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Dead As Doornails: A Chronicle of Life
'A classic; of his mastery of language there can be no doubt'- Anthony Burgess. This paperback reissue of Dead as Doornails, first published in 1976, brings back into print a true classic of Irish memoir. Anthony Cronin's account of life in post-war literary Dublin is as funny and colourful as one would expect from an intimate of Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh and Myles na Gopaleen; but it is also a clear-eyed and bracing antidote to the kitsch that passes for literary history and memory in the Dublin of today. Cronin writes with remarkable subtlety of the frustrations and pathologies of this the excess of drink, the shortage of sex, the insecurity and begrudgery, the painful limitations of cultural life, and the bittersweet pull of exile. We read of a comical sojourn in France with Behan, and of Cronin's years in London as a literary editor and a friend of the writer Julian Maclaren-Ross and the painters Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun. The generation chronicled by Cronin was one of wasted promise. That waste is redressed through the shimmering prose of Dead as Doornails, which has earned its place in Irish literary history alongside the best works of Behan, Kavanagh and Myles
Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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About the author
Anthony Cronin
32 books7 followersAnthony Cronin was an Irish poet, novelist, biographer, literary critic, commentator and arts activist.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
February 24, 2013
A great portrait of a time and a place - ie, Dublin in the Fifties, with brief forays to London and the continent - and the Irish authors of the day. The bulk of the story revolves around Cronin's relationship with Behan but Brian O'Nolan/Flann O'Brien and Paddy Kavanagh also feature. Nearly everybody in it is broke and the one person who is gainfully employed (O'Nolan) is a sour little alcoholic, but the book itself is hilariously, blackly funny, largely due to the disparity between Cronin's rather orutund style and the ignominies he is forced to endure thanks to Behan's various schemes and antics.
June 17, 2008
This may just be the Irish studies person in me talking, but I really enjoyed this book. It was really a very fast read, full of stories of the 1950s literary scene in Dublin--a very interesting and, ultimately, unfortunate group of writers. I honestly think even someone who has never heard of any of these writers (Kavanagh, O'Brian, Cronin, Behan, and more) will enjoy Cronin's memoir.
January 6, 2024
Beautiful and tragic I'll have to spend a lot of time thinking about it but if you've ever read Flann O'Brien or Brendan Behan or Patrick Kavanagh you have to read it, as an article of faith.
November 3, 2011
Anthony Cronin is a famously grumpy old sod. And yet (!), he comes across as the least grumpy person in this role call of curmudgeons, drunks, and literary giants. Brian O'Nolan, Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Behan stumble in and out of these pages, while the reader marvels at how they ever found time to write anything at all. This is exactly my type of memoir: boozy, urbane, anecdotal, and a little bit bittersweet.
June 8, 2025
“Friendship, like other forms of love, takes immediately or not at all.”
“May he and the others commemorated in this book enjoy at last, in Elysium or elsewhere, whatever the innermost nature truly seeks. If it be oblivion, so be it.”
“May he and the others commemorated in this book enjoy at last, in Elysium or elsewhere, whatever the innermost nature truly seeks. If it be oblivion, so be it.”
August 6, 2011
A vivid, passionate and utterly unsentimental account of the writer's younger years in Dublin that is filled with ridiculous stories and razor-sharp character descriptions. Cronin's prose is a joy and his ability to penetrate through the shrouds of myth is a thing to behold. Highly recommended to all.
November 23, 2025
There is a clear grá here, however qualified, for the intellectual and social environment of the time. Whatever you can say about the 40s and 50s in Ireland, it was at least a time when public intellectualism at the very least existed. Can the same be said of today? The characters here, though, are almost all paranoid, their psyches rotted by a potent mix of alcohol and ego. Each and everyone of them is completely useless with money, oscillating between destitution and intermittent wealth, all of which is spent on expensive taxis and drink. Nobody comes out of this looking good.
December 12, 2023
I greatly enjoyed the first two-thirds of this book. Lines kept jumping out me. This is Cronin's description of wealthy women, or rather, of the desperate literary men who hope to woo and be supported by them: “Money and its possibilities are of course extensions of personality, and it is a foolish woman who, being able to alleviate circumstance a little, distrusts the affection she gains therefrom” (p. 83).
A few pages later, he recounts a scene in which the poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh slags some celebrated person as "the greatest bore on God's Earth." Someone protests that this bore is actually well known as a brilliant speaker. "After all, he successfully talks for his dinner." And Kavanagh replies, with irrefutable Yoga-esqe illogic, "He'd eat a damn sight more if he kept his mouth shut."
Kavanagh imagines himself the only worthy contender to become Ireland’s poet laureate, and spends too much of his literary energy disparaging other imagined contenders for the post. “There is, I can see on reflection now," Cronin writes, "something infinitely comic and grotesque about the idea of a battered, penniless, and jobless man, and a man of enormous range, imaginative sympathy and talent, spending so much time and energy on the pursuit of a crown which did not exist, and on the discomfiture of the fellow writers which whom he chose to swop hatreds, but then is not much of Irish history made up of pretenders’ quarrels, the incomprehensible vendettas of broken, propertyless men, who had only their hatreds and their protocols to keep them warm.” (p. 87)
It’s a fine portrait of Kavanagh, whose work I know only from his novel "Tarry Flynn," which I read (and enjoyed) 45 years ago, and it is undoubtedly more devastating for being a friendly, even loving, portrait. Brendan Behan and Flann O'Brien also take a turn in the book, but with less sparkle and a much sooner collapse into alcoholic torpor. Mostly the book is a portrait of literary/alcoholic Dublin at a time of what now seems like unimaginable poverty in the early 1950s.
Caveats: Cronin sees the flaws in the characters he writes about with almost surgical analytical power, but sees very little of their virtues. This becomes less appealing after the initial thrill of well-phrased wickedness. The book also loses much of its appeal when Cronin moved to London, a great sprawling heap of money and ambition, where the street names and neighborhoods matter less, and even genius tends to get lost in the crowd.
A few pages later, he recounts a scene in which the poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh slags some celebrated person as "the greatest bore on God's Earth." Someone protests that this bore is actually well known as a brilliant speaker. "After all, he successfully talks for his dinner." And Kavanagh replies, with irrefutable Yoga-esqe illogic, "He'd eat a damn sight more if he kept his mouth shut."
Kavanagh imagines himself the only worthy contender to become Ireland’s poet laureate, and spends too much of his literary energy disparaging other imagined contenders for the post. “There is, I can see on reflection now," Cronin writes, "something infinitely comic and grotesque about the idea of a battered, penniless, and jobless man, and a man of enormous range, imaginative sympathy and talent, spending so much time and energy on the pursuit of a crown which did not exist, and on the discomfiture of the fellow writers which whom he chose to swop hatreds, but then is not much of Irish history made up of pretenders’ quarrels, the incomprehensible vendettas of broken, propertyless men, who had only their hatreds and their protocols to keep them warm.” (p. 87)
It’s a fine portrait of Kavanagh, whose work I know only from his novel "Tarry Flynn," which I read (and enjoyed) 45 years ago, and it is undoubtedly more devastating for being a friendly, even loving, portrait. Brendan Behan and Flann O'Brien also take a turn in the book, but with less sparkle and a much sooner collapse into alcoholic torpor. Mostly the book is a portrait of literary/alcoholic Dublin at a time of what now seems like unimaginable poverty in the early 1950s.
Caveats: Cronin sees the flaws in the characters he writes about with almost surgical analytical power, but sees very little of their virtues. This becomes less appealing after the initial thrill of well-phrased wickedness. The book also loses much of its appeal when Cronin moved to London, a great sprawling heap of money and ambition, where the street names and neighborhoods matter less, and even genius tends to get lost in the crowd.
July 28, 2011
Read this many years ago. Great sense of literary Dublin in the 1950s
October 15, 2015
Really enjoyed the insight into the lives of the Irish artists he associated with - felt he diminished his own negative traits. Enjoyed it.
March 27, 2021
When I studied Olivia Laing's The Trip to Echo Spring: Why Writers Drink in a contemporary literature class a few years ago, the lecturer Mike McCormack suggested Dead as Doornails as a similarly useful text in its exploration of how writers can be gripped by alcoholism. The only difference being was in his view, Dead as Doornails had plenty of humorous moments. Though certain sections in Dead as Doornails are definitely funny, thematically reading about how three of some of the most talented Irish writers of all time succumbed to the drink is pretty morbid stuff.
Still, the link between alcohol and creativity is something that has generally fascinated me. Could someone like Flann O Brien have written some of the unique forms of metafiction in At Swim Two Birds without Alcohol in his life? Borstal Boy is considered Beehan's masterpiece but would a sober Beehan have undertaken it? I'm speaking from personal preference here, but I wouldn't have minded if Cronin had explored this discourse in the book.
Also, the Soho section of the book didn't enthral me like the rest, but I initially thought the book's entirety was about these three writers.
Still, the link between alcohol and creativity is something that has generally fascinated me. Could someone like Flann O Brien have written some of the unique forms of metafiction in At Swim Two Birds without Alcohol in his life? Borstal Boy is considered Beehan's masterpiece but would a sober Beehan have undertaken it? I'm speaking from personal preference here, but I wouldn't have minded if Cronin had explored this discourse in the book.
Also, the Soho section of the book didn't enthral me like the rest, but I initially thought the book's entirety was about these three writers.
January 17, 2024
A droll portrait of 1950s literary Dublin with waspish reminiscences of Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O’Brien, Brendan Behan, with additional forays into the worlds of lesser-known writers and artists Julian Maclaren-Ross, Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun. The most entertaining yarns here are those with the rumbustious Brendan Behan, especially the story about smuggling the author into the coal scuttle of a French ship to try and return home, and the slapstick moment during the first Bloomsday celebration where Kavanaugh and O’Brien come to blows following a poorly executed shimmy up a wall. For those who want a fairly unforgiving insight into literary Dublin in this fruitful period, Cronin’s memoir is essential reading. The BBC documentary ‘Arena: Three Irish Writers’ made by Cronin in the 1990s on the period is worth watching too, and is up in its entirety on YouTube. Sláinte!
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September 3, 2024I agree with some of the reviews on here that say that the book loses its appeal slightly when Cronin leaves Dublin for London, and I feel inclined to agree. However, the characters are so vivid and so hilarious that he makes up for it very well, and his prose is so dexterous that once I was into it, it was rarely boring. A beautiful account of the poverty of Dublin at the time, and the jaunts of the alcoholic literary scene.
January 7, 2019
Highly entertaining and idiosyncratic memoir of Dublin literary life in the 1950s and 1960s. As Cronin repeatedly reminds us (so much so that it becomes a running joke), this book isn't about him, but about the famous writers (Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O'Brien) he knew. Lots of feuds, lots of fights, LOTS of drinking.
March 15, 2025
Amazing insights to the real lives of some monumental Irish writers, along with some beautifully written descriptions of the places where the action took place. Essential for anyone interested in widening their understanding of the book’s subjects.
February 3, 2017
Great insight into the literary stars of Ireland that were Behan, Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien. Told with style and detail.
December 20, 2019
Fantastic Read
A real insight into literary Dublin in the middle of the 20th century. Funny and tragic equal measures. The Behan bits are particularly enjoyable.
A real insight into literary Dublin in the middle of the 20th century. Funny and tragic equal measures. The Behan bits are particularly enjoyable.
February 8, 2025
A riveting, charming yet unsentimental portrait of Dublin and elsewhere in the rare aul times.
May 28, 2016
Несмотря на мою первоначальную осторожность (показалось, что стиль излишне кучеряв, но это, видимо, литературная англофилия автора), очень хороший мемуар о куске эпохи — послевоенной англо-ирландской богемы в Дублине и Лондоне. Действие ограничено этими двумя городами (с выходом в Испанию) и периодом от конца 40-х до середины 60-х: время достаточно унылое и нищее — по крайней мере, для действующих лиц, поэтому они спасаются от послевоенного шока бухлом. Ну и развлекаются соответственно. Среди главных героев — Брендан Биэн, Патрик Кавана и немножко Флэнн О’Брайен. Биэн — так и вообще параллельный битник (среди самых веселых хайлайтов книжки — их с Кронином скитания по Франции на нуле денег, очень рекомендую). Ну и ирония в том, что все там, кроме автора, уже давно действительно покойники, автор же даже на момент чтения еще был жив.
February 17, 2019
Anthony Cronin's memoir of literary Dublin and London at mid-century is supremely entertaining but also very sad. All the drinking becomes pathetic after a while, and I realized that I would not wish to have had any of the experiences that Cronin describes, or to have known a single one of the writers and artists he remembers here. Not one. So much for the cultural life.
September 17, 2013
A book of its time - amazing the amount of alcohol these writers drank. Fascinating insight!
March 29, 2017
Brilliant! Literary Dublin of the 1950s is masterfully evoked by Tony Cronin
April 2, 2017
Well written and interesting memoir telling of Behan, Kavanagh, Flann O'Brien and the Dublin literary scene of the 40's and 50's.
Cronin is insightful and tells it as they and he were. No one comes across too great but it seems honest which is all I wanted. Sometimes his own words get in his way but worth a read.
Cronin is insightful and tells it as they and he were. No one comes across too great but it seems honest which is all I wanted. Sometimes his own words get in his way but worth a read.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews