THE REAL-life Brian O’Nolan is not known ever to have visited Vienna, where a conference to mark his centenary began this week. But the possibility that his ghost is presiding over proceedings in the Austrian capital cannot, at this stage of the investigations, be ruled out.
Posters for the 100 Mylesconference feature the image of a bicycle with a man's shadow: a reference to the writer's famous molecular theory, whereby prolonged interaction between bikes and humans gives rise to mutual personality transfers.
On which theme, Paul Fagan, the Vienna-based Irishman who suggested the event, regaled guests at Monday’s opening ceremony with the curious tale of his own bicycle, stolen earlier this year.
A suspect for the theft had since been arrested. But with doubly uncanny timing, the Vienna police wrote to the owner on June 16th – Bloomsday – to say that the case would be in court on July 25th: the opening day of the Myles symposium.
The bike (yet to be recovered) “was a big part of me”, Fagan added, and if Flann O’Brien (the pseudonym used by O’Nolan) is to be believed, the reverse was true too. And the really disturbing possibility was that the bicycle had now also become mixed up with the thief. “In which case,” Fagan concluded, “even as we speak, a part of me may be on trial elsewhere in this city for the theft of my own bike.” Whatever about the little-travelled O’Nolan, the conference has shown how far his writings – long thought to be a uniquely Irish interest – have spread.
The head of the University of Vienna’s English department, Prof Margarete Rubik, spoke of her pride in hosting what is the first international O’Nolan symposium. But the organisers said the extent of interest from Europe and the rest of the world had already justified their “gamble” and also made the case for an annual event.
Speakers so far have included Austrian film director and novelist Kurt Palm, who made the first and still only feature-film version of a novel by Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds, and German writer and actor Harry Rowohlt.
Rowohlt played Finn MacCool in Palm's film, while being best known in his home country for his part in Lindenstrasse– the German equivalent of Coronation Street.
He is also, however, a prolific translator of writers ranging from Leonard Cohen to Ernest Hemingway.
In which capacity, he described the difficulties of rendering such details as the title of At Swim-Two-Birdsin German, although he equally insisted that certain parts of the book, including the poem A Pint of Plain is Your Only Man, sound much better in German than the original.
Academic contributors have also included Jon Day of Oxford University, who argued that digital technology potentially allows new generations to experience O'Nolan's long-running Irish Timescolumn, Cruiskeen Lawn, in exactly the way it was originally written, complete with daily context and intertextual cross-references.
He looked forward to the creation of a “Wiki-Lawn” version, free of the limitations imposed on collections of the column by the traditional book format.
The conference continued last night with a two-man show on The Science of Flann O'Brien. It ends later today with a talk by O'Nolan's friend and biographer Anthony Cronin.