Sir, - In his supercilious review of my book There is an Isle (Books, April 25th), George O'Brien asserts that I "launch a few haymakers in passing" at Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, "all the more striking as the book is never referred to by name." I have spent a weekend searching for these camouflaged anti-McCourt missiles; all I can find is some general reference to the pseudo-liberal gobdaws and yahoos who write piffle about the Catholic religion and its alleged harmful effects on Irish society. If O'Brien feels that McCourt fits in that category, well, "cap fit, cap wear".
Any intelligent reader would see that on the first page of his book McCourt sets out a thesis which, besides being a false generalisation, is a sweeping insult to Ireland and to the Catholic Church, viz., that a miserable Irish Catholic childhood is the worst possible. That my book, written about 15 years ago but published only recently, should turn out providentially to be a rebuttal of a meretricious concoction with which a Yankee-Doodle-Dandy smart boyo, backed by a powerful publicity machine, has gulled some naive critics and many of the common mob, is proof that the Lord works in strange ways. It is also a bitter pill for those who jumped on the McCourt bandwagon to swallow.
I am not surprised, therefore, that O'Brien ignores the academic evidence I adduce from sources both Protestant (F.S.L. Lyons of Trinity) and Catholic (Patrick Corish of Maynooth) to support my own life experience and that of the society in which I grew up. But why O'Brien dismisses as near kitsch (whatever that is) my record of the customs, pastimes and language of my generation, or belittles my late respected parents as "much as the peasantry used to be represented once upon a time" is a mystery to me. Nor can I understand why he gives passing mention to only one (brutal) Christian Brother out of four in my book, while ignoring my discussion of James Joyce's never-quoted homage to the Brothers and his account of a brutal Jesuit in Clongowes.
My comprehensive chapters on music and rugby O'Brien condescendingly finds "a little more interesting", but still unsatisfactory. The IRFU experts found my rugby chapter worth including in the programme for last Saturday's final at Lansdowne Road between my beloved Shannon and our long-admired Garryowen. When I stood on the pitch with old neighbours and friends from Limerick, as we were once again led by the inimitable Frank O'Flynn in a glorious rendering of There Is An Isle, I recalled that in my book I express the hope that our Shannon parish anthem might some day serve to unite in harmony all the people of this green island of Ireland. - Yours, etc.,
Criostoir O'Flynn
Pairc Arnold, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.