THE IRISH literary calendar acquired a new holiday yesterday when an event to honour writer Brian O’Nolan – better known as Flann O’Brien and Myles na Gopaleen – drew a capacity attendance to its main venue: the back room of a Dublin pub.
There was standing room only in the Palace bar, at least for the many who did not get in early enough to occupy the few available seats. So the inaugural “Mylesday” was deemed an instant success. In fact the organisers were quick to remind us that the first Bloomsday – the event Mylesday deliberately echoes – was attended by only five people, including O’Nolan himself.
Mylesday was the brainchild of engineer John Clarke, who had been thinking about it for years “until I went with a friend to a rugby match a month ago and we got talking about it and I woke up next day organising a festival”.
He was motivated partly by disappointment that “most people under the age of 35” seemed never to have heard of Myles, and partly by what he thinks is the excess attention given to Joyce.
Introducing the event, he noted that the original Bloomsday appeared to have been a pretext for those involved to spend the day drinking. Then, surveying the packed attendance and the pints arrayed before them, he added: "How things have changed." Drinking apart, the afternoon comprised readings by invited guests and volunteers, including actors Val O'Donnell and Jack Lynch and writers Carol Taaffe and Ed O'Loughlin. Most chose extracts from O'Nolan's long-running Irish Timescolumn, Cruiskeen Lawn, although O'Donnell's readings also included an extract from the 1943 play Faustus Kelly,which features a diatribe about Irish banks.
Non-reading guests included O’Nolan’s only surviving sibling, Micheal Ó Nualláin, who was in time to hear a piece about one of Cruiskeen Lawn’s many stock characters, “the brother”.
It was hard to say whether the subject of the celebrations was present in spirit. Even when present physically, O’Nolan is remembered as someone who always stayed on the edge of the company, speaking little and barely visible.
Brendan Behan said of him: "You had to look twice to see if he was there at all." If he was there yesterday, being a stickler for correct usage, he will have frowned at the commemorative T-shirts worn by the chief organisers. These quoted a verse from his deliberately bad poem about the pint of plain, The Workman's Friend. But instead of "in time of trouble and lousy strife", they had "lonely strife". A chastened Clarke blamed the "spell-checker".
Mylesday commemorates O’Nolan’s death which, with tragicomic timing, occurred on April 1st, 1966. But it is only the first of a series of events that will mark this, his centenary year, culminating with conferences in UCD and Trinity College, planned to coincide with his 100th birthday in October.
