Assembling Flann O'Brien [Paperback]

Flann O'Brien - also known as Brian O'Nolan or Myles na gCopaleen - is now widely recognised as one of the foremost of Ireland's modern authors.Assembling Flann O'Brienexplores the author's innovative and experimental work by reading him in relation to some of the 20th century's most important theorists, including Derrida, Agamben, Freud, Lacan and ??i??ek.

Assembling Flann O'Brienoffers a detailed study of O'Brien's five major novels ??? includingAt Swim-Two-BirdsandThe Third Policeman??? as well as his plays, short stories, journalistic output and unpublished archival material. The book presents new theoretical perspectives on his works, exploring his compelling engagements with questions of the proper name, the archive, law, and desire, and the problems of identity, language, sexuality and censorship which acutely troubled Ireland's new state. Combining a wide range of contemporary theory with a sensitivity to the cultural and political context in which the author wrote, Maebh Long opens up entirely new aspects of Flann O'Brien's writings, and explores the ingenious and the problematic within his oeuvre.

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Fragments of Palimpsests
2. Driven to Repeat
3. Ireland on Trial
4. A Hard Life for Women
5. Archival Fantasies

Notes
Bibliography
Index

???Flann O'Brien was one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific Brian O'Nolan (1911-66). In this superlative scholarly study, Long (Univ. of the South Pacific, Fiji Islands) offers what is surely the best analysis presently available of Ireland's most significant postmodernist writer. In five chapters, arranged topically across several genres, readers will gain rich insight into O'Nolan's mindset. But Long does more, providing a vibrant intellectual construct for reading O'Nolan's work by way of Derrida, Agamben, Freud, Lucan, and Zizek. Copious in its analysis, substantial in its notls$