Brian O'Nolan wrote a good deal about James Joyce's "Ulysses", either in his Myles na gCopaleen columns, his non-fiction, or obliquely in his Flann O'Brien novels. For #Ulysses100 this thread shares these pieces, in which he by turns teases, praises & analyses Joyce's masterpiece
Myles often turns to his copy of "Ulysses" when reflecting on topics ranging from foot and mouth disease to the Irish Tourist board, quoting extensively from his favourite passages with commentary ("Note the delicacy of Joyce's ommission of the query mark here") #Ulysses100
In his 22 August 22 1956 column "J.J. & US", Myles na Gopaleen discusses his supposed plans to translate "Ulysses" into Irish #Ulysses100
The 1951 Envoy Joyce issue opened with Nolan's editorial A Bash in the Tunnel, which declares Joyce's "works are a garden in which some of us may play. All that we can claim to know is merely a small bit of that garden. But at the end Joyce will still be in his tunnel, unabashed"
In his column "J-Day", to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloomsday, Myles notes "the utterly ignored fact that Joyce was among the most comic writers who have ever lived. Every time I get influenza I read about The Citizen and his Dog; penicillin has nothing on them." #Ulysses100
In The Dalkey Archive, James Joyce, having survived the war, is discovered alive and well, serving pints in Skerries and lamenting Sylvia Beach's "mad scheme" to have a "dirty book..named 'Ulysses' concocted, secretly circulated and have the authorship ascribed to me" #Ulysses100
"I disagree with the people who think that 'Ulysses' is a 'difficult' or obscure work, but its mental ingestion in full calls for intelligence, maturity and some knowledge of life as well of letters"
(Myles na Gopaleen, "Censorship", The Irish Times, 9 February 1956) #Ulysses100
Brian O'Nolan at the first Bloomsday celebrations, on 16 June 1954, with Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin, A.J. Leventhal, and Tom Joyce. The day was photographed by Elinor O’Brien and filmed by John Ryan:
#Ulysses100
On 16 June 1962, Flann O'Brien published 'Enigma', an article in The Irish Times written to mark the opening of the Sandycove Tower as a museum. He praises J as "a superb comic writer" with an "uncanny accuracy in recording the idiom and idiosyncracy of Dublin speech" #Ulysses100
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