Alf Mac Lochlainn

Life
1926- ; b. Dublin; ed. University College, Dublin; worked at National Library of Ireland from 1949, helping compile the manuscript Sources for the History of Irish Civilisation with R. J. Hayes; dir. National Library 1962; contrib. entry on Thomas Davis in Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (1979); Librarian of University College, Galway, 1982, now retired; author of Out of Focus (1977), described as a novella, but appearing to be four short reflections of Flann O'Brien's de Sleby as dictated to Samuel Beckett; The Corpus of the Library: Stories and Novellas (1996). DIL


Works
Out of Focus (Dublin: O'Brien 1977); The Corpus in the Library: Stories and Novellas (Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press 1996), 151pp. [distrib. Turnabout]. Also, review of Pilib Ó Laoghaire, Déirc an Dóchais: Léamh ar shaothar Phádraic Óig Uí Chonaire [Aistí Léirmheasa 3] (Indrebháin Cló Iar-Chonnachta 1995), in Irish Literary Supplement (Spring 1996), p.28.

Commentary
Frank O’Brien reviews The Corpus of the Library (Dalkey Archive Press: Illinois State Univ. 1996), in Irish Literary Supplement (Fall 1996), p.14; besides title-story, others cited incl. ‘Present Tense’; ‘Meruleus Lacrimans’ (disappearance of two atomised Dublin ladies through house damp); ‘Vacancy for a Photo-Finisher’; reviewer refers to epistemological underpinning of the stories but remarks that they are anything but philosophical in tone, and compares the author’s territory to the ‘mental haunts’ of Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman.

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