comments

1. Sheila Ryan on January 29th, 2009 at 9:16 pm

   Hell’s bells, Lucy, I’ll go first. Not that you don’t know my answer.

   Slammin’ Sam Beckett, for sure.

   I get off on Yeats the poet, you bet. But in the sack, I suspect it got . . . funny.

   I have never ever ever been into the Brendan Behan thing.

   Brian O’Nolan/Flann O’Brien/Myles na gCopaleen . . . ? Well, I truly couldn’t say which.

   Does Francis Stuart count, given his Australian birth? Never mind, never mind. Creep. Me. Out.

   James Joyce: not worth mentioning. Except that you know somebody’s going to ask.

   How far back we going?

   Okay. It don’t matter. Beckett. His words. His looks (the head of a raptor — Leda and the Swan indeed). His cool. The passion just below the cool. HIs athleticism. The quiet, dismissive bravery (his Resistance contributions were not, as he put it, just ‘Boy Scout stuff’).

   And the words.

   Plus: lots of women dug him the most. Right up to the end.

2. Deron Bauman on January 29th, 2009 at 9:54 pm

   shit, it would have to be Sam, wouldn’t it?

3. Sheila Ryan on January 29th, 2009 at 10:06 pm

   I’m open to suggestion, if you have another candidate.

4. Sheila Ryan on January 29th, 2009 at 10:14 pm

   This needn’t be for boy-loving girls only, you know. (I recall when Jon used to carry a picture of Edna O’Brien in his wallet.)

5. Amanda Mae Meyncke on January 29th, 2009 at 11:45 pm

   Flann O’Brien but we’d have to shyly talk about my At Swim Two Birds tattoo.

6. Lucy Foley on January 30th, 2009 at 4:45 am

   Well, there are more possibilities: for the boys, the dream of bringing Augusta Gregory out of her widow tweeds, Elizabeth Bowen perhaps, Maria Edgeworth might have been exciting, Kate O’Brien would have been willing for some discerning few ladies, lets not forget Lady Jane Wilde, who certainly held some passionate opinions. And though she spent her life in Germany, lets not forget Baroness Jemima Von Tautphoeus (nee Montgomery). But the fun one in this bunch would have had to have bee Irish Murdoch, I think.

7. Lucy Foley on January 30th, 2009 at 5:47 am

   I’m with Gonne on Yeats. He was, for me, a teenage crush, as I suspect, I would have been for him. (phew: gossip!)

   I bet Wilde was great fun and loving.

   Nobody’s mentioned Sean O’Casey. Thank God.

8. Phil Bebbington on January 30th, 2009 at 6:15 am

   Now Lucy, I haven’t read much in the way of Irish literature (hangs head in shame) But are any of these gals cute? If we start from the wrong end – their cuteness – I could then go and explore the literature – I did type several more lines but then realised I was digging myself a pit to jump into!

9. Phil Bebbington on January 30th, 2009 at 8:30 am

   Having done some visual research and in the absence of any literary references – I’d have to say that Edna O’Brien was very cute so she could have been all over me like a rash if she had so wished! The red hair helps a lot!

10. Cooper Renner on January 30th, 2009 at 9:35 am

    I’ll do something terrible and self-aggrandizing here (although self-aggrandizing is certainly the wrong word in this context) and refer you to something I did several years ago mocking a living Irish writer: for “Fergus”, read “Seamus”: here. That is the last page of the little chapbook. If you have any desire to begin at the beginning, click here. Do forgive me.

11. raynor on January 30th, 2009 at 10:12 am

    shy with: flann
    naked with: iris
    naked and shy with: oscar wilde

12. Errant Aesthete on January 30th, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    Re: Raynor

    Personally speaking, I think an assignation with Oscar was better rendered fully clothed and scintillatingly sarcastic.

    I had a yearning for Yeats and was always taken with Joyce’s declaration of the “soft sweet swoon of sin,” which forever more fueled my imagination.

13. Rick Neece on January 30th, 2009 at 1:51 pm

    Cooper, I’d welcome any self-aggrandizement you’d care to bring our way.

14. Afterword « The Errant Æsthete on January 30th, 2009 at 2:12 pm

    [...] that probe with answers that inspire and being the literary type, this inquiry by Lucy Foley of Clusterflock completely captivated [...]

15. 823 Ven, Cooper Esteban : clusterflock on February 3rd, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    [...] For those who didn’t see it in comments, I wanted to point to Renner’s (aka Cooper Esteban’s) online chapbook 823 Ven. I and others consider him to be among the finest contemporary American poets. In fact, he was recognized by the New York Public Library in their poets of the 21st century. If you are interested in contemporary literature that stands with the best of the past, you should definitely take a look. [...]

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