The Crazy Life of Brendan Behan
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Brendan Behan
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Michael Bratton rated it it was amazing Jan 15, Shullamuth Ballinger rated it really liked it Jul 09, Charlotte rated it really liked it Aug 18, Patrick J Dalton rated it it was amazing Jan 22, Sean Fitzgerald rated it liked it Aug 07, John Spinard rated it really liked it Jul 16, Leon rated it really liked it Feb 06, Nobblynobody marked it as to-read Jan 13, Sarah Kat marked it as to-read Jan 23, Yasmin marked it as to-read Mar 14, Trevor marked it as to-read Jun 11, Gert de Jager added it Sep 20, Behan's fortunes changed in with the appearance of his play The Quare Fellow —his major breakthrough at last.
Originally called The Twisting of Another Rope and influenced by his time spent in jail, it chronicles the vicissitudes of prison life leading up to the execution of "the quare fellow"—a character who is never seen. The prison dialogue is vivid and laced with satire, but reveals to the reader the human detritus that surrounds capital punishment. It was produced in the Pike Theatre in Dublin. The play ran for six months. Subsequently it transferred to the West End.
The Crazy Life of Brendan Behan: The Rise and Fall of Dublin's Laughing Boy
The English, relatively unaccustomed to public drunkenness in authors, took him to their hearts. A fellow guest on the show, Irish-American actor Jackie Gleason , reportedly said about the incident: Behan loved the story of how, walking along the street in London shortly after this episode, a Cockney approached him and exclaimed that he understood every word he had said—drunk or not—but had not a clue what "that bugger Muggeridge was on about! The transfer of the play to Broadway provided Behan with international recognition.
She remained a supporter, visiting him in Dublin in Reminiscent of Frank O'Connor's Guests of the Nation , it portrays the detention, in a teeming Dublin house in the late s, of a British conscript soldier seized by the IRA as a hostage pending the scheduled execution in Northern Ireland of an imprisoned IRA volunteer. The hostage falls in love with an Irish convent girl, Teresa, working as a maid in the house.
The Crazy Life of Brendan Behan - Google Книги
Their innocent world of love is incongruous among their surroundings—the house also serves as a brothel. In the end, the hostage dies accidentally during a bungled police raid, revealing the human cost of war—a universal suffering. The subsequent English-language version The Hostage , reflecting Behan's own translation from the Irish, but also much influenced by Joan Littlewood during a troubled collaboration with Behan, is a bawdy, slapstick play that adds a number of flamboyantly gay characters and bears only a limited resemblance to the original Irish language version.
His autobiographical novel Borstal Boy followed in An original voice in Irish literature boomed out from its pages.
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The language is both acerbic and delicate, the portrayal of inmates and "screws" cerebral. For a Republican, though, it is not a vitriolic attack on Britain; it delineates Behan's move away from violence. In one account an inmate strives to entice Behan in chanting political slogans with him. Behan curses and damns him in his mind, hoping he would cease his rantings-hardly the sign of a troublesome prisoner.
By the end the idealistic boy rebel emerges as a realistic young man who recognises the truth: Kenneth Tynan , the s literary critic said: He learned to speak Irish at the home of the Nolan family in the Gaeltacht area of Galway in the late s. Drs Sinead and Maureen Nolan daughters of the house never heard a disrespectful word or a hint of obscenity from him during that time. He was much loved and revered by their deeply religious parents, who recognized his genius for language early.
They saw his theatrics for what it was: Behan found fame difficult.
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He had long been a heavy drinker describing himself, on one occasion, as "a drinker with a writing problem" and claiming "I only drink on two occasions—when I'm thirsty and when I'm not" and developed diabetes in the early s but this was not diagnosed until This combination resulted in a series of famously drunken public appearances, on both stage and television. Behan's favourite drink a lethal combination for a diabetic was champagne and sherry. Behan saw that it paid to be drunk; the public wanted the witty, iconoclastic, genial "broth of a boy," and he gave that to them in abundance, exclaiming: The public who once extended their arms now closed ranks against him; publicans flung him from their premises.
Although Behan cried out that he was a writer, inside he knew his fears had materialised—he was unable to generate another classic. His books, Brendan Behan's Island , Brendan Behan's New York and "Confessions of an Irish Rebel", published in and , were dictated into a tape recorder because he was no longer able to write or type for long enough to be able to finish them. Behan had married Beatrice Salkeld daughter of the painter Cecil Salkeld in A daughter, Blanaid, was born in By early March , the end was in sight.
Collapsing at the Harbour Lights bar, he was transferred to the Meath Hospital in central Dublin, where he died, aged It is believed that Behan had a one night stand in with Valerie Danby-Smith, nine months later Valerie gave birth to a son she named Brendan.