Flann O’Brien’s Creative Loophole

Abstract

Flann O’Brien (1911-1966) began his career as a novelist in 1939 with the publication of At Swim-Two-Birds. Since then, his first novel has generally been considered by far his finest work. In 1940, O’Brien’s second novel, The Third Policeman, was rejected by several publishers and O’Brien temporally ceased to write novels. He devoted twenty-one years to writing his long-running newspaper column Cruiskeen Lawn, apart from several theatre and TV plays. In 1961 he began to write novels again with the publication of The Hard Life and three years later, in 1964, he published The Dalkey Archive. Although his last two novels enjoyed positive reception, for many years critics and audience alike have thought that they could not be compared to At Swim-Two-Birds. It has been argued that O’Brien started to lose his creativity as a writer from the 1940s onwards due to a number of reasons. This article aims at assessing the question of creativity in Flann O’Brien and at trying to provide some answers by looking at several external and personal circumstances in his career as a writer.