Niall Montgomery, Dublinman: Selected Writings by Christine O’Neill (review)

Abstract

children (not children as property, or even children as adults who haven’t grown up yet), is a valuable addition and can only help to open the blind eyes. For all those reasons, Children, Childhood and Irish Society will maintain a respected place on my bookshelf. Fergus Finlay is Chief Executive of the charity Barnardos in Ireland and a former senior member of the Irish Labour Party. Niall Montgomery, Dublinman: Selected Writings, Christine O’Neill (ed.) (Dublin: Ashfield Press, 2015), xiii+216 pages. This biography of Niall Montgomery (1915-87) by Christine O’Neill, is a welcome tribute, if tribute it be, to one of Dublin’s remarkable sons. He was remarkable for his knowledge of Dublin; its architecture, literature and art; remarkable for his capacity to express that knowledge in writing and speech with humour and erudition; remarkable, above all, for his own contributions to Dublin and to all of those disciplines and also, to the practice of architecture. O’Neill has succeeded in illustrating those contributions and that knowledge (while overlooking his contribution to his profession) in, what is, a short book for such a complex subject. The biography is presented in four parts with extensive and informative notes throughout. Part one, ‘The Portrait’, eighty-six pages in length, is biographical in nature with a brief CV. Part two, 100 pages, consists entirely of Montgomery’s own writings. Part three contains examples of his paintings and photographs. Part four is a bibliography and index. The whole thing is introduced by an award-winning essay written by Montgomery as a twelveyear -old student in Belvedere College. Part one is exactly what it says, a portrait. It is delivered in six subsections. In the opening subsection (his CV, family and friends), his professional career is summed up in a single paragraph and his artistic achievements in another. We are advised that his ‘first love’ was literature and in truth this portrait throughout dwells primarily on this first love, his writings and literary achievements, his literary contacts and friends, certainly not to the exclusion of all other activities but rather to their over-shadowing. ‘Dublin and Architecture’are dealt with in the second subsection and, as in the first subsection, his professional work is dealt with in a single paragraph. Spring 2017: Book Reviews 130 Studies • volume 106 • number 421 The rest of the subsection is devoted to his perspicacious comments on development in Dublin, and on the bureaucracy that controlled and directed that development – ‘all those mad gurriers from Kerry will tear the place to pieces’, as he is quoted as saying on one occasion. The third and fourth subsections are devoted to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett respectively. Both reveal Montgomery’s scholarship and internationally-acknowledged expertise, especially in the case of Joyce and his interpretation of that most difficult work Finnegans Wake. His knowledge of, and friendship with, Beckett is also recorded, including quotations from letters they exchanged. His preoccupation with Marcel Proust and his comparison between the works of Proust and Joyce is also touched upon. The broad range of Montgomery’s literary output is well covered in the last subsection, entitled ‘The Multifarious Remainder’. In this section, we are told of his relationship with Brian O’Nolan, his contributions to O’Nolan’s column, ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’, in The Irish Times, his own column in the same paper under the name ‘Rosemary Lane’, and much else besides – for example, that he was fluent in both French and Irish, as well as English, wrote poetry in these, and translated poetry from, and into, all three. The briefest (fifth) subsection, ‘Paintings, Drawings and Illustrations’, deals with Montgomery’s contribution to the visual arts. This aspect of his activities tends to be overlooked but, in truth, he had as much success in this field as many who devoted their entire lives to it. His acerbic wit and social commentary shine through in offerings such as his Traffic Light installation, while, on the other hand, many of his drawings and photographs are surprisingly simple and serene. Perhaps the saddest revelation in part one of the book is to learn that, despite his extensive oeuvre of poems, plays and prose, publishers were...