Up from Irishry
Teems of Times and Happy Returns. By Dominic Behan. (Heinemann, 18s.) IN every fat man there's a thin one struggling frantically to get out: in Brendan Behan's case its his brother Dominic who has at last emerged from the shadow of Big Brother with this torrential piece of writing. It owes practic- ally nothing to Brendan—if one excepts pretty frequent mentions of a love-hate nature and some similarities of style and profanity—but something to the patronage of Our Lady of the Four-Letter Word, Constance Mellors.
On life, on death in the Dublin slums of his boyhood, our horseman has cast a merry eye and the result is a shot of literary adrenalin• It is an irreverent jumble of witty, bawdy and unprincipled characters whose raucous sayings and doings can only be properly appreciated (perhaps condoned would be a better word) if one suspends normal moral judgments and approaches the book with a few whiskies under the belt (intending readers in Ireland would be advised to approach with speed and dispense with the whiskies—the hook will be banned by the time the drink arrives).
Some snatches. On the baiting of a street trader : 'Here you little bastard, take that straW, from me pony's arse. Stop him! Stop him! . 'Well the poo-e-r man. Look at all his coal blocks spread across the road. It's a cryin shame, so it is—grab a few of them coal blocks before he gets back. . .
On the way conversations were carried on trans-street, without regard for privacy : 'Is Molly over her confinement yet, Mam?'
'Any minit now, Missus, thanks for askin'.' 'Let's hope the dirty bastard marries her any- Way.'
'If he's not married already, Mam.'
But there is nothing facile or low in such moving episodes as Mrs. Clancy's pawnshop Odyssey; the story of Mrs. Carrol 'the coal- man,' with the walk of a queen and the im- becile son; or in the tragic story of the Reddins. At the insistence of the groom's mother their honeymoon was spent in two rooms in a Dublin back-street, the couple only emerging at night while by day the mother went around telling the neighbours that the pair were in Rome.
As a glimpse of the poor of Dublin, this is a more realistic image than that of the prayer- ful multitudes conjured up by other writers. But Behan's characters would be more cred- ible were they not all so determinedly pictur- esque. There are very few sordid petty thieves in these slums. Only humorous rascals like 'Giggles' Doyle, Who, while acting as best man at a wedding, hands the priest a sealed envelope containing a matrimonial prayer. The nasty pieces of work are mostly politicians, landlords and employers who withhold work from Republicans or give them coolie Wages.
Like many a man before him, the author uses humour to get him through difficult areas \\ here his empiricism does not compensate for his lack of formal education. Though this method is 'almost always devastatingly success- ful, his hardheaded naivete is, often wide of the mark when writing about the broader issues of Irish politics. His judgments here often have the ex cathedra quality of the bar-room stool. His stance in relation to authority is the classical Irish one of 'if there is a government I'm against it' Politically I would put hint left of the Kremlin.
But for a man whose talents were burnished against the sandpaper realities of poverty and Perennial unemployment, he is surprisingly free from bitterness. He writes with a marvellous gusto, creating an ordered chaos in an O'Casey- land setting. In the current spate of compost-heap literature this will surely prove a best-smeller.
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