Another American here - picked up Jane Eyre when it came out in the US. Have fallen in love with this series. The creativity keeps me coming back. Just finished Well of Lost Plots - picked it up in London last week when I was there. Anxiously awaiting Volume Four - Something Rotten.

I hope to see Jasper Fforde make it up to Boston for his book signing this year. I've been introducing other friends to this series - more American fans on the way soon!!

I'm going to assume you meant "The Eyre Affair", since I suspect the first US publication of "Jane Eyre" likely predated your birth.

Sorry...the pedantic tendancies on the Fforum appear to be contagious.

I'm impatiently waiting to see if he's getting anywhere near Ann Arbor, MI this time. Last April I had to drive 200 miles down to Dayton to see him.

-Magda-

at least the pedantic tendencies appear to be greatly muted in the non-General Chat (or 'noise') fforum. It's lovely and peaceful in here, and hardly *anyone* is being sarky.

Ah. :-)

Hi there TracyMichele, I was at the Brighton signing too. I was behind you in the queue, and asked to sneak a look at your US edition Eyre Affair. Very cool.

So is there any way we can identify which one you were, Simon? The only guy I could remeber there had a rather natty T-Shirt with an image of a shirt front on it, complete with tie!

Yes, that was me. The T-shirt was from 'Past Times', from their James Bond section... What were you wearing on that occasion?
The guys there also included the 'David Graham' whose Nextian-Earth counterpart appeared in LIAGB... And, if I remember correctly, a Dubliner who asked Jasper whether he'd drawn any inspiration from the works of an Irish author named [Flam? Flan?] O'Brian...

I came upon this site by misadventure and while trying to figure out what it was about I saw the question about Flann O'Brien, born in 1911 and for
many years an Irish civil servant. In the 1930's, I believe, he became a published humorist- under the pseudonym of 'Flann O'Brien' and Myles na
Gopaleen'. As I recall, his real name is something _Nolan_.

Now I shall return to trying to figure out what this site is about. Why Jasper
Fforde, by the way, rather than _Ford_. Odd types, these English- eh?

Eóin MagRáighne

Myles na gCopaleen is the other pseudonym. I forgot the 'g'. It's an interesting Anglo-Irish _bastardization_ [like so much of Irish culture, alas]. In Irish, the name is: Maolmuire na gCapaíllíní- Myles of the Small
Horses. 'Maolmuire' usually comes into English as 'Myles', but really means
'a monk [literally tonsured one'] of [the Blessed Virgin] Mary'.

'Capall'** means 'horse' and so does 'each', as in the name of Ireland's
PM Bertie Ahern- the Irish form is O Eachthighearna [descendant of the
Horse Lord, whoever _he_ was]. 'Capaillín' just means 'a small horse'.

I suspect that 'Myles na gCopaleen' was a satirical comment on Irish culture, as Brian O'Nolan [the _real_ name of the author] was fluent in
Irish.


cf. Spanish 'caballo'.

Hey I LOVE Flann O'Brien and for a long time 'The Third Policeman' was my favourite book. It'd still have to be up there somewhere and I can thoroughly recommend him to anybody who likes Jasper fforde.

His real name was Brian O'Nolan and yess, he also wrote under the name of Myles na Gopaleen. When I read the books the net wasn't in existence because I could certainly have done with a 'Guide to ......... for non-irish'. I suspect I misssed loads of the references.

A member of any nation that can have a language in which bh is pronounced 'v' is ill-placed to comment on the vagaries of english spelling methinks.................


Welcome to the fforum btw



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Some days I see the point

Sorry, I think I got attacked by a gollum virus there - altogether too many 's'es



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Some days I see the point

Thanks for the welcome, Annie. I must admit that Irish has many peculiarities- too many, really. I regret that it's not like Turkish, which is an almost entirely regular language and spoken exactly as spelled, without any anomalies.

An Irish speaker who spoke the words exactly as spelled
could never be understood by another Irish speaker, I might add.

Still, I don't think Irish has any anomalies such that one could approximate G.B. Shaw's spelling of the English word- 'fish', which was 'ghoti'.

Eóin

Yeah, I think Shaw was trying to prove a point though by pointing out that you could spell fish 'ghoti' and point out that each individual phoneme was pronounced in a way consistent with that elsewhere in english. Forget where the 'o' came from.

And didn't Shaw leave all his money to a society dedicated to the 'regularisation' of english spelling? He'd probably be a great fan of texting.

Are you a fan of Flann/Myles yourself? And do you speak Irish fluently? You sound remarkably knowledgeable



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Some days I see the point

The 'o' was from 'women'. I'm afraid I speak Irish as if it were a dead language. OOps, it almost is. So that seems reasonable, I guess.

My preference is for Old Irish [ca. 700-900 AD- _really_ dead] as that is the language used during the time when, as the book says, the Irish _saved_ civilization.

It's also the time when the poets wrote their best stuff. In fact, that was really from the 8th through the 10th century. Poetic images were amazing.
In the Voyage of Bran [Immram Brain] rain is described as 'silver coursing down from the sky'. Rain as _silver_; and white-capped waves were described as 'the bright tresses of the sea [folt fionn na farraige].

The poetry was concise, vivid, naturalistic, and highly introspective [interestingly]. The satire was very good too. Most of what was written before and afterwards was _boring_, but not the stuff done between the 8th and 10th centuries.

In the late 19th century, when the language was revived generally in Ireland, some thought that Old Irish should be used as the basis for
the revival, but a single book, _Séadna_, written in the surviving form of
the language, was so popular that it eclipsed Old Irish and became the
standard. More's the pity. Nach mór an truagh san!

Eóin

PS. I am not really a Flann O'Brien fan, but a friend of mine in Boorolong, New South Wales, Australia, is a _fanatic_ for him. He's working on me.

What did Jasper say about Flann O'Brien anyway Simon?



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Some days I see the point

Something along the lines of "No, never hear of him before now."

Wow, another Eóin on the Fforum. Welcome!

Eóin



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I love this series! I am the only person in my school that has even heard of them! I was so excited to get the WOLP. I made my aunt, who lives in England, send me a copy because I couldn't wait until it came out in America!

Yes, Shaw left a great part of his money as a prize for the development of a phonological writing system (set up of new symbols). The project was completed and the winning system called the "Shavian Alphabet" - though it never got used to the great extent Shaw would have wished... ;-)

'Shavian' is, if I remember correctly, one of the many scripts that are displayed at the interesting site [www.omniglot.com].

There's a supposedly-true story that somebody once tried running "ghoti" through their computer's spell-checker and was given "fish" as the suggested alternative spelling.


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Logic is like Fire, a good servant but a bad master.



Post Edited (03-12-04 20:09)

Greetings from Iowa, since I'm landlocked and across the pond from the UK.

My friend thought I was quite balmy (or shall I say mad as pants) when I orded a signed US hardcover TEA to replace my paperback. I then dragged Merryn to Jasper's signing in Iowa City. She thought Jasper was great, that she might want to borrow my books, and then proceeded to enter Mabel's Scrabble contest!

I think I've hooked another one!



I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train. --Oscar Wilde
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