THE PARISH BULLETIN
The Paris Review 1.2 is Here!
Exciting news: the new issue of The Parish Review is finally here!! That's right, on Friday 3 May members of the International Flann O'Brien Society will be receiving The Parish Review 1.2 (Winter 2013), a special issue dedicated to the theme of Flann and/in the Archive and guest-edited by Jennika Baines (‘Is It About a Bicycle?’: Flann O’Brien in the Twenty-First Century, Four Courts Press 2011).
To get your copy make sure you have registered for membership of IFOBS: just drop us an email! We're looking forward to hearing from you!
The
first annual
IFOBS Awards nominees are in...
Dear
friends and members of IFOBS,
we thank you warmly for your nominations for the International Flann O'Brien Society Awards (the soon-to-be world-famous Father Fahrt, S.J Memorial Prize) for excellent contributions to Flann O'Brien Scholarship published in 2011-2012.
The nominees will be announced in the next issue of The Parish Review, after which the winners will be chosen by an impartial judge, appointed ad hoc from outside the society. The winners will then be announced at "Problems with Authority: The II International Flann O'Brien Conference" (Rome, 19-21 June, 2013), at which prizes will be awarded to the best book-length publication, and best essay-length publication on a Flann O’Brien theme.
Make sure you are signed up to receive The Parish Review to find out how the members of IFOBS have spoken -- and may the best Flann(eur) win!
we thank you warmly for your nominations for the International Flann O'Brien Society Awards (the soon-to-be world-famous Father Fahrt, S.J Memorial Prize) for excellent contributions to Flann O'Brien Scholarship published in 2011-2012.
The nominees will be announced in the next issue of The Parish Review, after which the winners will be chosen by an impartial judge, appointed ad hoc from outside the society. The winners will then be announced at "Problems with Authority: The II International Flann O'Brien Conference" (Rome, 19-21 June, 2013), at which prizes will be awarded to the best book-length publication, and best essay-length publication on a Flann O’Brien theme.
Make sure you are signed up to receive The Parish Review to find out how the members of IFOBS have spoken -- and may the best Flann(eur) win!
Stephen Rea tours The Third Policeman
February
2013: Acclaimed actor Stephen Rea (The Crying Game,The
Butcher Boy, The End of the
Affair, Bloom) is embarking on an Irish tour with
his dramatic reading of The Third Policeman, accompanied by a live musical score
performed by composer Colin Reid on piano, Neil Martin & Becky
Joslin on cello & Niamh Crowley on violin. - Exciting! "an exceptional
event" Stuart Bailie, BBC Radio Ulster
The tour includes dates in the Pavilion Theatre (DunLaoghaire),
Longford's Backstage Theatre, and Sligo's The Hawk’s Well.
Longford's Backstage Theatre, and Sligo's The Hawk’s Well.
Check out the tour's trailer video for a taster, and more details on venues.
An
Béal Bocht: The Graphic Novel
More exciting news concerning Myles's
only Gaelic language novel: a
brand new graphic novel version of Myles na gCopaleen's An Béal Bocht has just been released by Cló Mhaigh
Eo Publishers!
Beautfully isslustrated by John McCloskey, the graphic novel is adapted from the original by Colman Ó Raghallaigh and edited by Breandán Ó Conaire, the author of Myles na Gaeilge (1986), still the authoratitive work on O'Nolan's gaelic language works.
Follow this link to get a copy for you, Ambrose, and every Jams O’Donnell on your Christmas list!
Beautfully isslustrated by John McCloskey, the graphic novel is adapted from the original by Colman Ó Raghallaigh and edited by Breandán Ó Conaire, the author of Myles na Gaeilge (1986), still the authoratitive work on O'Nolan's gaelic language works.
Follow this link to get a copy for you, Ambrose, and every Jams O’Donnell on your Christmas list!
Blue
Raincoat's The
Poor Mouth
Blue Raincoat Theatre Company performs
their adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s The
Poor Mouth at Project Arts Centre, 12–24 November 2012. The
production sees Sligo based Blue Raincoat Theatre Company complete a
trilogy of original stage adaptations by Jocelyn Clarke of the major
novels of Flann O’Brien, following Blue Raincoat's previous stage
adaptations of At Swim-Two-Birds (2007)
and The Third Policeman (2009).
Their adaption of The Poor Mouth has previously been nominated for two Irish Times Theatre Awards for Best
Director (Niall Henry) and Best Supporting Actor (Bob
Kelly). Tickets can be booked through the Project Arts website.
This is how Google is marking
Flann's 101st birthday! How will you?
5 October 2012
Rome, June 19-21, 2013
Call For Papers
KEYNOTES
Jed Esty
(University of Pennsylvania)
Carol Taaffe
(Author of Ireland Through the Looking-Glass:
Flann O'Brien, Myles na gCopaleen & Irish Cultural Debate)
Dirk Van Hulle
(University of Antwerp)
Jed Esty
(University of Pennsylvania)
Carol Taaffe
(Author of Ireland Through the Looking-Glass:
Flann O'Brien, Myles na gCopaleen & Irish Cultural Debate)
Dirk Van Hulle
(University of Antwerp)
The
International Flann O’Brien Society is proud to announce that a
conference on the Works of Brian O’Nolan will be hosted by the
Department of Comparative Literatures, at the Università Roma Tre under the title ‘Problems with Authority: The II
International Flann O’Brien Conference’.
It is an exciting time for the expanding field of Brian O’Nolan scholarship. Despite the significant increase in O’Nolan events and publications since his centenary year in 2011 – and even, perhaps, because of them – a great deal of work remains to be done in exploring O’Nolan’s under-analysed minor texts and in closing the many critical gaps in the academic record. At the centre of these critical projects are explorations of O’Nolan’s texts as fertile territory for mediating between conflicting Authorities: between traditional and modern scripts, local and international perspectives, and between avant-garde and conservative approaches to the authorities of science, history, and literary tradition.
With these issues in mind, the conference aims to address questions of canonicity and authority in Brian O’Nolan’s work. 2013 sees the publication of collections of O’Nolan’s short stories (Neil Murphy & Keith Hopper, Dalkey Archive) and dramatic works (Daniel Jernigan, Dalkey Archive). As these collections give us greater access to a rich variety of overlooked texts in the O’Nolan literary canon, they also prompt and challenge us to broaden and retrace its borders. Indeed, given the amount of pseudonyms and apocryphal texts in play, we might ask whether these borders can ever be definitively drawn. Similarly, the vast collections of O’Nolan’s correspondence, manuscripts, and drafts housed in Illinois, Boston, and Texas, – as well as the Irish Times’s online digital archive – have recently given rise to emerging fields of Genetic and Cultural Materialist approaches that seek to explore the borders of authorship and authority in O’Nolan’s ever-expanding oeuvre.
And while longer-running critical conversations continue to be finessed about the ways in which O’Nolan’s texts are shaped by towering 20th Century figures such as Joyce and Beckett (and the more local authorities of Church and State), the increasingly international contexts in which O’Nolan is being read have brought a new set of names to the table: from Calvino, Borges, and Kafka, to Nabokov, Danielewski and Bolaño. This international gaze brings with it other issues, such as the challenges of adaptation and translation, and the opportunities of exploring O’Nolan’s broader canon as a fertile ground for a range of critical perspectives, from Cultural Materialism, Queer Theory, and Feminism, to Metafiction, Genre Theory, and Deconstruction.
The organisers invite proposals on any aspect of O’Nolan’s writing, but are especially interested in papers that explore questions of authorship and authority in O’Nolan’s work, including, but not limited to:
Broadening the Canon
– Problems of canonicity and the reception of minor works
– O’Nolan on Screen and Stage: The forgotten scripts
– O’Nolan as letter writer
– Challenges in adapting/translating O’Nolan’s writing
On Whose Authority?
– Ideological critique & the comedic subversion of authority in O’Nolan’s writing
– Conflicting Authorities: The traditional vs. the avant-garde, the local vs. the international in O’Nolan’s writing
– Writing Under the Influence: O’Nolan and his contemporaries
– The Clowning of Science: Menippean Satire and the encyclopaedic ideal
Theoretical Authorities
– Death of the Author: O’Nolan and Capital "T" Theory
– O’Nolan and theories of Genre
– Cultural Materialist and Genetic Approaches
– Male Authorities / Feminist Readings
– The Reception of Flann O’Brien in Ireland and beyond
Please submit abstracts and panel proposals to viennacis.anglistik@univie.ac.at by February 1st 2013.
Keynote lectures will be given by Jed Esty (University of Pennsylvania), Carol Taaffe (Author of Ireland Through the Looking-Glass: Flann O'Brien, Myles na gCopaleen & Irish Cultural Debate), and Dirk Van Hulle (University of Antwerp). The programme will include performances by Mark O’Halloran (Award-winning screenwriter of Adam and Paul and Garage), and Mikel Murfi (Director of “John Duffy’s Brother”).
For more details as they emerge, including social programmes and accommodation & travel details visit our website
It is an exciting time for the expanding field of Brian O’Nolan scholarship. Despite the significant increase in O’Nolan events and publications since his centenary year in 2011 – and even, perhaps, because of them – a great deal of work remains to be done in exploring O’Nolan’s under-analysed minor texts and in closing the many critical gaps in the academic record. At the centre of these critical projects are explorations of O’Nolan’s texts as fertile territory for mediating between conflicting Authorities: between traditional and modern scripts, local and international perspectives, and between avant-garde and conservative approaches to the authorities of science, history, and literary tradition.
With these issues in mind, the conference aims to address questions of canonicity and authority in Brian O’Nolan’s work. 2013 sees the publication of collections of O’Nolan’s short stories (Neil Murphy & Keith Hopper, Dalkey Archive) and dramatic works (Daniel Jernigan, Dalkey Archive). As these collections give us greater access to a rich variety of overlooked texts in the O’Nolan literary canon, they also prompt and challenge us to broaden and retrace its borders. Indeed, given the amount of pseudonyms and apocryphal texts in play, we might ask whether these borders can ever be definitively drawn. Similarly, the vast collections of O’Nolan’s correspondence, manuscripts, and drafts housed in Illinois, Boston, and Texas, – as well as the Irish Times’s online digital archive – have recently given rise to emerging fields of Genetic and Cultural Materialist approaches that seek to explore the borders of authorship and authority in O’Nolan’s ever-expanding oeuvre.
And while longer-running critical conversations continue to be finessed about the ways in which O’Nolan’s texts are shaped by towering 20th Century figures such as Joyce and Beckett (and the more local authorities of Church and State), the increasingly international contexts in which O’Nolan is being read have brought a new set of names to the table: from Calvino, Borges, and Kafka, to Nabokov, Danielewski and Bolaño. This international gaze brings with it other issues, such as the challenges of adaptation and translation, and the opportunities of exploring O’Nolan’s broader canon as a fertile ground for a range of critical perspectives, from Cultural Materialism, Queer Theory, and Feminism, to Metafiction, Genre Theory, and Deconstruction.
The organisers invite proposals on any aspect of O’Nolan’s writing, but are especially interested in papers that explore questions of authorship and authority in O’Nolan’s work, including, but not limited to:
Broadening the Canon
– Problems of canonicity and the reception of minor works
– O’Nolan on Screen and Stage: The forgotten scripts
– O’Nolan as letter writer
– Challenges in adapting/translating O’Nolan’s writing
On Whose Authority?
– Ideological critique & the comedic subversion of authority in O’Nolan’s writing
– Conflicting Authorities: The traditional vs. the avant-garde, the local vs. the international in O’Nolan’s writing
– Writing Under the Influence: O’Nolan and his contemporaries
– The Clowning of Science: Menippean Satire and the encyclopaedic ideal
Theoretical Authorities
– Death of the Author: O’Nolan and Capital "T" Theory
– O’Nolan and theories of Genre
– Cultural Materialist and Genetic Approaches
– Male Authorities / Feminist Readings
– The Reception of Flann O’Brien in Ireland and beyond
Please submit abstracts and panel proposals to viennacis.anglistik@univie.ac.at by February 1st 2013.
Keynote lectures will be given by Jed Esty (University of Pennsylvania), Carol Taaffe (Author of Ireland Through the Looking-Glass: Flann O'Brien, Myles na gCopaleen & Irish Cultural Debate), and Dirk Van Hulle (University of Antwerp). The programme will include performances by Mark O’Halloran (Award-winning screenwriter of Adam and Paul and Garage), and Mikel Murfi (Director of “John Duffy’s Brother”).
For more details as they emerge, including social programmes and accommodation & travel details visit our website
John
McCourt (Università Roma Tre)
Ruben Borg (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Paul Fagan (University of Vienna)
Ruben Borg (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Paul Fagan (University of Vienna)
Friday 12th & Saturday 13th October, 2012.
The Riverine Autumn School and the De
Selby Institiute presents The Flann O'Brien
Literary Festival in
Flann's hometown of Strabane. Includes a performance of Your Only Man by Annie Caulfield, readings from
O'Nolan's work by Brenda Liddy &
Aussie Bryson, and a roundtable discussion with Ian Sansom, Brian
Caraher, and Frank McNally, as well as literary walks, pub crawls, and
cabaret evenings.
The Parish Review 1.1 (Summer
2012)
It's finally here! IFOBS is now getting ready to circulate the first edition of its society e-journal The Parish Review 1.1 (Summer 2012), with news and (re)views from the world of Flann scholarship by noted Flanneurs, including David Wheatley, Ronan Crowley, Maebh Long, Erika Mihálycsa, Keith Hopper, and Frank McNally, as well as musician Ergo Phizmiz and artists Kevin Atherton and David O'Kane, whose beautiful cover artwork for the edition you can see to the left.
Anybody interested in signing up for membership, and receiving editions of The Parish Review, please email the founders: viennacis.anglistik@univie.ac.at
O'Dea's Your Man!
RTÉ have added an episode of one of Myles na gCopaleen's rarely seen RTE TV shows O'Dea's Your Man to their website player for their TV50 Classics series!
Starring the recently deceased David Kelly, O'Dea's Your Man is set in a Signal Box, in which Station Master Mr O (played by Jimmy O'Dea) discusses life with his younger assistant Ignatius (Kelly).
To view the episode, entitled 'False Colours', follow the link here. Enjoy!
The IFOBS Newsletter
& Conference announcements!
Coming soon
Coming soon
We have high ambitions for this inaugural issue, with numerous Flann O'Brien research resources, reports, books reviews, as well as articles by leading Flann scholars on the current state of Flann research, the latest and ongoing Flann projects, and, of course, the Society Awards. We will also reveal our very exciting plans for future IFOBS events and conferences!
Members will be hearing from us soon on all of these exciting plans for 2012 - make sure you're included!
Myles Day, 1 April 2012
Palace Bar, Dublin
Actor Val O'Donnell reading from
our man during the inaugural Myles Day
event.
Photograph: Alan Betson. Source: The Irish Times.
Photograph: Alan Betson. Source: The Irish Times.
After the great success of last
year's first annual Myles Day - a
day dedicated to our man with
Flann/Myles-related readings, performances, table
quizzes (!), and, of course, pints of plain - the folks behind that
shindig are back again for Myles Day
2012 in the Palace
Bar, Fleet St., Dublin on
1 April 2012 from 3p.m. As last year, the
whole event is free. According to the latest update from the organisers:
Currently at least 14 performers
are confirmed for the Palace Bar on
Sunday 1st
April. They will be covering old favourites – such as the Brother, and
Bores, and opinions on the Irish language – and new pieces (a Mylesian
tale told through the medium of tweeting, for example).
Admission is free, but those of you lucky enough to be there last year will know that the good seats go early. So don’t stroll in whistling with your hands in your pockets at 5:00 and expect a seat front & centre.
Admission is free, but those of you lucky enough to be there last year will know that the good seats go early. So don’t stroll in whistling with your hands in your pockets at 5:00 and expect a seat front & centre.
For the latest list of confirmed
speakers - including Val
O'Donnell - see the Myles Day homepage.
If you missed last year's event and
want to see what you missed, check
out these
pictures of Myles Day 2011 and read Frank
McNally's review!
David Kelly
(1929-2012)
On 13 February 2012 we lost
not only one of the great Irish comic actors, but one of the greatest
performers of all things Flann. From his performances in "O'Dea's Your
Man" (1963) - a series of fifteen-minute conversations between
Kelly
& Dublin actor/comedian Jimmy O'Dea,
scripted by Myles na gCopaleen for RTÉ - to his readings from Cruiskeen Lawn for
TV3's specially commissioned comedy show "The Third Policeman's
Ball" (Park Films, 2007), and lead performance in the film
version of
Myles na gCopaleen's short story "The Martyr's Crown" (Park Films,
2007), David was one of the leading performers in the Flann
O'Brien community (as well as beyant in Hollywood) - we doff our
fedoras to you sir.
Below you will find video links to some of David Kelly's best Flann readings & performances:
"Wanted:
Wife" (Cruiskeen Lawn)
"Why hens have two legs" (Cruiskeen Lawn)
"The past" (Cruiskeen Lawn)
The Martyr's Crown (Myles na cGopaleen short story)
"Why hens have two legs" (Cruiskeen Lawn)
"The past" (Cruiskeen Lawn)
The Martyr's Crown (Myles na cGopaleen short story)
Also, as a special not-quite-Flann-related bonus, here is David's wonderful performance in "Rough for Theatre I" by O'Brien's contemporary (and heir) Samuel Beckett.
Two new Journals dedicated to
Flann O'Brien
The start of 2012 sees the release
of
not one, but two journals dedicated entirely to our man.Gaelic literary journal special issue devoted entirely to all things Brian/Myles/Flann Ó Nualláin. With contributions by Michael Cronin, Breandán Ó Conaire, Ian Ó Caoimh, Gülden Hatipoğlu, agus a lán eile!
The Review of
Contemporary Fiction releases its Fall 2011 issue
Flann O'Brien: Centenary Essays, edited by Neil Murphy and Keith
Hopper. Contributors include Aidan Higgins, Thierry Robin, Jennika
Baines, Flore Coulouma, Joseph Brooker,
Val Nolan, Amy Nejezchleb, Maciej Ruczaj,& many more!
BBC Radio 4 Flann O'Brien Special
To celebrate our man's birthday, BBC Radio will broadcast the special
"The Man with Many Names" on
Tuesday 4 October 2011, at 11:30 a.m. (GMT)
To mark the centenary of O'Nolan's birth, Peter Day -
a longtime Flann fan - travels to Dublin in search
of the reality behind the multiple personas, and meets those who drank
with him, supped with him at the family dinner table and have made
careers out of studying him...
For more details see the press release here.
The Flann O'Brien Statue Campaign
David
O'Kane's
proposal for a monument to Flann O'Brien.
The shutters carry an extract from a Myles na gCopaleen column. Source: The Irish Times.
The shutters carry an extract from a Myles na gCopaleen column. Source: The Irish Times.
Frank McNally from the Irish Times is leading a
campaign to get a
proposed statue to commemorate Flann
in Dublin. Sharpen your pencils,
it seems to us that a letters campaign to the editor of the Irish
Times would be in-keeping with the Mylesian spirit...
Frank McNally - Thursday, September 22, 2011 (An Irishman's Diary)
Frank McNally - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 (An Irishman's Diary)
It seems to us that they might even follow the advice of the man himself:
"How well the crowd in this town would never think of
forming a M. na gC.
Society! It'd be such a . . . a . . . . fine tribute to an old man! And
with a statue in College Green my back turned to Trinity! (I still may
have the figure to wear a stone beard and stone frock coat)"
- Cruiskeen Lawn, December 1944.
To join the campaign you can write to the letters page
of the irish
Times at lettersed@irishtimes.com.
Flann
O'Brien Centenary Weekend, Trinity Provisional
Programme.
UPDATE! Advance booking is now available here! All events are free.
The next big event on the Flann
calendar is the Flann O'Brien
Centenary Conference, to take place in
Trinity College Dublin from 14-16 October 2011,
and the organisers have announced
the
provisional programme here!
Keynote speakers for the conference event include Fintan O'Toole (Irish
Times), Keith Hopper
(Oxford), Anthony Cronin, Louis de Paor (NUIG), & Joseph Brooker
(Birkbeck). On Sunday 16 October there will be a programme of public
talks and performances, including The
Science of Flann O'Brien, Eamon
Morrissey, Jocelyn Clarke,
&
Arthur Riordan.
All events over the weekend are open and free to the
public, and will
take place will take place in the
Long Room Hub, Trinity College (Neill/ Hoey Lecture Theatre).
For more details, you can follow the
event's Facebook page
here.
Flann O'Brien Conference - Call for
Papers
University of New
South
Wales - 11 November, 2011
The John Hume Institute for Global
Irish Studies and the Centre for
Modernism Studies in Australia at UNSW have announced a conference on
Flann O'Brien and Modernism to take place at The University of New
South Wales Sydney, Australia, on November 11, 2011, and have issued a
Call for Papers.
According to the CFP:
Flann O’Brien has often been held as a
‘post-modern’ novelist, whose
ludic
and parodic fictions played creative havoc with traditional notions of
authority and authorship. However in recent years the category of
post-modernism has been in decline, supplanted by the rise of the ‘New
Modernism’. This has unleashed a radical rethinking of how we define
and ‘periodise’ the modern. (...) this conference uses the occasion of
Flann O’Brien’s centenary to reanalyse his major works in response to
these developments.
For more details on proposed paper topics and means of submission (deadline September 16), see their homepage, or contact the organisers on irish@unsw.edu.au.
Please send all suggestions for news
stories and info on Flann event to
viennacis.anglistik@univie.ac.at