Author’s Response: The Inside Outside Complexity of Sean O’Faolain

Abstract

In his opening remarks Jerry Nolan launches a general critique of my book as a “virtual dismissal of O’Faolain as a thinker of substance and originality.”He further objects to the fact that I have the audacity to suggest that O’Faolain’s emotional involvement in the matters he wrote about prevented him from being the rational and intellectual force he aspired to be in Ireland. He also, at great length, sets out to convince that I have failed to recognise The Irish as O’Faolain’s most important book. Taking all these critical remarks into account I wonder if he expected a hagiography. If that had been my intention I would have failed my duty as a critic. Questions must be raised and matters discussed, no matter how disturbing they may be for devotees. Consequently, my book is not intended to preach to the-already-converted to the idea of O’Faolain’s enormous stature as a cultural giant in post-independence Ireland. Nor is the book meant to judge O’Faolain with hindsight as a dim-eyed hell-raiser in the Ireland of his day. My agenda – every writer has one, which Jerry Nolan’s comments only verify too clearly – is to show that here was a man who could not accommodate both his emotional sentiments about Ireland and his intellectual aspirations for his country into a rational and consistent discourse. It is my belief that these split loyalties were at the heart of the ambiguities
and ambivalence often evident in his explicit remarks about Ireland and the Irish, and is largely the cause of the diverse opinions held by many about O’Faolain and his legacy even to this day.