Dead as Doornails - (Irish Literature) by Anthony Cronin (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Dead as Doornails, first published in 1976, brings back into print a true classic of Irish memoir. Anthony Cronin's account of life in post-war literary Dublin is as funny and colorful as one would expect from an intimate of Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh l, and Flann O'Brien.

Dead as Doornails is a clear-eyed and bracing antidote to the kitsch that passes for literary history and memory in the Dublin of today. Cronin writes with remarkable subtlety of the frustrations and pathologies of this generation: the excess of drink, the shortage of sex, the insecurity and begrudgery, the painful limitations of cultural life, and the bittersweet pull of exile. We read of a comical sojourn in France with Behan, and of Cronin's years in London as a literary editor and a friend of the writer Julian Maclaren-Ross and the painters Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun. The generation chronicled by Cronin was one of wasted promise. That waste is redressed through the shimmering prose of Dead as Doornails, earning its place in Irish literary history alongside the best works of Behan, Kavanagh, and O'Brien.

Review Quotes

"A classic; of his mastery of language there can be no doubt." --Anthony Burgess

"There have been few enough outstanding non-fiction prose works in Irish writing of the last quarter-century, but undoubtedly this is one of them." --Brian Fallon, The Irish Times

About the Author

Anthony Cronin was one of Ireland's most influential writers. He was the author of novels, criticism, poetry, and acclaimed biographies of Flann O'Brien, Samuel Beckett, and himself. He passed away in December 2016.

Ross Ufberg is a writer, translator, and cofounder of New Vessel Press.