There was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it exhibition of works by Miceal O Nuallain on in my home town recently. O Nuallain is of course the younger brother of Irish novelist Flann O’Brien and the exhibition, Memorabilia of Myles Na Gopaleen, was a tribute to the great humorist. Some of the best works in the show included a pastel drawing of O’Brien’s typewriter (an Underwood) and a watercolour of the hallway of 4 Avoca Terrace, Blackrock, as it was in 1948 and where O’Brien wrote some of his most-famous works—At Swim-Two-Brids and The Third Policeman, and as Myles na Gopaleen An B éal Bocht (The Poor Mouth) and his Cruiskeen Lawn column which ran in the Irish Times. A magnificent oil of Flann O’Brien [pictured, though my camera phone doesn’t do it justice], the only known portrait of O’Brien at work, dominated Memorabilia, as did a portrait of Brendan Behan, a drinking buddy of O’Brien’s. Behan nudged his way into the exhibition more than once, also portrayed alongside Paddy Kavanagh and Maurice Walsh in a section of portraits on O’Brien’s friends; the good, the bad and the ugly of Irish Literature, if you like.
The highlight of Memorabilia for me, though, had to be the fourteen illustrations from Cruiskeen Lawn, drawn by O Nuallain under his pseudonym of “Kilroy” (what is it about these boys and their aliases?) with accompanying text by O’Brien, colourful illustrative explosions bringing out the best of Myles. In the catalogue O Nuallain explains this series:
“In the 1950s Brian stated that he was going to Tory Island to write a book and asked me to accompany him to illustrate it. To show him what I could do, I made fourteen illustrations using coloured inks in pen, brush and wash. At this point I received a large commission and could not go to Tory. Brian did not go either but he wrote the book which he titled The Hard Life and got his friend Sean O’Sullivan to illustrate it.”
Miceal O Nuallain had been planning first a biography, then a book of anecdotes on Flann O’Brien, but both, as far as I’m aware, have failed to materialise. Still, Memorabilia of Myles Na Gopaleen is a fitting enough tribute to “The Brother”, and as Anthony Burgess said, “If we don’t cherish the work of Flann O’Brien we are stupid fools who don’t deserve to have great men. Flann O’Brien is a very great man.”
