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The Various Lives of Keats and Chapman and the Brother
"Along with Joyce and Beckett, [Flann O'Brien] constitutes our trinity of great Irish writers. And who is funnier?"
- Edna O'Brien
The cream of Flann O'Brien's comic tour-de-force, the Keats and Chapman stories began in O'Brien's column in the Irish Times . He called them "studies in literary pathology" -- monstrously tall tales that explore the very limits of the shaggy dog story. As one critic wrote, they will accumulate the fantasy to the point of sadism, and then cash home with the flat, desolating pun.
"The Brother" is another of O'Brien's funniest creations. He is the archetypal Dublin man -- an authority on every one of mankind's ills, from the common cold to the court case. Forget the experts, The Brother knows best.
"The best comic writer I can think of."
- S. J. Perelman
- Edna O'Brien
The cream of Flann O'Brien's comic tour-de-force, the Keats and Chapman stories began in O'Brien's column in the Irish Times . He called them "studies in literary pathology" -- monstrously tall tales that explore the very limits of the shaggy dog story. As one critic wrote, they will accumulate the fantasy to the point of sadism, and then cash home with the flat, desolating pun.
"The Brother" is another of O'Brien's funniest creations. He is the archetypal Dublin man -- an authority on every one of mankind's ills, from the common cold to the court case. Forget the experts, The Brother knows best.
"The best comic writer I can think of."
- S. J. Perelman
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
3 people are currently reading
323 people want to read
About the author
Flann O'Brien
62 books815 followersPseudonym of
Brian Ó Nualláin
, also known as Brian O'Nolan.
His English novels appeared under the name of Flann O’Brien, while his great Irish novel and his newspaper column (which appeared from 1940 to 1966) were signed Myles na gCopaleen or Myles na Gopaleen – the second being a phonetic rendering of the first. One of twelve brothers and sisters, he was born in 1911 in Strabane, County Tyrone, into an Irish-speaking family. His father had learned Irish while a young man during the Gaelic revival the son was later to mock. O’Brien’s childhood has been described as happy, though somewhat insular, as the language spoken at home was not that spoken by their neighbours. The Irish language had long been in decline, and Strabane was not in an Irish-speaking part of the country. The family moved frequently during O’Brien’s childhood, finally settling in Dublin in 1925. Four years later O’Brien took up study in University College Dublin.
Flann O'Brien is considered a major figure in twentieth century Irish literature. Flann O'Brien novels have attracted a wide following for their bizarre humour and Modernist metafiction.
The café and shop of Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich (www.culturlann.ie), at the heart of the Belfast Gaeltacht Quarter, is named An Ceathrú Póilí ("The Fourth Policeman"), as a play-on-words of the title of O'Brien's book The Third Policeman.
His English novels appeared under the name of Flann O’Brien, while his great Irish novel and his newspaper column (which appeared from 1940 to 1966) were signed Myles na gCopaleen or Myles na Gopaleen – the second being a phonetic rendering of the first. One of twelve brothers and sisters, he was born in 1911 in Strabane, County Tyrone, into an Irish-speaking family. His father had learned Irish while a young man during the Gaelic revival the son was later to mock. O’Brien’s childhood has been described as happy, though somewhat insular, as the language spoken at home was not that spoken by their neighbours. The Irish language had long been in decline, and Strabane was not in an Irish-speaking part of the country. The family moved frequently during O’Brien’s childhood, finally settling in Dublin in 1925. Four years later O’Brien took up study in University College Dublin.
Flann O'Brien is considered a major figure in twentieth century Irish literature. Flann O'Brien novels have attracted a wide following for their bizarre humour and Modernist metafiction.
The café and shop of Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich (www.culturlann.ie), at the heart of the Belfast Gaeltacht Quarter, is named An Ceathrú Póilí ("The Fourth Policeman"), as a play-on-words of the title of O'Brien's book The Third Policeman.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 25, 2008
This book compiles a choice selection of an ingenious column Flann O'Brien wrote for The Irish Times.
The column tells of two friends, Keats (the poet) and Chapman (famous translator of Homer into English) and their encounters here and there and everywhere. Every little story is an elaborate build up to a bad pun, which assisted by O'Brien's knowledge of languages such as Gaelic and Latin. The only way to do it justice is to display some of the articles here:
CARNIVAL
Keats and Chapman once lived near a church. There was a heavy debt on it. The pastor made many efforts to clear the debt by promoting whist drives and raffles and the like, but was making little headway. He then heard of the popularity of these carnivals where you have swing-boats and round-abouts and fruit-machines and la boule and shooting galleries and every modern convenience. He thought to entertain the town with a week of this and hoped to make some money to reduce the debt. He hired one of these outfits but with his diminutive financial status he could only induce a very third-rate company to come. All their machinery was old and broken. On the opening day, as the steam organ blared forth, the heavens opened and disgorged sheets of icy rain. The scene, with its drenched and tawdry trappings, assumed the gaiety of a morgue. Keats and Chapman waded from stall to stall, soaked and disconsolate. Chapman (unwisely, perhaps) asked the poet what he thought of the fiesta.
'A fete worse than debt,' Keats said.
Chapman collapsed into a trough of mud.
DOWN THE HIGH
Chapman's fag at Greyfriars was a boy called Fox, a weedy absent-minded article of Irish extraction. One evening, shortly before the hour when Mr. Quelch was scheduled to take the remove for prep, the young fellow was sent down the High with a jug and strict instructions to bring back a pint of mild and bitter without spilling it. The minutes lengthened and so did Chapman's face, who disliked going into class completely sober. He fumed and fretted, but still there was no sign of the returning fag. In the opposite armchair lay Keats, indolently biting his long nails. He thought he would console his friend with a witty quotation.
'Fox dimissa nescit reverti,' he murmured.
'Dimissus!' snapped Chapman, always a stickler for that kind of thing.
'Kindly leave my wife out of this,' Keats said stiffly.
The column tells of two friends, Keats (the poet) and Chapman (famous translator of Homer into English) and their encounters here and there and everywhere. Every little story is an elaborate build up to a bad pun, which assisted by O'Brien's knowledge of languages such as Gaelic and Latin. The only way to do it justice is to display some of the articles here:
CARNIVAL
Keats and Chapman once lived near a church. There was a heavy debt on it. The pastor made many efforts to clear the debt by promoting whist drives and raffles and the like, but was making little headway. He then heard of the popularity of these carnivals where you have swing-boats and round-abouts and fruit-machines and la boule and shooting galleries and every modern convenience. He thought to entertain the town with a week of this and hoped to make some money to reduce the debt. He hired one of these outfits but with his diminutive financial status he could only induce a very third-rate company to come. All their machinery was old and broken. On the opening day, as the steam organ blared forth, the heavens opened and disgorged sheets of icy rain. The scene, with its drenched and tawdry trappings, assumed the gaiety of a morgue. Keats and Chapman waded from stall to stall, soaked and disconsolate. Chapman (unwisely, perhaps) asked the poet what he thought of the fiesta.
'A fete worse than debt,' Keats said.
Chapman collapsed into a trough of mud.
DOWN THE HIGH
Chapman's fag at Greyfriars was a boy called Fox, a weedy absent-minded article of Irish extraction. One evening, shortly before the hour when Mr. Quelch was scheduled to take the remove for prep, the young fellow was sent down the High with a jug and strict instructions to bring back a pint of mild and bitter without spilling it. The minutes lengthened and so did Chapman's face, who disliked going into class completely sober. He fumed and fretted, but still there was no sign of the returning fag. In the opposite armchair lay Keats, indolently biting his long nails. He thought he would console his friend with a witty quotation.
'Fox dimissa nescit reverti,' he murmured.
'Dimissus!' snapped Chapman, always a stickler for that kind of thing.
'Kindly leave my wife out of this,' Keats said stiffly.
July 22, 2021
Most of these vignettes were very funny, inducing outright laughter and groans. Others ended with a dated or local reference I couldn't follow (there are no editorial notes), and I glazed over the few that required knowledge of Latin grammar or syntax to unpack the puns. Afterwards, I quite enjoyed the patchwork play "The Brother", which would still make for an entertaining one-man show. I wonder whether William S. Burroughs read O'Brien's work? WSB's "routines" were similarly concise, humorous, and sometimes grotesque, like many of the bits that make up "The Brother". Anyway, only having previously read At Swim-Two-Birds, I imagine most admirers of O'Brien's masterpiece would find it worth their time to give this a look.
December 26, 2008
I was charmed, but take it with a grain of salt because I love O'Brien. This book collects a bizarre and hilarious one man play--about a poor Irish lout who doesn't like playing the characters that "that fellow" (Flann O'Brien) forces upon him--and a series of shaggy-dog puns featuring the unlikely Laurel and Hardy duo of John Keats and George Chapman, translator of Homer. The puns are excerpts from O'Brien's newspaper columns and collected out of context. Despite some of the puns paying off in Latin or with references to mid-Century Irish slang, I still enjoyed the sheer bravado of them. Fuck you, he says, their bad puns. I was amused.
January 9, 2014
Some of these were very funny. Some of them I just didn't get. The brother is an entertaining piece of ridiculousness that made me want to re-read the novels.
January 22, 2020
I thought that a collection of pointless tales with bad punchlines would make for some good light reading. The introduction to The Various Lives of Keats and Chapman explains how Flann O'Brien has a reputation for being a legendary humourist, which may have been true in his day, but in my opinion the stories didn't age well. The majority of the puns feature outdated idioms and slang, or else they necessitate the reader to be familiar with Latin. Consequently, most of the puns went over my head and I didn't enjoy the book very much. There are a few stories that I liked: "Carnival," "A Man Called Dunne," "Dentistry," "Mineral Wealth," and "From the Vasty Deep." Here's "A Man Called Dunne" as an example of O'Brien's writing:
Keats once met a man called Dunne and invited him to dinner. It happened that Dunne was a hefty, well-nourished party who usually ordered his steaks in pairs and spent at least two hours at the table every time he visited it. He accepted the poet's invitation and was thunderstruck to find himself faced with a mess of green herbs, with damn the thing else to relieve the green greenness of it all.
'What's this?' he asked rudely.
'An experiment with thyme,' Keats said.
May 8, 2015
Сага о разнообразных жизнях Чэпмена и Китса — хитровывернутое литературное издевательство над читателем, образец абсурда в духе Хармса (это для понятности), но не Хармс, другая разновидность: это набор «фегутов», анекдотов, в которых сюжет кропотливо выстраивается, чтобы подвести к ударной фразе, как правило — довольно идиотской. По большей части это совсем непереводимо, проще тут писать свои истории, на материале родного языка.
«Брательник» же в исполнении Имона Моррисси — гениальный моноспектакль, смонтированный из статей, романов и рассказов ФОБ. Такой хорошо мог бы исполнить любой сильно пьющий актер.
«Брательник» же в исполнении Имона Моррисси — гениальный моноспектакль, смонтированный из статей, романов и рассказов ФОБ. Такой хорошо мог бы исполнить любой сильно пьющий актер.
June 30, 2022
As a regular pun-merchant myself, I enjoy the creative articulacy of the great humourist that was Myles na Gopaleen, pseudonomically Flann O'Brien.
For many years, he wrote pieces for the Irish people which chimed with a well-deserved peal of their reputation for blarney, word-play & verbal fantasies. This slim, anthological volume of O'Brien's wit perfectly illustrates his genius for amusing anecdotes which go nowhere in particular but end-up giving the reader a tot of total transliterations of a traditional twaddling! Many laughs...much madness!
For many years, he wrote pieces for the Irish people which chimed with a well-deserved peal of their reputation for blarney, word-play & verbal fantasies. This slim, anthological volume of O'Brien's wit perfectly illustrates his genius for amusing anecdotes which go nowhere in particular but end-up giving the reader a tot of total transliterations of a traditional twaddling! Many laughs...much madness!
June 20, 2010
If you like shaggy-dog stories, groan-wrenching puns, and the wit and wisdom of Brian O'Nolan, aka Flann O'Brien, aka Myles na Gopaleen, well then this one's for you.
October 1, 2023
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-various-lives-of-keats-and-chapman-including-the-brother-by-flann-obrien/
I had read this as a teenager, which I went through my Flann O’Brien phase, and approached re-reading it with some trepidation; would the Suck Fairy have visited this collection of excruciating puns based around a totally fictional friendship between John Keats (1795-1821) and George Chapman (1559-1634)?
I’m afraid so. I am sure that over the table in a bar, Flann O’Brien would have told these with gusto, his face barely twitching as he reached the end and his friends collapsed with hilarity. But culture has moved on since his time, especially in Ireland, and a lot of the stories are laboured journeys to an uninspiring punchline. Here is one of the less aged ones:
[start]
One winter’s evening Keats looked up to find Chapman regarding him closely. He naturally enquired the reason for this scrutiny.
‘I was thinking about those warts on your face,’ Chapman said. ‘
What about them?’ the poet said testily. ‘
Oh, nothing,’ Chapman said. ‘It just occurred to me that you might like to have them removed.’
‘They are there for years,’ Keats said, ‘and I don’t see any particular reason for getting worried about them now.’
‘But they are rather a blemish,’ Chapman persisted. ‘I wouldn’t mind one – but four fairly close together, that’s rather—’
‘Four?’ Keats cried. ‘There were only three there this morning!’
‘There are four there now,’ Chapman said.
‘That’s a new one on me,’ Keats said.
[end]
You see what I mean?
The book also includes the script of Eamon Morrissey’s one-man show based on O’Brien’s work, “The Brother”, where the punchline is that although many claim to have died for Ireland, the barman was born for Ireland (in that his mother distracted a hostile British soldier at just the right moment to save the narrator). It’s a cringeworthy set-up, but it also sparks the interesting thought that there has been very little writing about gender-based violence during the Irish conflicts of the early 1920s. Can there really have been none at all?
This is minor stuff compared with The Third Policeman or At Swim-Two-Birds.
I had read this as a teenager, which I went through my Flann O’Brien phase, and approached re-reading it with some trepidation; would the Suck Fairy have visited this collection of excruciating puns based around a totally fictional friendship between John Keats (1795-1821) and George Chapman (1559-1634)?
I’m afraid so. I am sure that over the table in a bar, Flann O’Brien would have told these with gusto, his face barely twitching as he reached the end and his friends collapsed with hilarity. But culture has moved on since his time, especially in Ireland, and a lot of the stories are laboured journeys to an uninspiring punchline. Here is one of the less aged ones:
[start]
One winter’s evening Keats looked up to find Chapman regarding him closely. He naturally enquired the reason for this scrutiny.
‘I was thinking about those warts on your face,’ Chapman said. ‘
What about them?’ the poet said testily. ‘
Oh, nothing,’ Chapman said. ‘It just occurred to me that you might like to have them removed.’
‘They are there for years,’ Keats said, ‘and I don’t see any particular reason for getting worried about them now.’
‘But they are rather a blemish,’ Chapman persisted. ‘I wouldn’t mind one – but four fairly close together, that’s rather—’
‘Four?’ Keats cried. ‘There were only three there this morning!’
‘There are four there now,’ Chapman said.
‘That’s a new one on me,’ Keats said.
[end]
You see what I mean?
The book also includes the script of Eamon Morrissey’s one-man show based on O’Brien’s work, “The Brother”, where the punchline is that although many claim to have died for Ireland, the barman was born for Ireland (in that his mother distracted a hostile British soldier at just the right moment to save the narrator). It’s a cringeworthy set-up, but it also sparks the interesting thought that there has been very little writing about gender-based violence during the Irish conflicts of the early 1920s. Can there really have been none at all?
This is minor stuff compared with The Third Policeman or At Swim-Two-Birds.
May 19, 2014
Very funny short stories, each stories becomes a painfully constructed pun, which it why it's so wonderfully weird and funny. So of them have taken me weeks to get, when the penny does drop it's rewarding. As I utterly loved the Third Policeman, this was recommended to me (although I can't claim to understand it fully).
April 17, 2011
A book of high-end puns. Thanks but no.
January 21, 2017
Quality puns from a master of the art. Flann O'Brien is a national treasure.
July 16, 2022
Fabulously funny (for the educated)
October 28, 2007
Makes for an excellent bathroom reader for intelligent fans of wordplay.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews