Review of 'Flann O’Brien: Acting Out' (2022), edited by Paul Fagan and Dieter Fuchs

Abstract

Flann O’Brien: Acting Out offers innovating and stimulating readings of O’Nolan’s textual oeuvre that consider the history of verbal and performance arts as well as the turbulent history of Ireland during the first half of the twentieth century. This historicisation dismantles critical commonplaces that view his humour as a mode of apolitical writing and of disinterested playfulness immune to statecraft and social issues. The various essays gathered in Acting Out show that O’Nolan’s fiction is attuned to civil and political issues, and that his use of literary tradition often serves his critique of socio-political realities.

Keywords

• Brian O'Nolan
• Theatre
• Affect
• Historicisation