Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1. Fragments of Palimpsests 2. Driven to Repeat 3. Ireland on Trial 4. A Hard Life for Women 5. Archival Fantasies Notes Bibliography Index
A complete guide to the writings of Flann O'Brien, including his major novels, plays and journalism.
Maebh Long is Lecturer in Literature at the University of the South Pacific, the Fiji Islands.
In Assembling Flann O’Brien, Maebh Long has set out on a difficult
task: to assemble the unassemblable. It is to her credit that the
book succeeds at its task ... [Her] dexterity as a critic is
impressive.
*Modern Language Review*
Maebh Long’s assembling of high theory and archival material within
specific cultural contexts makes for a compelling read. Her
bilingual analysis of An Béal Bocht /The Poor Mouth is astute, and
her fluid reading of O’Brien’s later novels is a valuable
contribution to existing Flanneur scholarship.
*Keith Hopper, St Mary’s University College, Twickenham (author of
Flann O’Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Post-modernist)*
This is a fine, thought-provoking study, offering nuanced, lucid,
witty and philosophically rich readings of the Flann O'Brien oeuvre
in all its uniquely unassemblable strangeness. Maebh Long's
Assembling Flann O'Brien promises to be an engaging and valuable
work for students and scholars alike.
*Nicholas Royle, Professor of English, University of Sussex,
UK*
Hugely erudite yet wonderfully alive to the entertainingly ludic
qualities of its subject, Maebh Long's witty and engaging account
is the first book-length study of Flann O'Brien that manages to do
full justice to the 'singularity' of the work of this most learned,
daring and brilliantly slippery writer. The book is a tour de force
that brings to its task of explication, appreciation and critique,
a wealth of scholarship, theoretical understanding and critical
dexterity.
*Patricia Waugh, Professor of English at Durham University,
UK.*
Flann O'Brien was one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific Brian
O'Nolan (1911-66). In this superlative scholarly study, Long (Univ.
of the South Pacific, Fiji Islands) offers what is surely the best
analysis presently available of Ireland's most significant
postmodernist writer. In five chapters, arranged topically across
several genres, readers will gain rich insight into O'Nolan's
mindset. But Long does more, providing a vibrant intellectual
construct for reading O'Nolan's work by way of Derrida, Agamben,
Freud, Lucan, and Zizek. Copious in its analysis, substantial in
its notes and bibliography, Long's study makes a major contribution
to Irish studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate
students, researchers, faculty.
*Asbury University*
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