John Ryan (1925-92)

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Bibliographical details
A Bash in the Tunnel: James Joyce by the Irish, ed. by John Ryan (Brighton: Clifton Books 1970), 259pp. Frontis. ‘James Joyce’ by Sean O’Sullivan, RHA [in chalk]; [untitled] poem by John Montague; CONTENTS: Introduction [9]; B. Nolan [aka Flann O’Brien], ‘A Bash in the Tunnel’ [15]; Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante ... Bruno ... Vico ... Joyce’ [21]; W. B. Stanford, ‘The Mysticism that Pleased Him: A Note on the Primary Source of Joyce’s Ulysses’ [35]; Edna O’Brien, ‘Dear Mr. Joyce’ [43]; Patrick Kavanagh, ‘Who Killed James Joyce?’ [49]; Joseph Hone, ‘A Recollection of James Joyce’ [53; rep. as ‘An Irish view of Dubliners’ in Deming, op. cit. 1970 [Vol. 1], pp.58-59]; Aidan Higgins, ‘Tired Lines: Or Tales My Mother Told Me’ [55]; Niall Montgomery, ‘Joyeux quicum Ulysse ... swissairis dubellay gadelice’ [61]; Ulick O’Connor, ‘Joyce and Gogarty’ [73]; Stanislaus Joyce, ‘The Bud’ [101]; John Jordan, ‘Joyce Without Fears: A Personal Journey’ [135]; Eoin O’Mahony, ‘Father Conmee and his Associates’ [147]; Patrick Boyle, ‘Drums and guns, and guns and drums. Hurrah! hurrah!’ [157]; Denis Johnston, ‘A Short View of the Progress of Joyceanity’ [163]; Andrew Cass [John Garvin], ‘Childe Horrid’s pilgrimace’ [169]; Arthur Power, ‘James Joyce: The Internationalist’ [181]; Bernard Share, ‘Downes’s cakeshop and Williams’s Jam’ []189; J. B. Lyons, ‘Doctors and Hospitals’ [193]; F. Harvey, ‘Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: The Intervention of Style in a Work of the Creative Imagination’ [203]; Monk Gibbon, ‘The Unraised Hat’ [209]; Thomas McGreevy, ‘The Catholic Element in Work in Progress’ [213]; John Francis Byrne, ‘Diseases of the Ox’ [221]; Benedict Kiely, ‘The Artist on the Giant’s Grave’ [235]; ‘What the Irish Papers Said: The Obituary Memoirs Appearing in the Irish papers of January 1941’ [243]; Notes on Contributors [251]; Index [255]. (See Introduction, infra; also several extracts under named authors as above elsewhere in RICORSO, e.g., Edna O’Brien, &c.)

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Criticism
Kurt Jacobsen, ‘An Interview with John Ryan’, in Journal of Irish Literature, 17 (Jan. 1988), pp.3-14; Peter Costello, ‘John Ryan’, in Irish Literary Supplement (Spring [1March] 1993) [see extract]; Constantine FitzGibbon, ‘Dublin’s grand époque’, review of Remembering How We Stood, in Times Literary Supplement (10 Oct.1975;

See also remarks in Ulick O’Connor, Brendan (London: Hamish Hamilton 1970); Gerry Smyth, Decolonisation and Criticism: The Construction of Irish Literature (London: Pluto Press 1998), p.118f. [comments on Envoy]; Huber Butler, ‘Envoy and Mr Kavanagh’ [1954], in Escape from the Anthill (Dublin: Lilliput Press 1985), pp.156-57; rep. in R. F. Foster, ed. & intro., The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press; Dublin: Lilliput 1990, pp.83-91), and Bruce Stewart, ‘Another Bash in the Tunnel: James Joyce and the Envoy', in Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review , 93, 370 (Summer 2004), pp.133-46 [copy as attached].

See also Adrienne Leavy, ‘Envoy, the literary magazine that sought to put Irish culture on the map’ in The Irish Times (17 Aug. 2015) - as infra.

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Commentary
Stan Gébler Davies, James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist (Poynter 1975), gives an incidental account of the rescue of door of 7 Eccles St., relates that those participating were Ryan, Patrick Kavanagh and Mr Leslie Mallory, journalist and film-maker, and that the Reverend Mother was unwilling to permit the removal on the door on the grounds that it was associated with ‘that pagan writer’ but was softened by a donation to the Foreign Missions. (p.238; ftn.) Davies incls. a photograph of his own ‘research’ at the Joycean address.

Anthony Cronin, No Laughing Matter, The Life and Times of Flann O’Brien (1989), comments on Envoy: ‘Soon Brian O’Nolan, or Myles, as everybody in the pub, including the barmen, called him, was a contributor to the magazine also, the general editorial policy being to foster a counter-trend of sophistication and cosmopolitanism against the debased Celtic twilightry and the rorms of rural picturesuqe which, it was felt, still held sway in established literary circles. Alas, we were not to know that Celtic twilightry and rural picturesque are hydra-headed monsters which survive all attempts to extirpate them either by precept or example. Many of the contributions to Envoy, including Kavanagh’s, had a strong anti-nationalist coloration, a more or less humorous form of protest against the tattered and cliché-ridden national triumphalism with its endless references to the “War of Independence” and “our unique Gaelic culture” which was the official ethos of the country; and it was to the Envoy that Brian contributed the story “The Martyr’s Crown” [1950]; ... In the following year, 1951, John Ryan asked Brian O’Nolan to edit a special James Joyce issue of Envoy ... a brilliant idea.’

Brian Inglis, Downstart (London: Chatto & Windus 1990), writes: ‘Ryan ran Envoy, a literary magazine which provided a lifeline for many impecunious Dublin writers: I do not recall that we ever met, but he published the one and only short story I have ever written.’ (p.185.)

Peter Costello, ‘John Ryan 1925-1992’, in Irish Literary Supplement [Boston Coll.] ([Spring] 1 March 1992): ‘The death of John Ryan in Dublin marks the end of an era in Irish writing, for he was without doubt the last Irish “man of letters.” Born in 1925, he was educated at Joyce’s old school, Clongowes Wood College, and later at the College of Art in Dublin. He came from a family prominent in politics and business - his mother ran the once übiquitous Monument Dairies, with their long familiar logo of the Parnell Memorial. For many years he owned the Bailey pub in Duke Street, in which he preserved the door from Bloom’s house in Eccles Street. But it was as a painter, editor, writer, set-designer, raconteur, radio essayist, sailor, friend, drinking companion, confessor, and listener (not the least of his talents) that his wide range of friends and acquaintances from all walks of life (so evident at his funeral) will remember him. Always ready to help with the schemes of others, he nearly always retained their friendship. John Ryan’s “period” is that brief spell in Irish life, in the late 1940 sand early 19505, when he was a young man of talent with other young friends of talent, when writing and art still belonged to their creators and their audiences, and less to their academic mediators. John founded and edited Envoy, which ran for twenty issues from December 1949 to July 1951, a herald from what Joyce called "the fair courts of life."

Unlike The Bell under Sean O’Faolain and Peadar O’Donnell, Envoy, likes its editor, was interested in a wide and international range of topics, including modern and continental writing. Yet it also found room for Patrick Kavanagh’s diary, and pieces by many others at the beginnings of their careers, like J.P. Donleavy, Anthony Cronin, Pearse Hutchinson, and Aidan Higgins. In April 1951, Ryan published a special number on James Joyce to mark the tenth anniversary of the writer’s death. This was long before the explosive expansion of Joyce studies, when the man’s mere name could still make some of his compatriots spit with hate. John’s was a brave and courageous act, and he later published the still valuable contributions by a range of Irish writers in A Bash in the Tunnel (1970), with additional pieces he specially commissioned from Joyce admirers like Edna O’Brien. Envoy failed, but it was not the last magazine for John Ryan, He was founder-editor of the Dublin Magazine (1970-75), taking over and continuing the name of Seamas O’Sullivan’s quarterly, which closed in 1958. These little magazines of the 1950s and 1960s were attractive and lively in ways which cannot be imagined now.

John created the idea of the Bloomsday fest in 1954, to mark the 50th anniversary of the day of Ulysses. He was secretary of the James Joyce Tower Society, and of the James Joyce Society of Ireland (1970-74). He was also secretary to the Irish Academy of Letters, founded in 1932 by Yeats, in 1971-74, but then almost moribund, which he kept going from a true sense of literary piety. John held regular selling exhibitions of his paintings, many of them sea-scapes, and wrote “a marine memoir” A Wave of the Sea (1981). In Remembering How We Stood (1975, new edition 1987), he wrote a classic work, which described the city of his youth and the vivid literary personalities of the day, such as Myles na Gopaleen, Brendan Behan, and Gainor Crist, the model for “the Ginger Man.” In his last months of illness, John retained his old sense of gentle humor, and suffered uncomplainingly, though for his friends it was sad to see his special sense of life fading away. Dublin owes John Ryan a great debt, but it is the nature of things that such debts to such men cannot ever be adequately repaid. In his company many diverse and divided strands of the city’s culture found a common ground. He was that rarest of things, a truly good man.’ (Available online; accessed 03.09.2023.; reparagraphed here.)

Adrienne Leavy, ‘Envoy, the literary magazine that sought to put Irish culture on the map’ inThe Irish Times (17 Aug. 2015): ‘First published in December 1949, Envoy was the brainchild of writer and artist John Ryan, and the poet and diplomat Valentin Iremonger. The impetus behind the magazine was an attempt to fill what they perceived as a literary gap in Irish culture. The foreword to the first issue announced that “Envoy, by its arrival, brings to a close a two year period during which the reading public of this island have had no monthly magazine wholly devoted to literature and the arts”. Determined to put literature first, Envoy was less concerned with issues of Irish nationalism or cultural politics, and instead, cast itself in a self-consciously European mode, mixing local appeal and a dash of international contributions. Envoy commenced with a detailed editorial plan which Ryan and his assistant editors (Iremonger and JK Hillman), outlined in their introduction to the first issue: the periodical would come to the aid of Irish culture “by serving abroad as envoy of Irish writing and at home as envoy of the best of international writing”. An ambitious aesthetic platform was spelled out in the second issue, which, despite the editors’ avowed inclination towards European literature, curiously confined itself to Irish authors. [...] Another important facet of the magazine was the inclusion of a regular column or “Diary” written by Patrick Kavanagh. Although Kavanagh’s Diary column initially captured the essence of Envoy’s cultural outlook, it became, with the passage of time, a vehicle for Kavanagh to pick fights and settle old scores. In several issues he uses his column to vent his scorn on other contemporary poets, most notably, Austin Clarke, John Hewitt and Louis McNeice, all of whose work Kavanagh considered inferior to his own. Other moving targets included the Abbey Theatre, the Catholic Church’s involvement in the arts, Radio Éireann, the Irish Club in London and the regular clientele of The Pearl Bar. Less measured opinion pieces than frequently very funny belligerent rants, Kavanagh displayed his not inconsiderable gifts as an acerbic satirist in these columns, which paved the way for his own publication, Kavanagh’s Weekly. He also was responsible for most of the letters to the editor that the magazine received. [...]’ (For full-text copy, see under RICORSO Library > “Criticism > Reviews” - via index or as attached.)

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Quotations
‘Editorial’ (Envoy, Vol., 3, No. 9): ‘The younger poets [...] take their nationality rather more for granted. They seem to be less interested in the technical craftwork by means of which one apparently becomes Irish - the over-use of assonance, Larminie, Raftery, a strained and imprecise Imagery - and rather more concerned with the craftsmanship involved in trying to write good poetry; their attitude seems to correspond more with Paul Gerrard’s - that if the poet happens to be Irish, the result, as like as not, is probably Irish poetry. They would probably claim that being Irish is no more an attitude of mind than the wearing of embroidered coats.’ (p.6; quoted in Gerry Smyth, Decolonisation and Criticism: The Construction of Irish Literature, Pluto Press 1998, p.118.)

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References
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, p.529n; John Ryan (b.1925), founder-editor of Envoy (1949-51, and the Dublin Magazine, published a memory, Remembering How We Stood: Bohemian Dublin at the Mid-Century (1975; rep. 1987).

Note: There is a Wikipedia article - online - in which RICORSO is cited as an ‘external reference’, and this in turn has been for the present entry. The matter cited from RICORSO is the quotation from the Introduction to A Bash in the Tunnel, which can be identified by the term [sic] associated with the mispelling of Flann as Flan (i.e., Brian O’Nolan’s nom-de-plume).

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Notes
Bloomsday: A Bloomsday record of 1954, informally filmed on 8mm. by John Ryan, follows Brian O’Nolan [Flann O’Brien], Patrick Kavanagh, and Con Leventhal on Bloom’s itinerary from Sandymount to Glasnevin cemetery.

Kith & Kin: siblings of John Ryan incl. Kathleen, Cora, Oonagh [bapt. Agnes Mary], Ide, Séamus. Of these Kathleen became a successful actress in Britain and America; Séamus [Fr. Vincent] became a Benedictine monk; Cora m. Sean Dunne, the Labour TD. Seamus Ryan Senior was a Fianna Fáil Senator. Oonagh, married Prince Alexis Guédroitz at 18 and later the artist Patrick Swift with whom she settled in Portugal. The couple’s friends included Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin, Brian O’Nolan, Brendan Behan, John Jordan, John McGahern, Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, and Nano Reid. In London the Swifts lived at Westbourne Tce., W2, where they founded the literary journal X with David Wright. Their domicile in Portugal was in a 17th c. cottage in the village of Carvoeiro in the Algrave - a region which they were among the first to colonise as artists. (See obituary of Oonagh Swift in The Irish Times, 10 Nov. 2012.)

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Edna O’Brien: O’Brien chose Ryan’s memoirs as her Observer Book of the Year in 1975, describing it as ‘a fine and loving account of literary Dublin in the golden fifties, which purrs with life and anecdote’. Persons remembered in it incl. Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, Myles na gCopaleen (Flann O’Brien), as well as “Pope” O’Mahony, Gainor Crist the original Ginger Man [by JP Dunleavy], and others. Amazon notice includes quotation [O’Brien?]: ’No more singular body of characters will ever rub shoulders again at any given time, or a city more uniquely bizarre than literary Dublin will ever be seen.’ (See Amazon - online; accessed 22.05.2023.)

Namesake: A John Ryan is the author of The History and Antiquities of the County of Carlow (R.M. Times 1833), 388pp.

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