Flann O'Brien Part II

Flann O’Brien was one of the few serious writers who lived in Ireland, but he made his living partly through journalism and his regular job in the Civil Service. (In fact he rarely went away from his native land even on holiday). He was an odd mixture of conformism and cynical rebellion. He was too intelligent to believe that the Gaels were a superior people. He was only too well aware of the country’s poverty and the fact that without the safety valve of emigration, the state would struggle to keep going. He himself was a fluent Irish speaker, but knew that the politicians, who claimed to be devoted to the Irish language, often only knew a few words. It was a burden on schoolchildren who had to learn it, even though it was of no practical use to them. His newspaper column was often mocking politicians and public servants. He liked to attack inefficiency, hypocrisy and corruption. However, in general he was apolitical and conservative in attitude, feeling that human nature was irredeemably flawed and not expecting much of it. He seemed to accept the isolationist narrow attitudes of many Irish people of the time when he might have been expected to rebel against them. He was always a heavy drinker, falling into full blown alcoholism. This affected his ability to hold down his civil service post. It may be one reason why he wrote less as he grew older and his work was less than successful. He retired early from the service, due to increasingly poor health. He had had arguments with the Service bosses about his journalism. Having only a small pension, and a wife to support, he had to become a full time writer. However he was having more trouble with producing newspaper columns. He went on writing fiction, but his health problems and his drinking slowed him down. He had been committed to financially supporting his widowed mother and his siblings for many years. As his brothers and sisters grew up and were off his hands, he finally reached a point where he was free to marry. He married Evelyn McDonnell, a typist in the Civil service. The marriage seemed happy. However his alcoholism made him a difficult husband at times. Also, like many men in Ireland at the time, he was inexperienced with women, living mostly in male bachelor company, as a young man. He grew up with a very distant father, who was affectionate but far from “hands on”, and he and his brothers were initially educated at home. Flann’s father Michael O’Nolan was a highly intelligent man and an Irish speaker, and they were well taught.  However they were sent to school and found that they were teased and bullied for being different, a small united group of brothers who clung together. Also discipline at the Christian Brothers' schools and other religious schools was harsh. In his writing, he attacked the viciously cruel attitude of many of the religious teachers who took out their sadistic impulses on their pupils. Possibly the sudden change from learning at home, with a sympathetic family around him, to the harsh atmosphere of a school had a bad effect on him mentally. Unlike James Joyce, who rejected the narrowness of Ireland in the last years before independence, O’Brien seems to have been unwilling to rebel. It may have been hard for O’Brien to criticise the culture of his well loved father. Michael O’Nolan, O’Brien’s father was a passionate supporter of Irish independence and of the Catholic Church and the Gaelic Language Flann criticised the more nonsensical aspects of the language revival, but he was a fluent Irish speaker himself, and was a Catholic... Like many Irishmen of the time, he had little contact with women, and married late. He was somewhat misogynistic, and seems to have had almost no women friends, which wasn’t uncommon at the time. His life was stressful, and his dependence on alcohol was the only way he could relieve it. After leaving the Civil Service, he was in and out of hospital trying to dry out, or to recover from illnesses. He perhaps had indeed peaked too early with At Swim Two Birds, and none of his other novels had been as good… He felt that he had dissipated his talent in journalism and had not been able to concentrate on his creative work. Had the war not happened, he might have made more money and had greater success with the first book and been able to work his way towards becoming a full time writer and producing more and better books. His newspaper columns were very funny and he wrote a couple of comic poems which have become famous. They are written by "Jem Casey, the People's Poet"... and one of them is called "A pint of Plain is your only man." It is a tribute to Guinness. It begins "When things go wrong and will not go right, Though you do the best you can When life seems black as the hour of night, A Pint of Plain is your Only Man." His marriage seems to have been reasonably happy, though little is known about it, but it is hard to say if marital problems played a part in pushing him to drink. By the 1960’s, his alcoholism was a serious problem and he developed cancer, possibly caused by drinking and smoking heavily. He died, on the first of April 1966..

Hoyt Axton

Hoyt Axton was born in Oklahoma in 1938, to a father who was an officer in the American Navy, and a mother (Mae Axton) who was famous for writing the Elvis Presley hit, Heartbreak Hotel. (She also introduced Elvis to Col Tom Parker). Hoyt was brought up in Florida. He was in the American Navy for a time and then in the early 60s, he started out singing folk songs, in San Francisco. The Folk revival in the 1960s has been portrayed in the film Inside Llewyn Davis. Axton had a warm personality and a deep and sweet country voice, and he started to act in movies and TV, as well as singing. He had a part in Bonanza, and many other TV shows. He wrote many songs that were made famous by other singers, but one of his best is the well-known “Della and the Dealer”. He struggled with cocaine addiction for many years, but had a stroke and died. He was only 61. I remember Hoyt particularly in The Dukes of Hazzard, where he annoys Boss Hogg with the song he sings, when caught in Roscoe’s Speed Trap. The song he chooses is called “I’m the cop in a little bitty Southern town, and I don't get too much pay”, about a corrupt sheriff. Boss thinks it is a dig at him.

Flann O'Brien and his life part I

Flann O’Brien’s novels were some of my favourites in my 20s, and later, my partner got into them too. He hadn’t heard of him before but when he did read a few - he felt that there was some influence on the British writer Robert Rankin. (Given that many of Rankin’s novels have bizarre events and a pub somewhere in them!). We loved to “swap information” on writers and TV programmes we liked. He got me to watch Morse; I got him to like O’Brien. I recently re-read “An Beal Bocht” which is one of Flann O’Brien’s funniest works… and I have been reading a biography of him, by Anthony Cronin, a fellow writer. Because he was a very private man, Cronin found it hard to analyse him. He was certainly an interesting character... According to some critics, he “peaked too early” as a novelist and never wrote anything again to equal his first book, “At Swim Two Birds”. This is a “meta fiction” which derives much of its humour from mocking the conventions of fiction. The “hero” Dermot Trellis, is a student as Flann was – at University College Dublin. Trellis spends a lot of his time in bed, wasting time and refusing to study – and drinking. James Joyce attended the same university, and his hero Stephen, is also a student at UCD… Trellis is writing a novel but his characters rebel against him. They write novels too, and attempt to kill him off. O’Brien admired Joyce but was somewhat hostile to him because of his pretentiousness... He also felt that his own work was sometimes seen as “inferior Joyce”. “At Swim Two Birds” later attracted a lot of critical attention, but it was published at the beginning of World War II and suffered from that. Paper shortages meant that newspapers were smaller and had less space to bestow on literary criticism. There was a lot going on in the world and a peculiar off beat novel like O’Brien’s was likely to fall by the wayside. In addition, southern Ireland had adopted a position of neutrality in WWII and this greatly affected the Irish people. In fact, during the first 40 years of independence, Ireland – having severed its connexion with the British Empire - had developed a condition of “being isolated from the rest of the world”, and indeed it seemed that they wanted to be isolated. This involved emphasising that the new “Free State” (and the Republic as it became later) was purer, more religious and moral, more “Catholic” than the rest of the world, particularly England. It also involved keeping the world at bay and refusing to get mixed up in its affairs. When World War II broke out, the Irish nation refused to get involved in it, because they did not want to support England and in fact, some sympathised with Nazi Germany. But the country was desperately poor, and only survived by keeping the population small. People emigrated, because there were no jobs. The narrow economy simply could not support the people who were there. In addition, the restrictive, puritanical conformism of the culture stifled people. Those who were willing to be open to the world, or who didn’t accept the prevailing orthodoxy, took the emigrant ship and took their “non conformity” elsewhere. Literature was one of the casualties resulting from this attitude. Most serious Irish writers had at least one of their works “banned” by the Censorship Board; most of them lived abroad part of the time because in any case, such a small impoverished and narrow community couldn’t support writers.

Helen Dore Boylston

Helen was born in 1894 in New Hampshire and died, after several years of ill health in 1984, at a nursing home in New England. She was the daughter of Joseph and Fannie Dore Boylston. She was a lively girl and her nickname was "Troub" - short for Trouble. She trained as a nurse, having considered being a doctor like her father. She studied at the famous Massachusetts General hospital in Boston. After her training, she joined a medical unit which supported the British army, and went to Europe.. She loved the work, more so than hospital work. Then she spent some time, when the war was over, working with the Red Cross in Poland. She found the work was done in an isolated fashion. She missed the companionship of war work. She returned to Boston and Massachusetts General, where she taught anaesthesia, (an interest she gave to one of her characters, Connie). She had met Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, of “Little House on the Prairie” fame. Rose was working in the literary and newspaper world and she read Helen’s war diary and had it published. In the 1920s, she returned to Europe and the Red Cross again, for a few years. She began to write more, covering the different sorts of nursing that she had experienced. In 1926, she and Rose Wilder travelled to Albania in an old car and lived there for a time, both of them writing. She loved adventure and her work and wondered if had it not been for the War, she would have settled for the feminine path of getting married and giving up her nursing. But her wartime service had created an appetite for adventure. She felt she could not give it up, to settle into conventional marriage and home life. I haven’t been able to find a biography of Helen Boylston but I have loved her “Sue” books from childhood. I’d love also to know more about her than the couple of internet articles that I’ve traced. After Albania, she returned to America with Rose, and they shared a house for a time. Helen had inherited some money and wanted to devote herself to writing. Rose was also a writer who edited her mother’s tales of life on the prairie. She was a Libertarian thinker and a political journalist. Helen had been partly financially independent, but she lost money in the Crash. She had to return to nursing for a time. Then in the 1930s, she began her series of “young adult” nursing novels about “Sue Barton". They were a hit... very popular with girls who were interested in a nursing career. At the time, few women became doctors but nursing had a shorter training, and many girls were keen on the idea. The idea of being “angels” looking after the sick, was very popular among young girls, but Helen’s novels were realistic about nursing and about growing up (within the limits of the young adult fiction genre). Sue is not an ambitious career girl… yet she wants to work, for a few years once she qualifies as a nurse. So she insists on going to New York to nurse in the Henry Street settlement, among the poor. She wants to “help her husband” in his work when he plans to become a country doctor. She works with him as hospital superintendent in his new country hospital for the first three years of her marriage but gives up for some years, to have children. Bill Barry, her husband, becomes ill, and has to go to a Sanatorium. Sue returns to work as a staff nurse. For the time, she is a good role model for women wanting to go on working after marriage. She gives up her staff nurse job again, when Bill recovers... Still she often helps out as a substitute district nurse, and it seems likely that (like Nurse Pat Glennon in the last book) she will return to work when her children are older. Boylston also wrote a series of “Girls career novels” about acting, when she had gotten Sue “married off and having a baby”... For this series, she created Carol Page, a budding actress. She got information about acting training from a friend, Eve Le Gallienne. Later she returned to the Barton series and wrote her two last Sue novels, Neighbourhood Nurse and Staff Nurse”. I have only managed to find one of the Carol novels, and it’s not as much fun somehow as the Barton ones. However it is enjoyable. I’d love to find out more about Helen Boylston. She never married and when she died, she had no known relatives and was a very old sick lady. She had had a wonderful life and created a very popular and well loved heroine in Sue.

Rough Music available on Amazon

A story set in the 1970s about a country rock band... and its 2 lead singers...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rough-Music-Nadine-Sutton-ebook/dp/B01AEQS0G0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496471341&sr=8-1&keywords=rough+music+nadine+sutton

Waylon Jennings

Waylon Jennings was born in Texas in 1937, to a poor farmer’s family. His father moved to Littlefield Texas, when he was a child. There, he set up a general store. Waylon was never a great student; he loved music and could play guitar well, at the age of 10. Aged 16, he left school. He worked for a time at temporary jobs, including his father’s store. He began a career as a DJ in a small station in Lubbock, Texas. He liked to play artists like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, as well as country, and as a result he lost his job at one time. Waylon had an exceptional strong deep voice, a little like Johnny Cash, but at first he seemed content to play other singers’ music. But in 1958/9 he was taken on by Buddy Holly, who was then an up and coming rock and roll artist. Buddy was on a winter tour, playing at gigs, in the cold month of January 1959. Jennings gave up his seat on the plane to one of the other musicians, who had the flu. He agreed to travel on Buddy’s tour bus, though the heating was broken. The two men teased each other, Buddy saying “I hope your old bus freezes up” and Waylon joking back with “I hope your old plane crashes”. That joke was to haunt Jennings, because Holly’s plane did crash, killing everyone on board. Waylon returned to singing with his band, the Waylors but he had relatively little success, until talented singer Bobby Bare persuaded Chet Atkins to listen to him. During the 1960s and 70s, Waylon did battle with the Nashville establishment. He was a womaniser and had frequent bouts of drug abuse. He began to get creative control over his work in the early 70s, and to perform “country outlaw” music. He was good friends with Johnny Cash at one stage and they shared an apartment, both of them using drugs. In later years, both men struggled to get clear of their addictions and to control their musical careers. Their friendship grew closer in the 80s… they both acted as well as sang. Waylon married Jessie Colter who was his last wife. Johnny had married June Carter. Waylon had a long stint as the narrator of the comedy “southern” show, Dukes of Hazzard and made one appearance as himself, singing in the show. He and Johnny both appeared in a remake of the John Wayne Movie, Stagecoach. The cast also included Willie Nelson and other country singers. John Schneider, who had played Bo Duke in Dukes of Hazzard, and who was trying to start a country singing career, also was in the TV film. Waylon also appeared in Married With Children. From the Stagecoach film and other appearances, was formed the “super group”, the Highwaymen... consisting of 4 country superstars who were getting a bit older and were less popular in the charts. But they had enormous success as a group, touring, and performing new and old songs together, and appealing to older country audiences all over the world. They were Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon. Later still, in the 1990s, Waylon started to work with the “Old Dogs”, another super group of Nashville singers who were older. This group consisted of Jerry Reed, Bobby Bare, Mel Tillis and Waylon. Shel Silverstein wrote several comedic songs for them, about the funny side of getting older. Waylon’s talent was awe inspiring, as a guitarist and a singer. He had great power and depth and his rough deep voice was admired. He was a hard working performer, in spite of his frequent bouts of abusing drugs, including cocaine. He made a heroic effort, in the 80s to get off the cocaine, so as to save his marriage to Jessie Coulter and to stay in good health. He wanted to spend more time with his son Shooter. However he was a heavy smoker and over ate, developing diabetes, in his later years. His health got worse, and he had to have heart surgery and later on, an operation to improve the circulation in his legs. By 2000, due to pain issues, he quit touring. He died in early 2002, of diabetes complications. He had spoken on the phone to Johnny Cash, his old friend, shortly before his death. Waylon’s influence on “outlaw country” artists lives on. I've always been a huge Cash fan, but I sometimes think that Waylon's voice was at least as good and maybe a bit better. I managed to see Johnny shortly before he had to give up foreign tours, but I never saw Waylon live. I wish I had -.

Dinah Mulock Craik Novelist

Dinah Maria Craik (Nee Mulock) was a well-known and prolific author in the nineteenth century, who made a good living with her writing. As the Victorian age progressed, writing became a respectable career for women. It could be done at home. It did not require much formal education. Dinah was born in Stoke on Trent, and her father was a minister of a non-conformist congregation. He was unstable and difficult and the family were not well off. Born in 1826, she moved to London around the age of 20, knowing she would have to make her own way in the world. She was friendly with Charles Mudie who founded the "Mudies’ Circulating Library" which was a very successful business. It had great influence on the reading habits of the Victorian public. Books were expensive; so many middle class people got them out of a library, borrowing them a volume at a time and paying a small subscription. Mudie only took books which were geared towards the respectable middle classes, so immorality and “risk taking” were weeded out of the reading matter he supplied. Dinah wrote short stories for the young and then began to produce 3 volume conventional novels. She did not have any problem with the restrictions of publishing novels that fit with the Victorian moral conventions. She was independent as a woman and took pride in her ability to make her own living rather than needing a man to keep her. Other novelists such as Mary Braddon, or George Eliot, who had “improper” private lives, or who wanted to write more serious novels which did not always abide by the strict rules of Victorian fiction, had more problems. Eliot complained about the “crowd pleasing” types of novels that women wrote, such as the “silver fork” ones which were a bit like Georgette Heyer - in that they were set in High Society...and were in Eliot’s view “silly”. She also complained about the sensation novels which became best sellers. Another novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell, who was happily married, naturally “proper” and religious had some difficulties with the style of the popular novels of the time, such as very long books. She didn't really like having to produce exciting events and cliffhangers. Dinah Craik wrote several works in her first 10 years in London. She had always felt that it was wrong to educate girls to do nothing but marry, when it was often difficult for a girl of the upper or middle classes to find a husband. In 1857 she wrote the massive best seller that made her famous “John Halifax Gentleman”. It was a very Victorian tale of a young boy from a poor background who has a lucky break, being taken in by a well to do Quaker. He was given a start in his business. (The tradesman’s son Phineas is an invalid and unable to work.). Phineas feels sorry for John –and persuades his father to help him. John proves that although he is not from a rich or grand background he is a natural “gentleman” and he soon take advantage of being given a job by old Abel Fletcher. In the Samuel Smiles tradition, he works his way up, displays a talent for mechanics and business, is rigidly honest, and eventually takes runs the place. It was a novel that came along “just at the right time” for making a young businessman a hero. The middle classes were on the rise, gradually becoming leaders in their communities and the wealthiest people in the country as a whole. Their political and social influence was now almost equal with that of the landed upper classes. Previously novel heroes had generally been “Gentlemen” of independent wealth or in the “genteel professions” i.e. owning land, being in the military or the law or clergy. Now a man with his own business, who has worked his way up from poverty, was the hero and it appealed to the public. Craik’s novel wasn’t that popular with critics, and most readers nowadays would agree that John is a tiresome “ultra-good” hero. He has no real faults. He does not drink, gamble or womanise and he doesn’t even waste time!! He is always worthily busy, working to improve his situation. He falls in love with a well-bred heiress but does not marry her till he is doing well financially. He has disputes over business and social issues, with upper class neighbours but always wins. His problems are pretty much solved before they have begun. The upper classes are generally portrayed as selfish, vicious, weak and “on their way out”. So it is hardly surprising that the novel was popular with middle class readers. John is good to his workers. Although he has come up from the poorer classes, they don’t resent his being successful. He is plainly a “natural gentleman” and bound to do well and become rich and powerful. Craik made good money from this and other novels though her later novels gradually become more didactic and less successful, though they still sold well. However her life in general was a happy one. In her 30s, having been contentedly single, she fell in love with George Lillie Craik, a young man several years her junior who was working in publishing. Craik lost a leg in a train accident and she nursed him, marrying him in 1865. She continued to write and to help with his work, as he became a partner in the famous publishing firm of Macmillan’s. But soon after their marriage she adopted a foundling child, a little girl whom she named Dorothy. Her adoptive daughter and her husband were a source of great happiness to her. They lived in Bromley, near London, and her busy happy life went on for several years till she died of heart failure at the age of 61 during preparations for her daughter’s wedding.