JANUARY 13th, 1939:THERE IS nothing like an outbreak of verbal fisticuffs between writers and critics to raise the level of abuse. A play by Frank O'Connor in the Abbey Theatre in 1939 got bad reviews from critics such as David Sears. O'Connor's fellow writer, Seán Ó Faoláin, came to his defence while one Flann O'Brien, then the unknown pseudonym of Brian O'Nolan, the future Myles na gCopaleen, stoked the dispute by challenging Ó Faoláin to actual fisticuffs.
Sir, – As Sidney Smith said about controversies, the trouble about them is that they are like underclothes before the invention of buttons – you can’t keep them up. I could keep up a discussion for ever with Mr Frank O’Connor or Mr FR Higgins, who speak the language of cultivated men. But when David Sears starts doing the “I’m only a plain guy!” sort of thing, all that can be said to him is what the New Yorker said to Ernest Hemingway, “Davie, lad, come out from behind the hair on your chest!” Mr Sears can talk quite intelligently when he wants to: this time he evidently prefers to go all Uriah Heep, and we get what must be his new signature tune: –
I’m only a plain reporter.
I’m only a simple guy
I’d wear my hair much shorter
If my brow got any more high.
Let him not chide me for not being ’umble. I assure him I am the most humble of men with my equals, and I suddenly remember that when Who’s Who (no doubt in amazement?) asked me where I got my education, I said: “In conversation with my betters.” But, to adapt a poet who was put in his place by the mugwump critics of his day, Johnny Keats:
Who would got to The Irish
Times
To chatter with dankhaired
critics,
When he might go where the
daisies blow
And there ain’t no mental
rickets.
As for the gentleman with the appropriately anachronistic pseudonym, like a Father Christmas whiskers on an Easter egg, does he (I sincerely hope not, for I would not hurt his feelings) expect me to reply to him? Am I an ARP decontaminator? I recommend the Man in the Gaelic mask to note that, when ever he feels inclined to address his spleen to me, if he would breathe deeply through his nose it would keep his mouth shut.
To what levels do we descend in our refined newspapers! Never mind – there is a monument beside the Scotch House [on Burgh Quay] to a policeman who died bravely while trying to rescue somebody from the public sewer. Let not my epitaph be written until it is written thereon – as one who descended far lower in a better cause.
And now, sir, would you mind withdrawing your rapscallions. How would you, sir, like to have to write a “leader” after descending . . . ? Oh, but, perhaps, that explains it!
– Yours, etc
Sean O Faolain,
Killiney, County Dublin
Sir, – When my recent play, “Time’s Pocket”, was adversely criticised in certain Dublin papers, I was compelled by the rules of public controversy to assume that these criticisms were detached and disinterested.
The publication in to-day's Irish Timesof a letter signed "Flann O'Brien" makes my assumption appear over-credulous. From beginning to end this letter consists entirely of personal abuse, and ends up with what appears to be a challenge to Mr O Faolain to
fight it out with different weapons.
Unfortunately, in issuing this challenge, “Flann O’Brien” forgot to give an address at which
Mr O Faolain might find him.
For the honour of Irish journalism the Editor of The Irish Timesmight answer the following questions: –
(a) is there such a person as “Flann O’Brien”? (b) If not, is the person who signs himself “Flann O’Brien” one known to the Editor, myself and Mr O Faolain; and (c) How long has the publication of violent personal abuse and challenges to fisticuffs been part of the duty of a responsible editor?
Knowing the answers to
these questions, his readers may again rest secure as to the absolute detachment of The Irish Timesand its freedom from the methods of literary gangsters and hooligans.
– Yours, etc,
Frank O’Connor
Lynduff,
Woodenbridge,
Co Wicklow
[The person who signs himself “Flann O’Brien” is known to the Editor. We do not know whether or not he is known to Messrs O Faolain and O’Connor. – Ed, IT]
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