Cerebral palsy victim achieves fame as writer

Press, 19 December 1989, Page 10

Cerebral palsy victim achieves fame as writer

Christopher Nolan is a young Irish writer who has been lauded as the new James Joyce. Yet he cannot walk, talk, or even control his twitching limbs. Last year he won Britain’s richest literary award with “Under the Eye of the Clock,” an autobiography which he hammered out with a “unicorn stick” strapped to his head.

“His Voice, His Written Word” (tonight at 9 on One), is the second film on Nolan by producer Jenny Cowan, and concentrates on his writing, with extracts from his Whitbread prizewinner. Cowan’s first film on “Christy” Nolan was inspired by his first book, “Dam-Burst of Dreams,” published when he was 15 years old. A book of poetry, it was also praised by critics, with one of them describing the “unlikely” discovery of his talent as like “finding diamonds in a dustbin.”

Now 23, Nolan still has to write each letter with his head cupped laboriously in his mother’s hands. It was the muscle relaxant, Lioresal that provided Nolan with an escape from disability, allowing the prose and poems to tumble out. “My mind is like a spindryer at full speed,” he wrote. “My thoughts fly around my head while millions of beautiful words cascade into my lap.” While “Under the Eye of the Clock” does have its dark times, they are almost invariably enlivened by humour. The work is a mixture of language that blends an enormous general vocabulary with Catholic theological terms, classical images, Celtic mythology and even specially invented words.

“His Voice, His Written Word,” includes an interview with Professor John Carey of Oxford University, who wrote the preface to “Under the Eye of the Clock.” He says of Nolan’s writing: “A strangely poised detachment from himself and his condition — a detachment which is still hopelessly trapped in the disabilities it frees itself from — continues to intrigue the reader and, it seems, the writer too.” A victim of cerebral palsy who almost died of asphyxiation at birth, Nolan still has to fight for each word.

Bernadette Nolan says they were always determined to treat their son as normal. “We wanted him to 1 have an education so that he would have things to think about, and life would be interesting when we weren’t here. We never dreamed there was all this poetry inside him.” She describes an astonishing relationship in a way that belies the strength of her own dedication and commitment. “I feel we are just two ordinary people to whom something extraordinary happened.”