Word: coonassa
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Dates: during 1976-1976
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...Poor Mouth ("edited" by na Gopaleen) to The Best of Myles, it's an open question whether Myles isn't the best of O'Nolan. The Gaelic novel is not only written for and of the Gales, but also purports to be by one-a certain Bonaparte O'Coonassa. But the credit transparently belongs to Myles, the columnist concerned about the so-called preservation of Gaelic Ireland, and the satirist who could mock things Gaelic as he lamented their passing, even making fun of his own concerns. All simultaneously, and in the language of the issue, the "Gaeltacht...
...book, Bonaparte, on his way to prison, Finds His Father and Recognizes Him--as every Irish hero since Telemachus and Daedalus has done. O'Coonassa has no trouble; he recognizes his father by his poverty, his fate (he is leaving the prison) and his name-Jams O'Donnell. But The Poor Mouth is as much pretence as plaint. In Gaelic putting on the poor mouth means complaining (according to the dictionary) and feigning suffering to get the advantage in a deal. O'Nolan's humour is as elusive and many-faceted as his name, but The Poor Mouth hides...
...folk in Corkadoragha", a remote "Gaeltacht". Though in the preface to the first edition, "The Editor" cautions that Corkadoragha is "without compare" and not to be taken as representative of the Gaelic community as a whole, in fact the town where the author-narrator of An Beal Bocht, O'Coonassa, was born and lived, does stand for all the Gaeltacht of West Ireland that O'Coonassa can see from his "small, lime-white and unhealthy house situated in the corner of the glen": from the bare Rosses and Tory Iland "like a great ship where the sky dips into...
...Coonassa relates the story of his life in a succession of hilarious vignettes, beginning with his birth, which took place in a time and place when things "Gaelic" traditionally occur: "the middle of the night in the end of the house." Darkness, and the pigs and people lying in the rushes in the end of the house create the atmosphere of the novel throughout. The pigs, especially, make atmosphere; one chapter describes a near-fatal smothering of the O'Coonassa family due to the smell of the pigs, "and a certain Ambrose, in particular...
...Coonassa bemoans the passing of Gaelic tradition in the same breath as he describes the "Gaelic misery" that that tradition mean. Such phrases of lament parody the writings of self-styled "Gaelic" authors, cliche-ridden and whining. The mix of serious statement, humourous presentation, and learned parody characterizes Myles' satire. Though O'Coonassa writes his story "to provide some testimony of the diversions and advintures of our times...because our types will never be there again," a great deal of the book pokes fun at the Gaeligores who come to study Corkadoragha-but leave because the reality of tempest, poverty...
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