The Sheila Variations

Happy birthday to Brendan Behan

Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in. -- Brendan Behan

Brendan Behan, Irish playwright, Irish terrorist, was born on this day, in Dublin, in 1923. He led a life of poverty, violence, controversy, and seemingly aimless wandering. He spent time in jail. He drank like a fish. He had trouble getting published in Ireland (so he was in a grand continuum of other Irish writers who faced similar censorship issues). Behan was raised in a staunchly Republican family. His father was involved in the Easter uprising. Behan was Catholic (of course) - but not by name only. He was a true believer. As a teenager, he got involved with the IRA which led to his imprisonment. And, like many other great writers who spent a lot of time in prison, he began to write during his long incarceration. Here's some biographical information on the man. What a writer.

"Never throw stones at your mother,
You'll be sorry for it when she's dead,
Never throw stones at your mother,
Throw bricks at your father instead."

-- Brendan Behan, "The Hostage", 1958

Here's an excerpt from The Hostage, a play I absolutely LOVE. I highly recommend his stuff, if you aren't familiar with it.

When we were in Ireland as a family, my dad took us to the writer's museum in Dublin (which is a must-see - to anyone who visits there. It's like going to the Vatican of artists. Nobody is more dominant in the written word than Irish writers. Who knows why that is - but it doesn't even matter why. The museum is great. Even as a kid I appreciated it, especially because I grew up being surrounded by these old Irish authors, on my dad's bookshelves. I hadn't READ any of the books, but people like Flann O'Brien and Brendan Behan and Francis Stewart and WB Yeats were a part of the warp and weft of our family. We had a big picture of Brendan Behan in our living room - it was interesting: it was a drawing of his big bloated meaty face - and it was all done in one line, with the pen never lifting from the page.) Anyway, I still remember our visit to the museum and seeing Behan's battered typewriter under glass. I didn't even know who he was, as a writer - I just knew that he was on our living room wall. So he was omnipresent.

He also sounds like he would have been a helluva lot of fun to hang out with. He famously said, "I am a drinker with writing problems."

His cynicism about the Irish and Ireland borders on the psychotic at times. "If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks," he snarled - but he also said, "It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody." In my opinion it is his cynicsm that makes his work so exciting to read. It palpitates on the page. His feelings and judgments tremble before you. He lives in his words. He is unforgiving. Yet also so so funny. A typically Irish combination. If you just have the unforgiving attitude, you'll be a rather humorless writer, a propagandist. Behan was a riot.

Here is an entire page devoted to funny Brendan Behan anecdotes. Great anecdotes!

So happy birthday, to a wonderful Irish writer, a man I grew up with. He was not outside our family. He was on our wall. He was one of us. As an adult, I finally read all of his plays and realized what the fuss was all about. He's fantastic.

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