Flann O’Brien’s Anti-Manifestos
One of the greatest challenges presented by the writings of Flann O’Brien is how to place them. For some he is the peer of Joyce and Beckett; for others his work is modernist pastiche; still others regard him as a reactionary satirist; while for another group he is the forerunner of American postmod...
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| In: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/erea, |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Language: | Anglais |
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E-rea
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Summary: | One of the greatest challenges presented by the writings of Flann O’Brien is how to place them. For some he is the peer of Joyce and Beckett; for others his work is modernist pastiche; still others regard him as a reactionary satirist; while for another group he is the forerunner of American postmodernism. His work is often loosely labelled “surreal” or “absurd.” Yet O’Brien’s work is rarely read as avant-garde per se. This essay attempts to gain a new understanding of his oeuvre by reading a particular sliver of it – his manifestos – in the context of the historical avant-garde in Europe. Like many writers of his generation and the one previous, O’Brien wrote manifestos. One example is the founding editorial of the “anti-magazine” Blather (1934), whose “sardonic laugh” echoes the manifestos – or “anti-manifestos” – of Vorticism and Dada. The manifesto of intertextuality in At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), meanwhile, is more complex: while it appears to be in some ways a sincere statement about the novel as a whole, it is also intensely ironic and self-mocking. But that only deepens its relation to the manifestos of the preceding decades, which frequently undercut their own purpose in the midst of their performance. |
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