Mirth & Misery

DUBLIN — Mention his name--or, rather, any of the three names he used--and it is like one of those codes used by secret societies. If you get a blank stare, you know you're dealing with one of the uninitiated. But if there is an immediate smile (always a smile), you know you're in the company of a fellow member, another admirer of Brian O'Nolan, or Flann O'Brien, or Myles na Gopaleen.

A good case can be made that after James Joyce, Myles (the name Dubliners use) was Ireland's greatest modern writer. But even though all his books remain in print 32 years after his death, he is not well-known outside his native country.

Now, however, a penetrating biography by Anthony Cronin, "No Laughing Matter" (Fromm International, 1998), is raising interest in Myles' life and in his work as the author of five novels and a remarkable newspaper column that ran for 26 years and endures in three collections.

A new edition of his first novel, "At Swim-Two-Birds," was published last week by Dalkey Archive Press. In March, the only film based on his fiction was shown at the Dublin Film Festival. The screening sold out, forcing a move to a larger theater, and it sold out. That the first cinematic expression of this quintessentially Irish work was made by an Austrian, in German, titled "In Schimmen-Swei-Vogel," would make perfect sense in Myles' world.

All his work glows not just with euphoric language, but with deadpan hilarity and a commitment to irreverence driven by skepticism of anything remotely serious or somber. ("If university education were universally available and availed of," he wrote, "the country would collapse in one generation.")

But the biography reveals this writer of splendid comedy to be essentially a sad man of many gloomy demons, not least his firm belief in Manichaeism, the ancient philosophy that human life is a battleground of Good versus Evil and that the latter always has fresh troops.

Myles took a well-developed Irish pleasure in bitterness. Much of it was directed at himself: He systematically drank himself to death, seven months shy of his 55th birthday.

On a recent mild Saturday afternoon, Cronin--who was a friend and drinking companion of Myles'--came to the Westbury Hotel here to speak about him. It was a First Communion Saturday in Ireland, and the hotel's spacious upstairs lounge was packed with celebrating families. Cronin suggested the bar and settled in for talk and coffee.