was a civil servant helping to support 10 brothers and sisters, and I believe never married. I picture him in grimy pubs, listening quietly to the voices around him as he drinks far too many tumblers of whiskey and smokes his teeth to the gums before walking steadily home, one foot in front of the other.
Above all, O’Brien is so goddamn funny he breaks the rules of goddamn respectable literature. Middle finger to conformity! And yet Joyce loved him. I think one element of his humor is a stoic acceptance of the unacceptable. Life is just so fucked up, and yet the likes of it shall never be seen again. Another element is a keen eye for the ridiculous in human nature.
Another quality that endears me to O’Brien: He was a risk-taker. He was an experimentalist who somehow kept one foot grounded in dirty reality. Most of his novels have meta-fictional qualities that pre-date post-modernism (or post-date pre-modernism, as the case may be.) Whether it’s acknowledging the author, reusing scenes or characters from previous novels, having characters who admit they’re fictional, or fictionalizing real people, O’Brien pushed the boundaries. Realistic narratives and characters are difficult to pull off, yes, great job. But I admire even more the author who can pull off an original form…i.e. ART…without being cold, abstract and irritatingly confusing.
He was also a lover of language who crafts his grammar and language with precision. The book in question here, The Poor Mouth, was originally written in (so the translation indicates) beautiful Gaelic. There is an effable quality of the punch in the mouth from O’Brien. His love and anger come across in every sentence. And yet, there is a sense of humility as well. That steady walk home that we all take, walking steadily to our deaths.
The Poor Mouth is one of O’Brien’s less meta-fictional novels although it definitely exceeds realism into a state of satire. It’s couched as the autobiographical story of one of the poorest Gaels in all of Gaeltacht, one Bonaparte O’Coonassa. Although, everyone in town is so poor that …well, that they’re Irish. It’s ridiculously funny until at the very end when the weight of the poverty sinks into tragedy at the hands of the English. It rains every day and night, they sleep with the pigs and cows, and they eat nothing but spuds. It’s a Gaelic life for me.
Here is a sample to whet your appetite:
I was born in the West of Ireland on that awful winter’s night—may we all be healthy and safe!—in the place called Corkadoragha and in the townland named Lisnabrawshkeen. I was very young at the time I was born and had not aged even a single day; for half a year I did not perceive anything about me and did not know one person from the other. Wisdom and understanding, nevertheless, come steadily, solidly and stealthily into the mind of every human being and I spent that year on the broad of my back, my eyes darting here and there at my environment. I noticed my mother in the house before me, a decent, hefty, big-boned woman; a silent, cross, big-breasted woman. She seldom spoke to me and often struck me when I screamed in the end of the house. The beating was of little use in stopping the tumult because the second tumult was worse than the first one and, if I received a further beating, the third tumult was worse than the second one. However, my mother was sensible, level-headed and well-fed; her like will not be there again.
I leave you with the same recommendations I made in my other O’Brien review (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/984107.Stories_and_plays). If you only have time for one book, At Swim-Two-Birds is his masterpiece. If I could read them all over again like a virgin, touched for the very first time—I’d read The Dalkey Archive first, followed by The Third Policemen (where he gets supremely weird), followed by At Swim. The Hard Life is quite hilarious too…oh, see I can’t stop.