The winding stairs of number 68 Dame Street, in the centre of Dublin, once led up to a second-floor office where a young man named Brian O'Nolan published five issues of a humorous magazine called Blather between August 1934 and January 1935.
O'Nolan was later known as both the novelist Flann O'Brien and the columnist Myles na Gopaleen, whose belligerently surrealist diatribes posed as the column by the name of Cruiskeen Lawn in The Irish Times for many years. O'Nolan died 41 years ago, on April 1st, 1966; and given his habitual presence in these pages as court jester, it is difficult not to smile wryly at the date of his death.
O'Nolan had been a star debater at the Literary and Historical Society in University College Dublin, and had sharpened his comic gift in student magazines. The legend, propagated by O'Nolan himself, goes that, on having his MA thesis rejected, he promptly resubmitted it on pink paper and passed. The first issue of Blather was published in the same month he first submitted his thesis: August 1934.
Blather was a venture O'Nolan undertook with his brother Ciarán and a couple of other friends, and it was never long for this world. Its first issue, trumpeted as "the only paper exclusively devoted to the interests of clay-pigeon shooting in Ireland", set
the tone, with an "us-against-the-world" editorial that underlined its contempt for everything that passed for contemporary popular opinion, including that of its (presumed) readers. "A lot we care for what you think," Blather concluded.
In subsequent issues, the letters to the editor were clearly faked, and most either picked a fight with the publishers or acted as straw men for Blather to knock down. It is hard, then, to believe anything within the pages of Blather; and - as with the Cruiskeen Lawn columns - much of its charm lies in that fact.
Part of Blather's humour rests on its increasingly fraught relationship with its readers. It is clear that Blather was having troubles with its circulation. Indeed, one cannot be sure whether it had any readers at all, and many articles in the magazine betray this concern by busying themselves figuring out new wheezes that will help raise the sales of the magazine. In the first issue, Blather offered a prize of pedigree bulls to any readers who created a public nuisance by loudly proclaiming the quality of the magazine.
By the October issue, it becomes clear that all is not well, and Blather dolorously notes that only 60 copies of its previous edition had been sold. By November, Blather was rebuking readers who had complained of not being able to find the magazine for not ordering the publication ahead of time. This, along with phoney letters pages titled "Whining Readers", told another tale of O'Nolan's frustration with the reach of his publication.
Setting itself up against its nearest direct competitor, the humour magazine Dublin Opinion, Blather soon took up cudgels against such papers as The Irish Times, the Irish Independent and Irish Press, plastering news of its victories against its mass-market foes across its pages A work of satire that soon tired of the cold reality of its targets, Blather blew bubbles born of O'Nolan's febrile imagination. Take the increasing confusion of the aristocratic Blazes O'Blather with Éamon de Valera, one heartily encouraged by Blather in retouched photographs that depict an athlete (identified as O'Blather), bearing the unmistakable countenance of de Valera, completing the long jump. The head of de Valera is, needless to say, very obviously pasted on to the photograph.
De Valera, the Garda Commissioner and the Lord Mayor of Dublin were the recipients of Blather's characteristic ire when open letters to each were printed in the second issue, of October 1934 (the gap between this issue and August's was explained away by Blather, which offered to sell the non-existent September issue to curious readers for the ludicrously excessive sum of £5).
A mutually beneficial relationship between the State and Blather is soon reached in a later article, though. Blather merges with the Irish government; or rather, the Irish government merges with the mighty Blather, and soon government and civil service are employed in the printing and publishing of the magazine under the watchful eye of Blazes O'Blather.
The civil service was soon to play a much larger part in O'Nolan's day-to-day existence. Blather made it through a Christmas double issue, but ground to a halt with its issue of January 1935 - one that, nevertheless, continued to canvass for readers who wished to take out an annual subscription to the doomed publication. In January 1935, Brian O'Nolan decided to apply for the position of junior administrative officer in the civil service, a position which he took up that July.
In the final issue of Blather, an article entitled "Your ignoramus of a son" hinted at the pressures pushing the talented O'Nolan - who had captained the vessel of lunacy that was Blather for only a few months - into the steady quotidian round of the civil service. Surveying the jobs available to the average "ignoramus", and noting that all journalistic posts are filled, Blather picked on the Civil Service.
"In the Administrative Grades," Blather noted, "intelligence and judgement are essential." O'Nolan was careful to add that "candidates deficient in these qualities must produce evidence of a university education".
Karl Whitney is a doctoral scholar in the UCD Humanities Institute of Ireland.