When, in 1941, Sean O'Faolain wrote to the Irish Times to protest about the 'miserable fees' paid by Irish radio for talks by Irish writers, he inadvertently set in train the most nightmarishly savage satire in that paper's history. O'Faolain's letter, and the response to it from the impoverished rump that constituted the Irish intelligentsia, led to the foundation by him of WAAMA, the Writers Artists Actors Musicians Association, a short-lived trade union for workers whose services were not exactly regarded as essential. WAAMA inspired the Times columnist Myles naGopaleen (the novelist Flann O'Brien) to an extended fantasy that raised the dilemma of the artist in post-Independence Ireland to Swiftian heights of terror and disgust.

LRB 23 June 1994 | PDF Download