“Literature and the Hack”: Brendan Behan and the Newspapers
“Literature and the Hack”: Brendan Behan and the Newspapers

Summary/Abstract: Between 1951 and 1956, Brendan Behan published more than one hundred articles in The Irish Press newspaper, which have now been collected into a single volume, A Bit of a Writer: Brendan Behan’s Collected Short Prose. The collection augments the critical appreciation of Behan’s talents as a writer, but it also raises important questions for the late modernist period of writing, about the relationship between “Literature,” as a distinct and valued art form, and writing for newspapers, which is often regarded as ephemeral or minor work. This essay examines some of Behan’s own reflections and characterisations of this relationship between literature and the newspapers in his writing.

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