Brendan Behan's New York - Brendan Behan

 BRENDAN BEHAN'S NEW YORK - BRENDAN BEHAN

What better person to have as a tour guide of New York than Brendan Behan? Playwright, author, poet, raconteur, rebel and alcoholic. 'To America, my new-found land' as he once famously said 'The man that hates you, hates the human race.' It was New York specifically that Behan loved, so much so that he wrote a love letter to it in the form of a book entitled Brendan Behan's New York that was first published in January of 1964. By March of that same year, however, Behan was dead.

'The person who says that he's not impressed by the New York skyline' Behan writes 'he's either half blind or he's just simply a liar'. And how can anyone possibly disagree with that? In fact, from every angle New York is mightily impressive. From the window of an aeroplane at night it's like the final scene from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind where the mothership ascends and all that can be seen is a dazzling lightshow.

From the streets of New York when looking up it's like being at the bottom of a canyon with the tops of the buildings obscured by clouds.

There's also the sound of New York, best heard from the top of the Empire State Building, that's like a gargantuan machine pounding and rumbling away at the centre of the earth.

And then there's the phenomenon of the setting sun aligning perfectly with Manhattan's east-west street grid, forming a corridor of shimmering gold.

Above all, however, there's the people. From all corners of the world they come. From the lowliest, poorest and most desperate to the richest, most successful and decadent. New York is the melting pot. The world's plug hole where all humankind is washed down. One of whom, of course, being Brendan Behan.

There's an awful lot of name-dropping in Brendan Behan's New York but then Behan seemed to know an awful lot of people, and those he didn't know all seemed to know him. Of those he knew personally, he would always have an anecdote about them or an opinion, almost always funny or complimentary. In regard to Samuel Beckett, for example, Behan writes: 'Samuel Beckett is an old and very dear friend of mine and a marvelous playwright. I don't know what his plays are about, but I know I enjoy them. I do not know what a swim in the ocean is about, but I enjoy it. I enjoy the water flowing over me'.

In regard to Allen Ginsberg, Behan tells us he's a very interesting and important man, whilst Jack Kerouac is easily the most controversial person he met (in Greenwich Village, at least). 'I think the beatniks are highly dangerous men. They are all after a job and they're dangerous. I don't mind people going after a job, but the job that the beatnik is after is my job.' Written with tongue firmly in cheek.

'I never felt so much at home anywhere as I do in New York' he tells us 'I am not afraid to admit that New York is the greatest city on the face of God's earth'. There are other great cities in the world as well, of course, but in regard to New York, Behan was probably right. His ode to it in the form of Brendan Behan's New York serves as a last will and testament and though it doesn't make for a brilliant book as such, it's a very generous one. A returned compliment to a city he so obviously loved and that so obviously loved him back.

John Serpico