Flann O'Brien - Years Ahead of His Time

This item via Make about photographs of a jeans distressing factory in Kentucky made me realise what a true visionary the Irish writer and satirist Flann O'Brien really was. O'Brien, whose Myles na gCopaleen column in the Irish Times raised titters at Dublin breakfast tables from the 1940s for some decades, observed in one of his myriad flights of fancy, that many owners of newly commissioned mansion houses ordered, as part of the decor, books by the yard and that the observant visitor might deduce, by the obvious lack of use of said books, the owner's Philistine nature. He proposed to fill an evident gap in the market with a Book Distressing Service in which, for varying reward, he and a team of carefully trained distressers would punish the books in as an artistic fashion the owner could afford so that they might be spared the embarrassment of a virgin tome adorning their carefully tasteful libraries. The stages of distressing ran from the basic (worrying by small but determined terriers specially trained for the job) to erudite dedications by the author in the flyleaves to the current owner of the book complete with wine stains and railway tickets from exotic locations placed as 'forgotten' bookmarks. I've no doubt that he has a wry smile on whatever passes for a face now and is at this moment perparing a law suit claiming copyright on his brilliant idea.