Happy 60th anniversary
He was a fine pancake
@flannobriensoc.bsky.social
@frankie49.bsky.social

#CapeCod #Poetry #Painting

When Money’s tight and is hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt--
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

Flann O'Brien

🎨 Martin Driscoll (1939-2011)

A Flann O'Brien thread about pancakes.

“The Workman’s Friend” — Flann O’Brien (Brian O’Nolan)

When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night -
A pint of plain is your only man.

☘️ ¡Feliz Día de San Patricio!

Hoy os recomendamos uno de los libros más divertidos de la literatura irlandesa: «La boca pobre», de Flann O’Brien.

La novela fue escrita en gaélico y la traducción es de nuestro querido Antonio Rivero Taravillo

#diadesanpatricio
#sanpatrickday

“A good question is very hard to answer. The better the question the harder the answer. There is no answer at all to a very good question.”
- Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds

“Do you know what I am going to tell you, he said with his wry mouth, a pint of plain is your only man.”

(Flann O’Brien “At Swim-Two-Birds”)

🎨 Jim MacDonald

A Pint of Plain - The Dubliners YouTube video by stecaswell

Tis the season

youtu.be/BYudr9FAGOA?...

Next in the playlist for music to read Flann O'Brien by is Isa Gordon's 8Men. Mixing electronica and folk, Gordon's album is also influenced by her teenage listening to indie, emo, the glory of Bowie and even some classical music. Her album is inspired by Flann O’Brien’s novel The Poor Mouth.

7 Darkly Surreal Irish Books to Read This St. Patrick's Day - Electric Literature These Irish authors use wry humor to navigate desperate times

'I read Flann O’Brien’s The Poor Mouth [...] & found my first true love in Irish literature. The characters get woefully, superlatively mistreated by the Irish countryside, by the state, each other, by the endless rain and the diabolical Sea Cat—all [...] with an absurdist, roguish surrealism'

As Flann O'Brien said of Joyce, "That poor writer's end was hastened by that same intrusive apostrophe."

(Though not referring to this Penguin cover in particular)

The seminal account of a lost 1950's bohemian Dublin in a handsome new edition from @lilliputpress.bsky.social & a new introduction from Joseph O'Connor. Both melancholy and sharp, portraits of Behan, Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien .
Dead as Doornails - Anthony Cronin. thebookshop.ie/anthony-cron...

[Excerpt from a satirical Flann O'Brien piece on "book-handling", a "new service, which enables ignorant people who want to be suspected of reading books to have their books handled and mauled in a manner that will give the impression that their owner is very devoted to them."] 'Le Traitement Superbe'. Every volume to be well and truly handled, first by a qualified handler and subsequently by a master-handler who shall have to his credit not less than 550 handling hours; suitable passages in not less than fifty per cent of the books to be underlined in good-quality red ink and an appropriate phrase from the following list inserted in the margin, viz: Rubbish! Yes, indeed! How true, how true! I don't agree at all. Why? Yes, but cf. Homer, Od., iii, 151. Well, well, well. Quite, but Boussuet in his Discours sur l'histoire Universelle has already established the same point and given much more forceful explanations. Nonsense, nonsense! A point well taken! But why in heaven's name? I remember poor Joyce saying the very same thing to me.

Yeah, sure, new books are great, but do you ever read old books? Have you ever read 'The Third Policeman' by Flann O’Brien?

Yeah, sure, new books are great, but do you ever read old books?

Have you ever read 'The Third Policeman' by Flann O’Brien?

It's a brilliantly absurd story of a village police force and a brief, unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle.

drbslibrary.com/thirdpoliceman

The brother is always on the ball

13. Joseph LaBine: Flann O'Brien and Radio A special edition of the Radio Myles podcast dedicated to Joe and Toby's special edition of the Parish Review about Flann O'Brien and the radio.

Now, for your listening pleasure, the latest instalment of the podcast Radio Myles. Toby Harris and Joseph LaBine provide fascinating context to mid-century Irish radio and their excellent special issue of the Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies on O’Brien and the Radio. Get your headphones ready!

"The first beginnings of wisdom," he said, "is to ask questions but never to answer any." Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

Post a book quote that you love. #booksky #bookchallenge #writers #authors #readers #booklovers

BBC Radio 4 - A Good Read, Martin Edwards and Tom Shakespeare The crime writer and the sociologist talk about books they love with Harriett Gilbert.

#Books A Good Read
Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie, chosen by crime writer @martinedwardsbooks.bsky.social
At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien, chosen by @tomshakespeare.bsky.social
Thursday Night Widows by Claudia Pineiro, chosen by @harriettsg.bsky.social
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

My other favourite wild reading book is The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien. Now I’m wondering if it was never published in his lifetime partly because of worries about its digressive, footnotey anti-structure.
His At Swim-Two-Birds was at least as wild but in yet another way. Genius

"Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill!" —Flann O'Brien, after reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Garda who lent bike to man to receive over €250k damages A garda detective who was suspended for more than three years for giving a man a loan of a bicycle during the Covid-19 pandemic is to receive over €250,000 in damages.

Flann O'Brien reports:

www.rte.ie/news/courts/...

CFP for Transformations: Irish Literature and Social Change Call for Proposals for a new edited collection on Transformations: Irish Literature and Social Change The early decades of Irish independence are now remembered as a time of repression and socioeconom...

Call for Proposals for a new edited collection on 'Transformations: Irish Literature and Social Change’: the artistic works which have reflected and even helped to activate what could be described as a revolution in the Irish experience of class, disability, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

Get your tickets for ATHRAITHEOIR at the Smock Alley Theatre on 26 February.

Strongly influenced by Flann O'Brien, ATHRAITHEOIR bends Buile Shuibhne (The Madness of Sweeney) into a multidisciplinary performance of oration, movement and Irish literary echo.

Review of <em>Myles na gCopaleen agus Flann O’Brien: An Saol Bocht </em>by Brian Ó Conchubhair (Leabhar Breac, 2025) Myles na gCopaleen agus Flann O’Brien: An Saol Bocht is the first book-length biography of Flann O'Brien in over 30 years. Brian Ó Conchubhair has crafted a rigourously researched narrative that adds ...

Now published in the Journal of Flann O'Brien Studies, Jonathan O'Neill's review of Brian Ó Conchubhair's award-winning biography 'Myles na gCopaleen agus Flann O’Brien: An Saol Bocht'. #speirgorm

A man against whom public transport held a clear grudge

Brian knew a thing or two about road crashes - he was in six or seven of them. Including being hit by a bus, which adds colour to the Brother's farewell: Begob, there's me bus.
@flannobriensoc.bsky.social
@maebhlong.bsky.social

Flann O'Brien was also known as the Count O'Blather, George Knowall, Peter the Painter , Brother Barnabus, John James Doe , Winnie Wedge, An Broc, and most famously as  Myles na gCopaleen. His Real Name was Brian O'Nuallain (Gaelic spelling)

The #MylesnaGopaleen Catechism of Cliche

Is man ever hurt in a motor crash?
No. He sustains an injury.
Does such a man ever die from his injuries?
No. He succumbs to them.
...
Is he dead when he gets to the hospital?
No, he is not dead. Life is found to be extinct...

cbladey.com/irish/HomePa...

The Poor Mouth, Flann O'Brien

The Poor Mouth, Flann O'Brien

Delicious Irish language satire as An Béal Bocht, the English translation gives the feeling of bursting at the seams of the language. A rec from @mattrshelton.bsky.social

8/

Found by chance a strange old book that I found quite enjoyable: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.
Recommended if you like it weird.
DO NOT read a plot summary because major spoiler.

Communiqué from the Desk of Effy:

There is a shortage of references to the works of Flann O'Brien lately. I know that with the drink trade on its last legs and the land running fallow for the want of artificial manures, things are difficult, but-