Brendan Behan
sitelink youtube. com/watchvmPpGp content and quality of this official video clip also deserve a lot of praise!
The Behan in the song is Irish author Brendan Behan who MacGowan says is one of his main inspirations.
Honouring this I thought it be good to take on Borstal Boy, Behans account of the three years he spent in a borstal, an English juvenile prison, for planning to set off a bomb, being a member of the youth section of the IRA.
Apparently the book has been banned in Ireland for a while, the reason for which is completely unclear to me, The concept of banning books to me has always been weird, but in this particular case I even struggle to see any reason, As with the illegal high school cigarettes, or the fatherly sip of beer predrinking age, I guess banning this work, only added to its popularity.
I always like flipping throughstar reviews of books I enjoyed reading myself, but for Borstal Boy there are just not a lot of these.
And especially not with sharp, witty comments, Just dont read the book if youre not interested in the monotone goings of someone describing life in prison, Other than that, get on it! Behans pen is razorsharp, the setting is bleak but there is humour and humanity all around,
The story follows the monotony of life in prison, with such realistic and detailed descriptions of all the colourful characters he encounters all written in beautiful prose with the occasional Irish poem or song.
Behans acceptance of the situation at hand, his positivity to the circumstances, his hope, and sympathy to his fellow inmates and also the prison staff are striking.
The continuous belittling of him being Irish seems not to bother him much, he stands strong for his principles when required, but otherwise seems to get along well with many, not interested to throw a fit.
And all along so eloquent, Theres the repetitive comfort of being served a warm meal, or getting to share just the dogend of a cigarette with a friend, If the idea of life in as prison is not enough to put things in the right perspective, then let Behans positivity serve as a reminder whenever the delivery guy runs late again.
It was not her name, but civility costs nothing, Thank you Mr. Behan! What better book to read on St, Patricks Day than sitelinkBorstal Boy, by sitelinkBrendan Behan Niall Tóibín, Irish comedian and actor, narrates this one that is semiautobiographical story of the author.
After committing murder via an IRA bomb, ayear old boy is lockedup in three English detention institutions during WWII, However, Mr. Tóibín's accent depending on the dialect he is doing is so thick, I had to play back parts, though I did get used to it.
Still, wonderful dialogue, jokes, slang words, and few great songs sung in Irish in this once banned book, A great read! The dialogue was fantastic, Would definitely seek out its sequel, Insixteen year old IRA man Brendan Behan was arrested holding explosives which he was going to use to blow up the Liverpool docks, to strike a blow for Ireland against its age long imperial oppressor.
Held on remand at Walton Prison, he was excommunicated and suffered the occasional beating from the "screws", Sentenced to serve time in England's Borstal system for young prisoners, he was thrown in amongst the dregs of the British Empire, and found them to be splendid fellows.
"John Howard, the Quaker, invented solitary confinement they say, He must have had terrible little to do, These religious bastards, they have empty minds on account of not going in for sex, or sport, or drink, or swimming, or reading bad books.
And Satan will find work for idle hands, To hell with him anyway, I always get grateful and pious in good weather and this was the kind of day you'd know that Christ died for you, A bloody good job that I wasn't born in the South of France or Miami Beach, or I'd be so grateful and holy for the sunshine that St.
Paul of the Cross would be only trotting after me, skull, crossbones and all, "
"But like that again, from my point of view I was as comic as I was pathetic and as comic as I was sinister for such is the condition of man in this old world and we better put up with it, such as it is, for I never saw much hurry in parish priests in getting to the next one, nor on parsons or rabbis, for the matter of that and as they are all supposed to be the experts on the next world, we can take it that they have learned something very unpleasant about it which makes them prefer to stick it out in this one for as long as they can.
If there is a next world, and I'm offered the choice of where to spend my eternity within it, my choice will be simple I'll just ask the honcho "which part is Brendan Behan in, and which part is Pat Robertson", and follow Brendan Behan.
A picaresque masterpiece. The book Patrick Leigh Fermor might have written if he'd been a teenage IRA bomber packed off to an English reform school in the 's.
Raised in a prominent Dublin family and welleducated, at agethe future Irish playwright Brendan Behan attempted to blow up Liverpool docks as part of an unauthorized mission for the IRA, at the start of World War II in.
Behan was arrested and spent time in a rough English jail, then in a borstal for juvenile delinquents, He describes his three years in reform school with much of Fermor's literary erudition, sometimes quoting Latin and Gaelic poetry, then the "fughall's" and "whore's melts" of prison and school life, in language and scenes that got the book banned in the conservative Ireland of the's.
Behan's semifictional autobiography shows the sadistic and often very dark underside of Jolly Old England at a time when we like to think of it as a bastion against Herrenvolk darkness, something England's civilian bombing campaigns during the war which far outdid the brutality and cruelty of the IRA leave seriously in doubt.
Behan's genius is satirical, though, and "Borstal Boy" is a comic riot, hardly a call for rioting in the street, Hard not to compare his characters in some ways to Dickens' or even Laurence Sterne's, Not
every chapter in this book is a pageturner, but a strange and interesting human story here, .
of my all time favourite albums is Red Roses For Me by The Pogues, It is their first album, with lyrics drawing heavily on the life of Irish men in London in thes and for years I had no idea what Shane MacGowan was singing about.
I guess that was just me being ignorant, and too foreign a language, and backgrounds that not even remotely resembled my own, Having spent a lot of time blaring along phonetically, I decided one day it was time to give the album its due and listen with written lyrics on the side and boy was that a wake up call.
MacGowan is one of the most profound writers ever to have walked the face of the earth, if you ask me, and he deserves lots more than the regular snarling he gets for the 'Oh there is the drunk Irish who once wrote Fairytale in New York' moments.
In Streams of Whiskey Shane sings about a dream he has in which he meets Behan who offers simple words on the crux of life philosophies
Oh the words that he spoke
Seemed the wisest of philosophies
There's nothing ever gained
By a wet thing called a tear
When the world is too dark
And I need the light inside of me
I'll walk into a bar
And drink fifteen pints of beer
sitelink youtube. com/watchvmPpGp content and quality of this official video clip also deserve a lot of praise!
The Behan in the song is Irish author Brendan Behan who MacGowan says is one of his main inspirations.
Honouring this I thought it be good to take on Borstal Boy, Behans account of the three years he spent in a borstal, an English juvenile prison, for planning to set off a bomb, being a member of the youth section of the IRA.
Apparently the book has been banned in Ireland for a while, the reason for which is completely unclear to me, The concept of banning books to me has always been weird, but in this particular case I even struggle to see any reason, As with the illegal high school cigarettes, or the fatherly sip of beer predrinking age, I guess banning this work, only added to its popularity.
I always like flipping throughstar reviews of books I enjoyed reading myself, but for Borstal Boy there are just not a lot of these.
And especially not with sharp, witty comments, Just dont read the book if youre not interested in the monotone goings of someone describing life in prison, Other than that, get on it! Behans pen is razorsharp, the setting is bleak but there is humour and humanity all around,
The landlady was a mean woman from the Midlands, I dont mean that coming from the Midlands caused her meanness, Youll get good people from there, or from any other part of the world, but if Cockneys or a Siamese are mean or decent, theyll be mean or decent in a Cockney or a Siamese way.
This landlady was mean and as barren as a bog, Her broken windows would be a judgement on her for the cheap sausages and margarine she poisoned her table with, for she was only generous with things that cost little in cash, locking hall doors at night time and kneeling down to say the Rosary with the lodger and her sister, who always added three Hail Marys for holy purity and the protection of her person and modesty, so that you would think half the men in Liverpool were running after her, panting for a lick of her big buck teeth.
The story follows the monotony of life in prison, with such realistic and detailed descriptions of all the colourful characters he encounters all written in beautiful prose with the occasional Irish poem or song.
Behans acceptance of the situation at hand, his positivity to the circumstances, his hope, and sympathy to his fellow inmates and also the prison staff are striking.
The continuous belittling of him being Irish seems not to bother him much, he stands strong for his principles when required, but otherwise seems to get along well with many, not interested to throw a fit.
And all along so eloquent, Theres the repetitive comfort of being served a warm meal, or getting to share just the dogend of a cigarette with a friend, If the idea of life in as prison is not enough to put things in the right perspective, then let Behans positivity serve as a reminder whenever the delivery guy runs late again.
I sat beside Charlie, Opposite us, in the Black Maria, was a redhaired boy of my own age, and a small man with a broken nose, a cauliflower ear, and a begrudging look.
He was going up for kicking his wife, He was not unfriendly, and told me his name was Donohoe, I said that by a coincidence that was my mothers name, It was not her name, but civility costs nothing,
It was not her name, but civility costs nothing, Thank you Mr. Behan! What better book to read on St, Patricks Day than sitelinkBorstal Boy, by sitelinkBrendan Behan Niall Tóibín, Irish comedian and actor, narrates this one that is semiautobiographical story of the author.
After committing murder via an IRA bomb, ayear old boy is lockedup in three English detention institutions during WWII, However, Mr. Tóibín's accent depending on the dialect he is doing is so thick, I had to play back parts, though I did get used to it.
Still, wonderful dialogue, jokes, slang words, and few great songs sung in Irish in this once banned book, A great read! The dialogue was fantastic, Would definitely seek out its sequel, Insixteen year old IRA man Brendan Behan was arrested holding explosives which he was going to use to blow up the Liverpool docks, to strike a blow for Ireland against its age long imperial oppressor.
Held on remand at Walton Prison, he was excommunicated and suffered the occasional beating from the "screws", Sentenced to serve time in England's Borstal system for young prisoners, he was thrown in amongst the dregs of the British Empire, and found them to be splendid fellows.
"John Howard, the Quaker, invented solitary confinement they say, He must have had terrible little to do, These religious bastards, they have empty minds on account of not going in for sex, or sport, or drink, or swimming, or reading bad books.
And Satan will find work for idle hands, To hell with him anyway, I always get grateful and pious in good weather and this was the kind of day you'd know that Christ died for you, A bloody good job that I wasn't born in the South of France or Miami Beach, or I'd be so grateful and holy for the sunshine that St.
Paul of the Cross would be only trotting after me, skull, crossbones and all, "
"But like that again, from my point of view I was as comic as I was pathetic and as comic as I was sinister for such is the condition of man in this old world and we better put up with it, such as it is, for I never saw much hurry in parish priests in getting to the next one, nor on parsons or rabbis, for the matter of that and as they are all supposed to be the experts on the next world, we can take it that they have learned something very unpleasant about it which makes them prefer to stick it out in this one for as long as they can.
If there is a next world, and I'm offered the choice of where to spend my eternity within it, my choice will be simple I'll just ask the honcho "which part is Brendan Behan in, and which part is Pat Robertson", and follow Brendan Behan.
A picaresque masterpiece. The book Patrick Leigh Fermor might have written if he'd been a teenage IRA bomber packed off to an English reform school in the 's.
Raised in a prominent Dublin family and welleducated, at agethe future Irish playwright Brendan Behan attempted to blow up Liverpool docks as part of an unauthorized mission for the IRA, at the start of World War II in.
Behan was arrested and spent time in a rough English jail, then in a borstal for juvenile delinquents, He describes his three years in reform school with much of Fermor's literary erudition, sometimes quoting Latin and Gaelic poetry, then the "fughall's" and "whore's melts" of prison and school life, in language and scenes that got the book banned in the conservative Ireland of the's.
Behan's semifictional autobiography shows the sadistic and often very dark underside of Jolly Old England at a time when we like to think of it as a bastion against Herrenvolk darkness, something England's civilian bombing campaigns during the war which far outdid the brutality and cruelty of the IRA leave seriously in doubt.
Behan's genius is satirical, though, and "Borstal Boy" is a comic riot, hardly a call for rioting in the street, Hard not to compare his characters in some ways to Dickens' or even Laurence Sterne's, Not
every chapter in this book is a pageturner, but a strange and interesting human story here, .