Oliver St. John Gogarty

by Ulick O'Connor

Oliver St John Gogarty was called by Yeats 'one of the great lyric poets of the age'. Asquith thought Gogarty the wittiest man in London. His brilliant conversation was said to have the flavour of Wilde's, and exemplified the rich Dublin talk of his time. Gogarty was also skillful surgeon, a senator, a playwright, a champion athlete and swimmer, and author of two renowned books, As I Was Going Down Sackville Street and Tumbling in the Hay. He was the garrulous and flamboyant drinking companion of James Joyce, providing the character of Buck Mulligan for Ulysses, the exuberant and mocking wit who delighted George Moore, and a friend and inspiration to the man who was high priest of the Irish literary renaissance, William Butler Yeats. From his boisterous student days, through the time of the Irish Civil War, and in all his years as a successful surgeon and unrivalled conversationalist, Gogarty embodied the life of Dublin during one of its richest and most turbulent periods. Gogarty himself appointed Ulick O'Connor to be his biographer. O'Connor spent six years researching published and unpublished material, as well as collecting the reminiscences of Gogarty's many friends. The result is a surprising and intimate portrait of a great Irishman and a stirring period of Irish history.

Genres: Irish Literature

Paperback

First published January 7, 2011

About the author

Ulick O'Connor was an Irish writer, historian and critic.

Reviews

[False · Rating 3 out of 5]

I entered this book on Goodreads. This is a first edition of the life of Oliver St. John Gogarty. Gogarty attended Royal University (now University College, Dublin), where he was a fellow student of James Joyce. (He later appeared in Joyce’s Ulysses as the character Buck Mulligan, an identification that he heartily disliked and that proved to be a lifelong irritant to him. He did not take Joyce seriously as an artist.) Gogarty practiced as a surgeon and throat specialist in Dublin, where he became acquainted with W.B. Yeats, George Moore, George Russell (AE), and other leaders of the renaissance. Gogarty wrote the entertaining memoirs As I Was Going Down Sackville Street (1937), Tumbling in the Hay (1939), and It Isn’t This Time of Year at All (1954). I had ordered a book, not by him, because when I received this from the library, I couldn't figure out why. I went back through the bibliography and did some online research and while I thought, "His time must certainly be past, despite his knowing luminaries of his era, including Yeats (he thought he was a better poet than Yeats.) I also discovered there is a pub in Dublin, Ireland named the Oliver St. John Gogarty. As for the book and his life? I'm the wrong person to ask since I received this as a mistake. A lot about his medical practice, which bounced back between London and Dublin. His poetry. His controlling temperament, never attractive and the famous and infamous he hung out with over a rebellious time in Irish history.

[Nick Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oliver St John Gogarty, scion of a wealthy Dublin family, was not content to live off his family's money or reputation. Gogarty became famous as being the model for James Joyce's 'stately, plump Buck Mulligan', who steps out of Joyce's world and into the wider world in the first sentence of the legendary Ulysses, but he was so much more than that: he was truly one of Ireland's greatest men, and, like Parnell, his flaws only seem to underline his greatness.

First of all, I sometimes don't get Gogarty's objection to being the model for Buck Mulligan. Whether Joyce meant it or not, the portrayal of Mulligan is quite affectionate, and quite heroic. Gogarty's lightning-sharp wit is well put over in Ulysses - and yes, its non-stop nature does make Mulligan/Gogarty seem a bit tedious at times, but young men are often like that. I'd much rather have spent a night out with Mulligan than with Stephen Dedalus. If Mulligan/Gogarty is pictured abandoning Stephen/Joyce to the rest of his drunken night out alone, then, again, what of it? Stuff like that happens on drunken nights out. I imagine Gogarty didn't object to his portrayal in Ulysses for too long, anyway - I think he'd have seen the funny side. He had other things in his life to distract him, both pleasant and frivolous, and serious things too.

(I'm a bit puzzled that, in his bibliography at the end of the book, Ulick O'Connor included Joyce's Portait of the Artist, but not Ulysses. He also included Joyce's brother Stanislaus' biography of JJ, My Brother's Keeper. Weird.)

Gogarty was, as Mulligan was, a medical student when Joyce knew him. His other antics and talents got in the way of his medical studies, and delayed his doctorate for a few years, but he then went on to be one of the UK's most eminent surgeons; expert, innovative, and kindly to his charges. He was a sportsman, a bike racer and a swimmer, and indeed, like Mulligan, 'saved men from drowning', and on several occasions. He was a scholar, well versed in the languages and literature of the Classics. He was also a poet, both of bawdy doggerel and sensitive, fine poetry, a prose writer of some standing, and one of Dublin's renowned wits. He was also a bon-viveur, who took his food and his wine and his cars seriously. He was a brave man, who extricated himself out of an almost certain execution by armed men during the Irish Civil War by jumping into the Liffey river and swimming away from them, marking his good fortune every year thereafter with a gift - in typical eccentic Gogarty style - of swans to Dublin City, and its river. He was also, finally, a good husband and father.

Gogarty's courage was not only of the face-to-face variety. He was severely critical of the de Valera government, while at the same time agreeing to work with it as much as he could for the greater good of his country. You can only imagine the bitterness he must have felt, though, at having to deal with the men who killed his friend Michael Collins so brutally, and who burned down his own house in their sometimes vindictive campaign against friend and foe alike.

It's difficult to find anything more to say about him here. Ulick O'Connor was almost as much of an all-round man himself, cut from the same cloth as men like Gogarty. He wrote biographies of many Irish authors, and contributed significantly to Ireland's cultural life. He writes competently and with expertise - the prose seems a little dated, at times (this was published in 1963) but renders Gogarty's life wonderfully. O'Connor knows how to write about his subjects, and when, for example, he deals with the Easter Rising and the Irish Civil War, it is genuinely thrilling. I'm looking forward to reading more of his work.

[Aimée · Rating 3 out of 5]

My grandmother was a Gogarty, and we have traced our family tree to him. My dad has been in contact with these distant cousins. We discovered what a character Gogarty was, and have been eager to learn more. While in Ireland as a chaperone on a school trip last year, we went to the Oliver St. John Gogarty Pub, which is where we purchased this book. It was so exciting! I've been eager to read it, but had to wait for both parents to finish it.

I loved reading about the man himself. I think if I was reading this from a scholarly point of view, I would have given it a higher rating. But to be honest, I wanted a glimpse into my family's history. And I got it, but it was mixed in with a lot of information about his peers. That was nice bonus information, but not what I was looking for.

However, it was well done, and I truly enjoyed reading it.

[Erin]

...really quite a fascinating read. Gogarty is the model for Buck Mulligan in Joyce's Ulysses. Some of the biographical info here is endlessly helpful in deciphering the dialogue at the beginning of Ulysses. Read this with a critical eye, however. O'Connor writes with highly biased language in favor of Gogarty, making him seem like a quiet, humble hero that, after all of his charitable, honorable deeds, is sorely abused and betrayed by his unflattering portrait as Buck Mulligan - which is all highly subjective and personal, of course. Still, an interesting read even without any knowledge of Ulysses.