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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