Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Arrow (1994)
Description
'I have him bitched, balloxed and bewildered, for there's a system and a science in taking the piss out of a screw and I'm a well-trained man at it.'So writes Brendan Behan, poet, writer and literary legend, of the episode that coloured his life. Arrested in Liverpool as an agitator for the IRA, he was tried and sent to reform school. He was sixteen years old.The world he entered was brutal and coldly indifferent. Conditions were primitive, and violence simmered just below the surface. Yet, Brendan Behan found something more positive than hate in borstal- friendship, solidarity and healing flashes of kindness. Extraordinarily vivid, fluent, and moving, it is a superb and unforgettable piece of writing.
User reviews
LibraryThing member gbill
Brendan Behan’s 1958 account of his three years in Borstal, the name for the detention center for minors in the United Kingdom. He had been arrested at the age of 16 with explosives in Liverpool, intending to plant a bomb as part of the IRA.
While such an act is morally difficult at best, Behan
The writing is true to Behan’s voice and he does have a natural gift. He is funny in his ‘inner voice’:
“‘You know, Pad, I’d have messed that Geordie about today. I’d ‘ave done ‘im good and proper.’
You would, Charlie, if he was tied hand and foot, and under ether.”
He is honest, admitting to avoiding a fight at one point and commenting “there’s a fearless rebel for you”.
And he has the soul of a poet, observing on his first night in prison: “As I stood, waiting over the lavatory, I heard a church bell peal in the frosty night, in some other part of the city. Cold and lonely it sounded, like the dreariest noise that ever defiled the ear of man. If you could call it a noise. It made misery mark time.”
And this later, after eating fruit in a field on work detail: “’Shan’t be sorry to get some kip,’ said a sleepy voice from the next row. It was 538 Jones, and he was yawning, half asleep already. The whole field was tired and silent, and their faces round their bushes, in the soft and gathering dark, reposed and innocent.”
The reason for downgrading my rating a bit is because the book focuses too much on the events within the detention center for my taste, which drag on. I would have loved more on his life growing up, how he joined the IRA, what it was like to be in the ranks, and the events leading up to his arrest.
Quotes:
On the IRA:
“You facquing bestud, how would you like to see a woman cut in two by a plate-glass window?
I would have answered him on the same level – Bloody Sunday, when the Black and Tans attacked a football crowd in our street; the massacre at Cork; Balbriggan; Amritsar; the RAF raids on Indian villages.”
On religion:
“…from my point of view I was as comic as I was pathetic and as comic as I was sinister; for such is the condition of man in this world (and we better put up with it, such as it is, for I never saw much hurry on parish priests in getting to the next one, nor on parsons or rabbis, for the matter of that; and as they are all supposed to be the experts on the next world, we can take it that they have heard something very unpleasant about it which makes them prefer to stick it out in this one for as long as they can).”
“…when I got over it, my expulsion from religion, it was like being pushed outside a prison and told not to come back. If I was willing to serve Mass, it was in memory of my ancestors standing around a rock, in a lonely glen, for fear of the landlords and their yeomen, or sneaking through a back-lane in Dublin, and giving the pass-word, to hear Mass in a slum public-house, when a priest’s head was worth five pounds and an Irish Catholic had no existence in law.”
While such an act is morally difficult at best, Behan
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comes across as anything but a deranged and violent man, finding friends amongst his fellow prisoners, behaving respectfully, and holding his opinions confidently within. He is understanding of others, both for their viewpoints even if differing from his own, and for their weaknesses, for “every cripple has his own way of walking”. If ever there was a spokesman for terrorism, it would be him. And it’s amazing how easily accepted he is, which at one point he explains as being because “I had the same rearing as most of them; Dublin, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, London. All our mothers had done the pawn – pledging on Monday, releasing on Saturday. We all knew the chip shop and the picture house and the fourpenny rush of a Saturday afternoon, and the summer swimming in the canal and being chased along the railway by the cops.”The writing is true to Behan’s voice and he does have a natural gift. He is funny in his ‘inner voice’:
“‘You know, Pad, I’d have messed that Geordie about today. I’d ‘ave done ‘im good and proper.’
You would, Charlie, if he was tied hand and foot, and under ether.”
He is honest, admitting to avoiding a fight at one point and commenting “there’s a fearless rebel for you”.
And he has the soul of a poet, observing on his first night in prison: “As I stood, waiting over the lavatory, I heard a church bell peal in the frosty night, in some other part of the city. Cold and lonely it sounded, like the dreariest noise that ever defiled the ear of man. If you could call it a noise. It made misery mark time.”
And this later, after eating fruit in a field on work detail: “’Shan’t be sorry to get some kip,’ said a sleepy voice from the next row. It was 538 Jones, and he was yawning, half asleep already. The whole field was tired and silent, and their faces round their bushes, in the soft and gathering dark, reposed and innocent.”
The reason for downgrading my rating a bit is because the book focuses too much on the events within the detention center for my taste, which drag on. I would have loved more on his life growing up, how he joined the IRA, what it was like to be in the ranks, and the events leading up to his arrest.
Quotes:
On the IRA:
“You facquing bestud, how would you like to see a woman cut in two by a plate-glass window?
I would have answered him on the same level – Bloody Sunday, when the Black and Tans attacked a football crowd in our street; the massacre at Cork; Balbriggan; Amritsar; the RAF raids on Indian villages.”
On religion:
“…from my point of view I was as comic as I was pathetic and as comic as I was sinister; for such is the condition of man in this world (and we better put up with it, such as it is, for I never saw much hurry on parish priests in getting to the next one, nor on parsons or rabbis, for the matter of that; and as they are all supposed to be the experts on the next world, we can take it that they have heard something very unpleasant about it which makes them prefer to stick it out in this one for as long as they can).”
“…when I got over it, my expulsion from religion, it was like being pushed outside a prison and told not to come back. If I was willing to serve Mass, it was in memory of my ancestors standing around a rock, in a lonely glen, for fear of the landlords and their yeomen, or sneaking through a back-lane in Dublin, and giving the pass-word, to hear Mass in a slum public-house, when a priest’s head was worth five pounds and an Irish Catholic had no existence in law.”
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LibraryThing member Hera
A seemingly-artless novel with moments of sheer lyrical power. It's funny, too.
LibraryThing member Clurb
Interesting for the language and prison slang as much as for the story.
LibraryThing member WrathofAchilles
Behan's apostasy of IRA dogma meshes perfectly with his hatred of foreign rule. Surviving British prison moves the target of his just ire from foreigners to the powerful. I paraphrase: "I have more in common with an English house painter than with the president of Ireland, who has more in common
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with the Queen." Show Less
LibraryThing member poetontheone
The triumph of Behan's novel is that is shows its reader the unity of men when there differences are, if not stripped away, set aside, and they are made to bond over their environment, and to help each other gets along. He is really handy with vernacular and tone, and being such puts down wonderful
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dialogue spoken by very rich characters. This not a dim jailhouse narrative. It is a colorful, humorous and beautifully optimistic book. Behan's sense of humanity pervades every page. Along with his play, the Quare Fellow, Borstal Boy dwells in the upper echelons of prison literature, with Genet and all of the rest. Show Less
LibraryThing member -Eva-
At age sixteen, Brendan Behan traveled from Ireland to England, carrying explosives on behalf of the IRA - this is the story about his capture, trial, and subsequent three-year Borstal sentence. Behan's coming-of-age is a story of loosening youth's rigorous ideological conviction and accepting a
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more moderate personality and the journey is psychologically enlightening as well as entertaining. The story in itself is obviously intriguing since not many of us (I assume) have spent time in a mid-1900s Borstal, but it's Behan's uncanny grasp of dialogue and dialects that really makes this story stand out - the multitude of voices that are presented in this story reads like a linguistic tour of the British Isles, as well as one of class divisions. Recommended to anyone interested in the time, the history, or the language. Show Less
LibraryThing member Daftboy1
This is a good story its quite slow and in some chapters boring.
But overall a good read, It is easy to imagine what Borstal was like back in the 1940s.
Brendan made some really good friends while he was banged up for being in the IRA.
Overall well worth reading if you want to know what life was
But overall a good read, It is easy to imagine what Borstal was like back in the 1940s.
Brendan made some really good friends while he was banged up for being in the IRA.
Overall well worth reading if you want to know what life was
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like for young offenders. Show Less
LibraryThing member nandadevi
I read this years ago. Back then it reminded me of a stint in boarding school I'd gone through. Now with some professional experience of these institutions I can still reflect that it's a good story well told. Behan famously drank himself to death, but his writing was magical. Recommended, but it's
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twice the value if you can get a hold of Ulrick O'Connor's biography of Behan and read that first, or in some fashion weave the two of them together. Show Less
LibraryThing member k6gst
We spent just a few days in Ireland on our honeymoon trip last summer. I resolved to read more Irish writers. They churn them out.
Behan was arrested in England as a 16 year-old I.R.A. soldier and bomb maker, and this is his memoir of his time in borstal (juvie).
This is a different sort of prison
Much of it was fairly impenetrable, notwithstanding the slang glossary in the back of the Knopf hardcover copy I have. A few helpful entries also serve to give you a glimpse into the subject matter:
giving the nut: butting with the head
grass: squealer, spy, informer (from grasshopper; rhyming slang for copper, “policeman,” and probably also for shopper, “informer”)
sea-pie: a kind of Irish stew, made with suet instead of potatoes
The peculiar kind of Irish Catholic hyper-religiosity coupled with anti-clericalism is there, heightened by the fact that Behan was more or less excommunicated for being an I.R.A. man, as the church was doing to I.R.A. leaders back in Ireland at the time (the setting is the late 1930s). But notwithstanding his excommunication, the padre tapped him to assist at mass because he knew his way around the Latin.
He is sympathetic towards not just his English fellow prisoners but also his jailers. The superintendent of his institution, whom they called “the squire,” is positively revered for his humanity and fair play.
The book has much fine humor, song, and dirty verse to recommend it.
On our recent trip we were only in Dublin for two nights and so didn’t get to see Kilmainham jail, but it was a queer feeling seeing other Republican sites and monuments. My general aversion to revolutions was heightened by the historical recency and cultural-linguistic links. It was bizarre to be walking through battlefields of a revolution only one hundred years old, a revolution that I wouldn’t have supported (for reasons that have nothing to do with whether it was right or wrong—I just always imagine myself on Team England). I don’t know quite how to explain it. Someone please explain to me what I was feeling.
Behan was dead of alcoholism at 41.
Any other Irish writers you recommend, besides the regular ones? I’m going to try William Trevor next.
Behan was arrested in England as a 16 year-old I.R.A. soldier and bomb maker, and this is his memoir of his time in borstal (juvie).
This is a different sort of prison
Show More
book than last week’s A Gentleman in Moscow. The English juvenile justice system of the early 20th century was not the Metropol Hotel. But it ain’t the gulag neither.Much of it was fairly impenetrable, notwithstanding the slang glossary in the back of the Knopf hardcover copy I have. A few helpful entries also serve to give you a glimpse into the subject matter:
giving the nut: butting with the head
grass: squealer, spy, informer (from grasshopper; rhyming slang for copper, “policeman,” and probably also for shopper, “informer”)
sea-pie: a kind of Irish stew, made with suet instead of potatoes
The peculiar kind of Irish Catholic hyper-religiosity coupled with anti-clericalism is there, heightened by the fact that Behan was more or less excommunicated for being an I.R.A. man, as the church was doing to I.R.A. leaders back in Ireland at the time (the setting is the late 1930s). But notwithstanding his excommunication, the padre tapped him to assist at mass because he knew his way around the Latin.
He is sympathetic towards not just his English fellow prisoners but also his jailers. The superintendent of his institution, whom they called “the squire,” is positively revered for his humanity and fair play.
The book has much fine humor, song, and dirty verse to recommend it.
On our recent trip we were only in Dublin for two nights and so didn’t get to see Kilmainham jail, but it was a queer feeling seeing other Republican sites and monuments. My general aversion to revolutions was heightened by the historical recency and cultural-linguistic links. It was bizarre to be walking through battlefields of a revolution only one hundred years old, a revolution that I wouldn’t have supported (for reasons that have nothing to do with whether it was right or wrong—I just always imagine myself on Team England). I don’t know quite how to explain it. Someone please explain to me what I was feeling.
Behan was dead of alcoholism at 41.
Any other Irish writers you recommend, besides the regular ones? I’m going to try William Trevor next.
Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Tony Award (Winner — Best Play 1970)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1958
Physical description
7.8 inches
ISBN
0099706504 / 9780099706502
Other editions
Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan (Paperback)