Life
1933- ; son of Padraic Fallon and Dorothea (née Maher), dg. of
Dublin builder; brs. Garry, Brian, Conor (a sculptor), Padraic, Ivan (Financial
Times exec.), and Niall; introduced to The Irish Times at 19 through his
father’s friendship with the editor R. M. Smyllie; enrolled as classics
student, TCD, sub-editing at night; left TCD after two years; m. journalist
Marion Fitzgerald; art critic and Chief Critic of The Irish Times;
chief author for Gandon series on Irish artists; appt. Chairman of the
Arts Council, 1996 [cf. Banville].
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Works
Monographs, Edward McGuire (Dublin: Irish Academic
Press 1991), 143pp.; Irish Art 1830-1990 (Belfast: Appletree Press
1994); Charles Tyrrell (Dublin: Gandon 1994); Martin Gale (Dublin:
Gandon 1995) [No. 19]; Sean McSweeney (Dublin: Gandon 1996); An
Age of Innocence (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1998).
Miscellaneous, contrib. essay to Henry Flanagan, OP: Preacher in Stone (Dublin: Riverbank Arts Centre 2003). See also a very large number of articles in the Irish Times espec. during his period of tenure as Senior Art.
Bibliographical details
An Age of Innocence (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1998). CONTENTS, Chapter 1: In Perspective [1]; Chapter 2: Begging the Question [19]; Chapter 3: A Disinherited Culture [27]; Chapter 4: Yeats Centre Stage [39]; Chapter 5: Joyce and the Exile Tradition [59]; Chapter 6: Founding Fathers [73]; Chapter 7: Second Generation [95]; Chapter 8: The Poets after Yeats [107]; Chapter 9: The French Connection [123]; Chapter 10: The Theatre [133]; Chapter 11: The Literary Pubs [149]; Chapter 12: The Irish Language [159]; Chapter 13: Gaels and Anglo-Irish [173]; Chapter 14: The Church [183]; Chapter 15: The Literary Censorship [201]; Chapter 16: Neutrality and de Valera [211]; Chapter 17: Press and Periodicals [225]; Chapter 18: The Visual Arts [237]; Chapter 19: Musical Life and Lives [247]; Chapter 20: The Fifties [257 ]. References 273]; Bibliography 285]; Index [295].
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Quotations
An Age of Innocence: Irish Culture 1930-1960
(Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1998): ‘Though it is often depicted
as a time almost entirely dominated by ruralism and back-to-the-land philosophies,
many people - including young women - were deserting the countrysIde and
the small farms; and while peasant values were paid lip service by politicians
and others, in practice the Irish were already on the way to becoming
what Seán O’Faolain has called “a nation of urbanised
peasants”. [...] Seen in this context, it becomes plain that it
was not an era of regression, but rather of deep social and cultural change
which led - sometimes by odd or circuitous routes - to the Irish society
of today. Today we tend to see those thirty years in a kind of levelling
monochrome, though Ireland was actually in constant flux and many crucial
intellectual debates were fought out which have largely made us what we
are today, for better or worse - or for neither. The newborn Ireland was
[1] grappling, sometimes hesitantly and sometimes ineptly, with its role
or place in the modern era. Yet for a long time now the tendency has been
to see it as dominated by insularity, defensive-minded nationalism, the
Church, censorship, a retreat from the outer world. This attitude has
fossilised into a kind of dogma, which a surprising number of people –
including some well-informed ones – refuse to criticise or reconsider.’
(pp.1-2.)
Fears: ‘You ask me do I fear for literacy. I fear for literacy’; ‘Journalism … encourages a certain terseness, which is a good thing’; ‘there is an urgent need for a serious arts journal. The Arts Council should step in.’ (Eileen Battersby, ‘A Self-made Critic’, in The Irish Times, 5 Nov. 1998, p.15.)
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Notes
After Independence, the National University became the
alma mater of most of the new writers and intelligentsia … The great
exception was Samuel Beckett … In the Sixties, when Trinity seemd
harldy to matter any longer as a “literary” university, a vital
new generation emerged […]. (‘Laureates, divines, Francophiles,
and poor MacFlecknoes, “Trinity Weekend”, in Irish Times,
9 May 1992, p.8; cited in Edna Longley, The Living Stream: Literature
and Revisionism in Ireland, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe 1994, p.17-18.
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