Ruben Borg, Paul Fagan & John McCourt, eds., Flann O’Brien: Problems with Authority (Cork UP 2017), qpp.

[ Publisher’s notice: Together, these chapters focus on the satirical energies and anti-authoritarian temperament invested in Flann O’Brien’s style, interrogating the author’s clowning with linguistic, literary, legal, bureaucratic, political, economic, academic, religious and scientific powers in the sites of the popular, the modern and the traditional. Among the topics addressed are O’Brien’s satirical use of the pseudonym, the cliché and the Irish language; his irreverent repackaging of inherited myths, sacred texts and formative canons; and a broad range of new comparative contexts, from the science popularisations of Arthur Eddington and James Jeans to Revivalist writers such as James Stephens and Brinsely MacNamara; from O’Brien’s models of mind between Joyce and Beckett to his place among continental modernists Pirandello and Carlo Emilio Gadda; from his brothers Ciarán and Caoimhín Ó Nualláin to the traditional authorities of St Paul, Socrates and Voltaire.

List of contributors: Carol Taaffe, Maebh Long, Maria Kager, Catherine Flynn, Katherine Ebury, Dirk Van Hulle, Ronan Crowley, Rob Maslen, Ian Ó Caoimh, John McCourt, Louis De Paor, Alana Gillespie, Ruben Borg, Dieter Fuchs and Tamara Radak. Source: Paul Fagan on Facebook - 02.02.2017.]

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