Brendan Behan

Never read the books or plays, but I like the song 'The Old Triangle'.

But his brother Dominic wrote some better ones. McAlpine's Fusiliers (Oh mother dear I'm over here and I'm never coming back, What keeps me here is the rake of beer, the ladies, and the crack) and The Patriot Game (which has the same tune as Dylan's God on our Side).

And their uncle Peadar Kearney wrote Down by the Liffeyside (yerra John come on for a wan and wan) and the Irish National Anthem (which is rubbish)

This looks like a post to ILM. Anyway, Pecker Dunne's version of McAlpine's Fusiliers is well worth your while.

So: maybe MUSIC is key to Behan?

I state the obvious. But he is known as a dhramatiste, after all, not a compooser.

I like the way 'The Old Triangle' punctuates The Quare Fellow - which I have come to think is his best work. It is funny to read it and be instantly confronted with the Pogues echo.

My A level English teacher used to tell a Dickensian joke, the punchline of which was: "Dom Behan's son!". I know nothing of Brendan.

There is another brother, BRIAN, who wrote a buik (there) called THE BROTHERS BEHAN. In its index the word Behan appears not once.

A view or two for restarters.

THE QUARE FELLOW is poignant, effective, structured, maybe even polemical, and draws well on real experience to make drama.

THE HOSTAGE is uneven, cooked by too many ladles maybe, yet still full of good morsels. It seems to me to mix the Irish stage tradition with a very progressive-British 1950s-1960s thing via Joan Littlewood -- all of which I suppose begins to explain why it reminds me of Morrissey.

RICHARD'S CORK LEG is surprisingly OK, so far.

BORSTAL BOY is surprisingly flat and lame, as writing, I'm sorry to say. Odd, when it took so long to finish.

CONFESSIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL and AFTER THE WAKE I may yet report back on.

Tell me if I have missed something important. Oh, the short plays - I may report back on them also.

(Vicar to thread!)

Brian also wrote a book called Mother of all the Behans about, unsurprisingly, their mother.

uh oh. i bought borstal boy yesterday from a used-book table. that's a ringing endorsement.

Borstal Boy is great. Don't worry that you found it on a used book table.
Most people in Dublin do not read Behan, or see his plays, but almost everyone has a story about him. He has become a legend. I wonder if, in fifty years time, people will stop reading and seeing his stuff altogether and will he become a Duberlin myth like Bang Bang. I'm sure that if Behan actually took all the money from people that they claim he did, he'd have been a millionaire.

no, i meant the pf's comments: "surprisingly flat and lame." i love the used book table and would never cast aspersions.
i should just get going with the book and see what i think, instead of staring at it and wondering.

I have tried to locate a copy of Brendan's brother Brian's Brothers Behan, but can't, locally at least.

When you go to that prison in Dublin they tell you something about Behan, but I can't remember what. That's if you can hear the guide over the obligatory German going on about how good the Baader-Meinhoff gang was.

Miller is so droll, in his way.

Accentmonkey's post reminds of Hopkins' good point.

I have that Brothers Behan buik, from a library. It has pages of gags. A bit like the Young Ones' book, BACHELOR BOYS.

My BORSTAL BOY was cheap also, but not as cheap as, and in better condition than, my CONFESSIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL. Lauren, you must tell us what you think, about it, some time.

I am now reading his stories, AFTER THE WAKE, which I think are an improvement, on the memoir. I have now, at last, read all his drama in English. Phew.

Now that you mention short stories, I'm fairly sure there was a Behan one on the short-story list we did for our Intermediate Certificate.
It was about the day he got his Confirmation, I think, but I can't remember anything else about it.

I'm thinkin it was THE CONFIRMATION SUIT which is 10 pp long.

Among the best ever commentators on BB turns out to be ... COLIN MACINNES!

I have written some words on him, now. You'll see. There will be more, whence they came.

these words... where?

Only on my computer, now.

I want someone to read them, for me, soon.

Today I finished the Myles one, too!

Can I read them, Foxy?

Yes.

They're not thrilling: they are just supposed to give information to a wide readership. They do contain some information, and quite a lot of OPINION, re. what is good and what's not so good.

But I will mail them to you, Sister Disco.

PS / I did - and Sister Disco's comments had major FX on the finished text!

That reminds me, I've still got a couple of Fox Things to read. I am definitley well jealous of Jerry the Nipper's biggy-up.

I am glad: I thought you thought it was gay.

Borstal Boy is a great book. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't think so. I am looking for information on Brendan Behan for a possible webpage, in case anyone has anything. I need photos and anecdotes. Send them to me here, if you'd like to help:

webmaker02@yahoo.com

Thanks.

J.D.

I wonder what my good point might have been, in the summer of 2004.

I read "The Scarperer" recently, which was better than I was expecting it to be, from time to time it was knocking on the door of deft. Then I read a bit of "Brendan Behan's New York" which is a dreadful book, sadly.

I wonder whether the first time I was became aware of BB was listening to the first Pogues LP? Perhaps it was. I wonder which pop stars are inspriring what fans to read what, these days.

I'm sorry, JD, I don't have any pictures, apart from a postcard sent to me from Dublin recently. And I don't have any anecdotes, either, apart from I once got drunk in MacDaids, next to a photograph of BB. Close, on two counts, but no cigar. At least not in MacDaids any more.

I suppose what this website needs is the exchange of emails on the subject of not being able to physically write your own work between myself and The Pinefox.

I think I was excessively lenient, at the time. Lax, even.

Some would say that Behan is one of the best Irish Writers, I say he is the best. Contrary to his public persona, his writing, at its best, conveys the brighter and gentler side of human spirit. As he himself said " I realised that people are n't orange or Green, but just simply people."
Preab San Ol (another round!)

JG

"I realised that people aren't Orange or Green, but just simply people."

Now there's a thought for the ages. Profound - that's what it is - in the way that the sight of a man's toes becomes profound, when he's grown so fat that he cannot see them without lying on the flat of his back and struggling to lift up his feet above the belly-occluded line of his vision.