The Various Lives of Keats and Chapman: Including the Brother

A welcome compilation of the incomparable Myles marred only by a thoroughly cack-handed introduction by Jamie O'Neill, whose sole qualification for the job it seems is having written something called At Swim, Two Boys--a novel apparently, set against the backdrop of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, about the love that blossoms between two boys. Shudder. Seriously though, I haven't read this much cartoon Irish claptrap in prefatory remarks since I ran across Malachy McCourt's acknowledgements in his ghastly little memoir, A Monk Swimming. If O'Neill's smugly contemptuous and entirely unwarranted swipe at the Catholic Church doesn't give you the full measure of this imposter's stunted perspective, then his trite and tired rehearsal of the Irish way with the English language certainly will. My advice is skip the introduction, better yet yank it completely, and start straight in on Flann, a joy as ever from start to finish. Saw Eamon Morrissey do his thing too so I did, back in the eighties, and he done full justice to your man up above in the bed I can tell you.