The man behind the pseudonym

BETWEEN 1908 and 1914 a mysterious figure named ‘Art Flann’ wrote a prominently placed weekly column for the Ulster Herald that was reproduced in our sister titles Strabane Chronicle and the Donegal News.

Penned during the years of upheaval cascading towards the Easter Rising and the eventual partition of Ireland, ‘Art’ was an ardent home-ruler who crusaded against British misrule and Orangeism in the withering diatribes that characterised his columns, obliquely headlined as his ‘Random Reflections’.

The identity of the man behind the pseudonym has never been formally revealed, but more than a century later, Frank McNally, long-standing journalist and columnist with the Irish Times, believes he may have unveiled the answer.

His strong suspicion – and there’s plenty of supporting evidence – is that ‘Art Flann’ is in fact the Omagh-born Michael Victor O’Nolan, who so happens to be the first ever Tyrone GAA chairman. But distinguished as that is, it’s hardly his main claim to fame.

Michael Victor is the father of none other than Brian O’Nolan (better known as ‘Flann O’Brien’), now considered a major figure in 20-century Irish Literature.

A self-confessed Flann O’Brien aficionado, McNally has authored a recently published article in the ‘Parish Review of Flann O’Brien Studies’ that considers the very real possibility that Michael Victor O’Nolan was the man behind the nom de plume.

McNally says, “This all stems from a Tweet from Trinity historian, Georgina Laragy, where she asked if anyone knows about an ‘Art Flann’ who wrote for the UH and other northern newspapers, and if he could be anything to Flann O’Brien.

“I didn’t have the answer, so I started delving into the archives and while I can’t be entirely certain, it’s highly plausible that the column was written by Flann’s father, Michael Victor.”

While not the possible smoking gun – more on that later – McNally believes that the recurring themes contained within Art Flann’s columns support the theory that Michael Victor O’Nolan, an excise officer heavily involved in the Gaelic League, was the columnist.

“It’s interesting that the column coincides with the years around Flann’s birth, and that it comes to an end around the time the O’Nolan family moved from Strabane to Dublin.

“It’s a column written by someone who’s very much interested in public administration and politics, and that fits with what we know about Michael Victor.

“The column was to varying degrees anti-British, he wanted Ireland to rule itself. He wrote about the judiciary a lot, and one of the things I mention in the article is a man called Sir Francis Brady.

“He was this very elderly judge, and ‘Art’ was openly contemptuous of him which was interesting because that’s obviously a very dangerous thing to do.”

Educational reform was another hobby horse of columnist ‘ArtFlann’.

That too is in keeping with Michael Victor O’Nolan, a man who home-schooled his children.

“He also writes a lot about education, it seems to be an obsession of ‘Art Flann’s’, and that also fits with what we know about Michael Victor O’Nolan.

“He was a major proponent of homeschooling, he had very strong ideas about education and Flann O’Brien was educated at home until he was 11.

“It’s also known that Michael Victor was a bit of a writer, and he had at least one unpublished play in his papers when he died, as well as the manuscript for a novel.

“The columns are fairly dense, but there is a bit of satire as well.

“Maybe I’m projecting some of Flann O’Brien’s traits onto the father, but there are some of the same qualities, even though he wasn’t the brilliant literary comedian that his son was.”

But the most definitive piece of evidence relates to the pseudonym itself – and not just because it tallies with the ‘Flann O’Brien’ moniker, later adopted by his son Brian.

McNally said, “Michael Victor ran a local branch of the Gaelic League, and I’ve discovered that he once bought 75 copies of an Irish Language book by a Eugene O’Growney.

“In the book, O’Growney illustrates a grammatical point to do with the sound of the letter ‘A’ in Irish, citing as examples the names ‘Art’ and ‘Flann’ one after the other, as well as the diminutives ‘Artagán’ and ‘Flannagán’.

“I’ve done a bit of research, and I can see no other instances of the names ‘Art’ and ‘Flann’ coming up alongside each other like that.

“It’s the nearest I’ve got to a smoking gun, and it’s very interesting that it looks like Flann O’Brien’s novel-writing persona was a deliberate homage to his father – that his pseudonym had, in effect, been pre-ordained, and it seems very unlikely that it’s a mere coincidence.”

And there we have it. It would seem beyond reasonable doubt that it was indeed Flann O’Brien’s father behind the column – and moreover, Frank’s studied conclusion suggests a fore-life for the famous literary pseudonym adopted by one of the most revered figures in modernist literature.