A Writer Whom Other Writers Praise

Some contemporary writers on Brian O’Nolan: “When I first read him, I was struck by the originality. The true test of originality is that there are no imitators. Writers can figure out other writers, how they do things. But no creative writer I know has truly figured out his technique. He’s not a minor novelist but one of the greatest and most important writers of the century.” --Pete Hamill

“He exposed the atmospherics of Irish life with a blade-like accuracy, the idea that everything must be continually examined and nothing, of course, is ever done. His comic vision was based on the truth that hopelessness is a certainty.” --J.P. Donleavy

“I read ‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ as a semi-student and hazy longhair in the late ‘60s. I loved the wordplay and humor.” --T. Coraghessan Boyle

“Myles’ column is amazing in that it wasn’t just funny, it was a radical form of art, blurring reality and fiction, constantly commenting on other parts of the paper. Reading Myles’ fiction in English, but even more so in Irish, is something like the joy of committing a shameful act.” --Fintan O’Toole, columnist for the Irish Times

“His humor is the humor of release. In many ways his vision is a grim one. But we laugh the laughter, at times, of embarrassment, at the absurdity and stupidity of life. He allows us to look at ourselves, and the laughter is at our own lives.” --William Gass, writer of the introduction to a new edition of “At Swim-Two-Birds”

“He is one of our century’s great masters of comic prose. Sardonic, searching, wedded to every intimacy of word and sound. “But, then, as Myles would say, here I’ve gone on too long.” --Thomas Flanagan, author of “The Year of the French,” “The Tenants of Time” and “The End of the Hunt,” a trilogy on Irish Republicanism