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Further Cuttings From Cruiskeen Lawn
-- Paperback original.
-- First U.S. edition. British publication by Hart-Davis, McGibbon Ltd ('76).
-- A companion to The Best of Myles, Further Cuttings culls more scathing selections from Cruiskeen Lawn, Flann O'Brien's column in the Irish Times written under the pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen.
-- This volume covers the years 1947-1957 and finds O'Brien's alter ego clashing with the law on numerous charges, including larceny, using bad language, and marrying without the consent of his parents. It also includes several bizarre obituaries, witty criticisms of George Bernard Shaw, Sean O' Faolain, and other literary figures, the return of the preposterous Brother, and the first article ever ascribed to Myles (published in 1940).
-- First U.S. edition. British publication by Hart-Davis, McGibbon Ltd ('76).
-- A companion to The Best of Myles, Further Cuttings culls more scathing selections from Cruiskeen Lawn, Flann O'Brien's column in the Irish Times written under the pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen.
-- This volume covers the years 1947-1957 and finds O'Brien's alter ego clashing with the law on numerous charges, including larceny, using bad language, and marrying without the consent of his parents. It also includes several bizarre obituaries, witty criticisms of George Bernard Shaw, Sean O' Faolain, and other literary figures, the return of the preposterous Brother, and the first article ever ascribed to Myles (published in 1940).
189 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
About the author
Flann O'Brien
66 books825 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
November 12, 2012
The Best of Myles is the only Myles na gCopaleen collection needed in one’s personal library, end of discussion, rubber-stamp it, commit it to posterity, do it and dust it. This edition and its non-Dalkey partner The Hair of the Dogma mop up morsels from the Cruiskeen Lawn columns that might be of some interest to the reader jonesing for historical Irish trivia or who can’t get enough of Myles’s hilarious but eventually tiresomely wacky voice. I can imagine how exciting flicking through The Irish Times and arriving at Myles’s column would have been circa 1940-1966—here, the effect is diluted through a surfeit of out-of-date material on Irish politics, topical debates and other parochial concerns or esoteric oddities. In other words, all the best material is in The Best of Myles. Clue’s in the name.
May 9, 2021
Brian O'Nolan's newspaper writing is hilarious and deserves to be read just as much as his novels.
July 22, 2010
Recommended for O'Brien completists. This is a collection of some of his newspaper column writings under his faux-identity Myles na gaCopaleen.
July 25, 2024
A fine collection of sardonic satires from a seldom discussed but important part of Flann O'Brien literally output.
September 17, 2022
If you have already read "The Best of Myles", then all that you need to know it that this is additional material from Flann O'Brien's "Cruiskeen Lawn" column. If you have not read "the Best of Myles", you should go read "The Best of Myles".
With that out of the way, I have time to lay out one of my great ideas. Every time I read a copy of Forbes Magazine they seem to be adding to the list of billionaires in the world. We seem to be overrun with them. I have a proposal, which I offer free of charge, to any one of those billionaires.
A billionaire should finance the publication of a annotated complete twenty six year run of Flann O'Brien's "Cruiskeen Lawn" newspaper column in The Irish Times. Each day's column should be reproduced as printed. When necessary to follow O'Brien's references to other article on the page, the whole page should be reproduced. All of the Gaelic should be translated in notes at the bottom of the page. All of the names, except the most obvious, should be annotated. References to obscure Irish political spats should be explained in the notes. Judicious commentary, including cross references to other columns dealing with the same issue, should be included.
I suggest that a web site be established. The columns should be posted chronologically. Fans could look forward to a "new" column every day. The columns could then be published in yearly books with appropriate introductions and indexes.
First class scholars would need to be hired. I don't have a good feeling for the market, but I would guess you could get an excellent head of the project for no more than $200K/year. An accomplished assistant plus an admin could run around $150K. If we were lucky, this could be affiliated with a University which would provide offices. If not, say $250K/yr for office and supplies. I would hope that the O'Brien estate and the The Irish Times would not want royalties for this non-profit scholarly project. The whole thing could be done for less than $1M/year.
For a million a year a billionaire will earn a permanent place in English Literary History. Naming rights would be included. It would be "The (Your Name Here) Cruiskeen Lawn Project." A million a year won't get a chemistry lab named after you at Harvard. A million a year will get you invited to White House dinners, but down at the wrong end of the table. A million a year won't get a new garage entrance named after you at a major teaching hospital.
This is the best bang for a buck that a billionaire can get for a measly $1M/year. Your name will be mentioned every time great comic writing is discussed and you are making a ground breaking contribution to the large portion of mankind who enjoy laughing.
With that out of the way, I have time to lay out one of my great ideas. Every time I read a copy of Forbes Magazine they seem to be adding to the list of billionaires in the world. We seem to be overrun with them. I have a proposal, which I offer free of charge, to any one of those billionaires.
A billionaire should finance the publication of a annotated complete twenty six year run of Flann O'Brien's "Cruiskeen Lawn" newspaper column in The Irish Times. Each day's column should be reproduced as printed. When necessary to follow O'Brien's references to other article on the page, the whole page should be reproduced. All of the Gaelic should be translated in notes at the bottom of the page. All of the names, except the most obvious, should be annotated. References to obscure Irish political spats should be explained in the notes. Judicious commentary, including cross references to other columns dealing with the same issue, should be included.
I suggest that a web site be established. The columns should be posted chronologically. Fans could look forward to a "new" column every day. The columns could then be published in yearly books with appropriate introductions and indexes.
First class scholars would need to be hired. I don't have a good feeling for the market, but I would guess you could get an excellent head of the project for no more than $200K/year. An accomplished assistant plus an admin could run around $150K. If we were lucky, this could be affiliated with a University which would provide offices. If not, say $250K/yr for office and supplies. I would hope that the O'Brien estate and the The Irish Times would not want royalties for this non-profit scholarly project. The whole thing could be done for less than $1M/year.
For a million a year a billionaire will earn a permanent place in English Literary History. Naming rights would be included. It would be "The (Your Name Here) Cruiskeen Lawn Project." A million a year won't get a chemistry lab named after you at Harvard. A million a year will get you invited to White House dinners, but down at the wrong end of the table. A million a year won't get a new garage entrance named after you at a major teaching hospital.
This is the best bang for a buck that a billionaire can get for a measly $1M/year. Your name will be mentioned every time great comic writing is discussed and you are making a ground breaking contribution to the large portion of mankind who enjoy laughing.
January 17, 2011
Having meant to get around to this semi-legendary Irish author for some time, this might not have been the best place to start. The second-best collection of incidental writings, culled from a pseudonymous column for the Irish Times in the mid-20th century, the topics include the ever-popular satirizing smug and complacent lower-middle class pub-goers and their various prejudices, squabbles with educational authorities and other journalists, and so on. Not laugh out loud funny - more an endless succession of puns and wordplay, impressive erudition in the form of lengthy passages in Latin and Irish Gaelic with snippets of Greek, French and German and the like. His actual beliefs, when they can be discerned, on the position of women in society and so on, may sound a bit old-fashioned to current ears. There is cover praise from S.J. Perelman, who I will freely admit I hardly know, and I'm also reminded that Dick Cavett's recent pieces for the New York Times seem a bit dated, even though he's just written them - humor is a funny business! On to the novels.
August 9, 2013
I stole these two paragraphs from something someone wrote out there on Amazon. The original piece that I stole these two paragraphs from was longer, more positive and a bit more upbeat:
Apparently the columns in the Irish language only were transposed into English, yet we are left with large passages in Irish, fragments in Latin, and in fact an entire column in Latin and other languages as well. If such a polyglot nature does not alarm you but rather inspires you to translation left entirely on your own, this is the book for you.
Not only do we find this in several tongues, with no support, with no notes, not even biographical of those historical figures mentioned, and purposefully undated, but also arranged by this collection's editor by an artificially imposed scheme of "themes" not original to the author, whose modus operandi involved a greatly varied style from day to day, always a surprise, a large part of the charm. Here we get bogged down in themes, and thus, fatally for humor, near repetitions, especially in the courtroom sequences.
Apparently the columns in the Irish language only were transposed into English, yet we are left with large passages in Irish, fragments in Latin, and in fact an entire column in Latin and other languages as well. If such a polyglot nature does not alarm you but rather inspires you to translation left entirely on your own, this is the book for you.
Not only do we find this in several tongues, with no support, with no notes, not even biographical of those historical figures mentioned, and purposefully undated, but also arranged by this collection's editor by an artificially imposed scheme of "themes" not original to the author, whose modus operandi involved a greatly varied style from day to day, always a surprise, a large part of the charm. Here we get bogged down in themes, and thus, fatally for humor, near repetitions, especially in the courtroom sequences.
February 1, 2012
The organization of this book is stupid, but otherwise, I really liked it. Yes, there are sections that are a bit tedious (one reviewer said it's due to being the earlier stuff, which I understand), but still really entertaining. Also, it includes the first ever Myles column!
Also, it deserves five stars for the hilarious face-off between Myles and Reverend Alfred O'Rahilly somewhere near the end. Relevant excerpt: "I was reading Kubla Khan in the library of the dower house in Santry Great Park the other evening and the thought came to me that we might call the Doctor merely Alph the Sacred Raver." Golden.
Also, it deserves five stars for the hilarious face-off between Myles and Reverend Alfred O'Rahilly somewhere near the end. Relevant excerpt: "I was reading Kubla Khan in the library of the dower house in Santry Great Park the other evening and the thought came to me that we might call the Doctor merely Alph the Sacred Raver." Golden.
September 4, 2013
Бурливый горшочек вновь кипит и перекипает. Здесь вновь появляются Брат и Зануды + присутствуют искрометные пьяные беседы в пабе абсолютно ни о чем и масса вброшенных мимоходом совершенно пинчоноидных острот и словесных шуток (в т.ч. графических). И потоки яда изливаются на благоглупости этих претенциозных графоманов, Шона О'Фаолейна и Фрэнка О'Коннора, больших, надо сказать, друзей советского союза, от которых в книжных магазинах было не продохнуть: это просто бальзам на душу. Появляется и новый персонаж - Архитекторы! В основном же в томе представлен пламенный журнализм - великолепные флеймы, массированный троллинг и роскошные телеги. Нынешним амебам только и учиться бы.
February 24, 2010
Nowhere near as good as "At War". This seems to be earlier stuff so I can understand it being weaker, but the format of the book does it no favors. The arrangement makes no sense: where "At War" is a chronological set of newspaper columns, this is organized into broad sections depending on what kind of rant it is.
The highlight comes in the first piece, which includes a long, apparently humorous, dialog in Gaelic. Rather than providing a translation, the nerds who compiled the book explained the joke.
The highlight comes in the first piece, which includes a long, apparently humorous, dialog in Gaelic. Rather than providing a translation, the nerds who compiled the book explained the joke.
September 27, 2025
Brian O'Nolan (Irish: Brian Ó Nualláin) under the pseudonym, Myles na Gopaleen wrote a famous column in the Irish Times from 1940 to 1966. "Further Cuttings from Cruiskeen Lawn" as well as the first volume, "The Best of Myles" demonstrate remarkable humor, satire, story telling that is purely Irish in its truly glorious use of language. Under another pseudonym, Flan O'Brien, he wrote four comic novels in English, and a famous work in Irish, translated as "The Poor Mouth." Under whatever name he chose, he is one of the greatest comic writers of the 20th Century.
November 16, 2008
This second collection of Myles na gCopaleen's newspaper columns for the Irish Times is too slender and a bit weak compared to the essential work in "The Best of Myles", but it's still worth reading.
February 21, 2013
A little rocky the first half, not his best stuff - then, some of the most vicious, brilliant satire in the second, particularly of academics.
January 18, 2016
genius selection of columns from flann.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews