Event overview
GLITS (Goldsmiths Literature Seminar)
Much has been written about the “Cruiskeen Lawn” columns of the Irish Times. A deft satire on the Irish government, Dublin’s literati and the general public, the slot is often noted in studies of Irish political and cultural consciousness.
Less attention has been paid to its formal features. This paper will discuss how the medium of the newspaper offsets the satirical absurdity of Myles' columns, allowing him to incisively pass comment on the sociopolitical impetus thinly veiled in various forms of popular discourse.
O’Nolan was, as the “Publisher’s Note” in the compendium The Best of Myles stresses, “a committed newspaperman”, with an awareness of — and stake in — the conventions of the press.
By writing in a space usually reserved for factual analysis and sincere polemic, “Cruiskeen Lawn” plays with its fictional status. Its placement among “regular” features of the newspaper, such as society writing and advertisements, gifts its cultural commentary an ambiguous mix of legitimacy and parody.
The columns themselves, I will demonstrate, explicitly toy with this ambiguity, featuring as they do not only overly-casual references to the previous or following week’s output but also more obviously experimental formal features, such as finger graphics pointing to neighbouring articles on which Myles passes comment.
This subversive re-appropriation of the regular newspaper column’s (at least ostensibly) instructive rôle implicates the press and its discourses in the social and artistic upheavals with which “Cruiskeen Lawn” is concerned — aware that even as it comments on it, the press is part of culture.
Stephanie Boland is a graduate student at the University of Exeter writing on modernism and non-fictional forms. As a journalist, she has written for the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement and is an assistant and regular contributor at the New Statesman.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 19 Jan 2017 | 6:30pm - 8:00pm |
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