From Hunt Emerson- Firkin (1989). Scanned from 'the brothers' collection.
I popped into the inaugural MylesDay on Friday. Flann O’Brien is among my favourite writers to emerge from this country, and The Palace Bar is undoubtedly the most fitting of places to honour him, owing to his frequent custom in times long past.
I arrived at 2:15, a quarter of an hour before kick-off. Alas, there was not a seat to be found in the pub. Journalists, writers, plain people of Ireland like myself and more besides had gathered for a day of readings and performances.
Val O’Donnell got things off to a flying start with bookhandling. It’s all in the delivery of course, and Val was just the man to launch the day:
A visit that I paid to the house of a newly-married friend the other day set me thinking. My friend is a man of great wealth and vulgarity. When he had set about buying bedsteads, tables, chairs and what-not, it occurred to him to buy also a library. Whether he can read or not, I do not know, but some savage faculty for observation told him that most respectable and estimable people usually had a lot of books in their houses. So he bought several book-cases and paid some rascally middleman to stuff them with all manner of new books, some of them very costly volumes on the subject of French landscape painting. I noticed on my visit that not one of them had ever been opened or touched, and remarked the fact.
‘When I get settled down properly,’ said the fool, ‘I’ll have to catch up on my reading.’
This is what set me thinking. Why should a wealthy person like this be put to the trouble of pretending to read at all? Why not a professional book-handler to go in and suitably maul his library for so-much per shelf? Such a person, if properly qualified, could make a fortune.
One by one excellent performers rose to pay tribute to O’Brien and as the clocks ticked away the laughter went on unabated.
I hope MylesDay becomes an annual event. Well done to the organisers, speakers and performers. The brother says he’s raging he missed it.
My thanks to FXR for the photos:
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 
The whole thing went very well and was suitably packed despite taking place on a working afternoon. Myles’ brother, the artist, turned up as did a man from Kilbeggan with a jug of whiskey. A good afternoons entertainment.
PS. Technical note for students of photography: The photos above were taken from the other side of a partition using the Pint and Shoot method. Photos later in the evening were taken using a Guinness filter and a rickety bar stool.
Full set of photos here:
http://s532.photobucket.com/albums/ee327/Falconer1st/Myles%20Day%20April%201st%202011%20Palace%20Bar/