Fintan O'Toole (born 16 February 1958) is an Irish journalist,literary editor, and drama critic forThe Irish Times, for which he has written since 1988.[1] O'Toole was drama critic for theNew York Daily News from 1997 to 2001 and is Advising Editor and a regular contributor toThe New York Review of Books. He is also an author, literary critic, historical writer and political commentator.
In 2011, O'Toole was named byThe Observer as one of "Britain's top 300 intellectuals", despite not being British nor living in the United Kingdom.[2] In 2012 and 2013, O'Toole was a visiting lecturer in Irish letters atPrinceton University and contributed to the Fund for Irish Studies Series.[3][4]
O'Toole was born inDublin in a working-class family.[1] He was educated at Scoil Íosagáin and Coláiste Chaoimhín inCrumlin (both run by theChristian Brothers) and atUniversity College Dublin (UCD). He graduated from the university in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy.[5][6]
Soon after graduation, O'Toole became drama critic ofIn Dublin magazine in 1980. He joined theSunday Tribune on its relaunch byVincent Browne in 1983, and worked as its drama critic, literary editor, arts editor, and feature writer. From 1986 to 1987 he editedMagill magazine.
O'Toole joinedThe Irish Times as a columnist in 1988 and his columns have appeared twice-weekly ever since. He took a sabbatical in 1990–1991 to work as literary adviser to theAbbey Theatre. In 1994 he was one of the presenters for the last season ofBBC TV'sThe Late Show. From 1997 to 2001 he was drama critic of theDaily News in New York. In 2011, he was appointed as literary editor ofThe Irish Times. He also has published articles regularly in theNew York Review of Books, andThe Guardian.[7][non-primary source needed]
In 2017, O'Toole was commissioned byFaber and Faber to write the official biography ofSeamus Heaney. O'Toole said of the process that his "one terror is that [Heaney's] favourite communication mode was the fax, and faxes fade."[8]
In 2018, he was awarded the UCD Alumni Award in Arts & Humanities.[6]
O'Toole has criticised what he sees as negative attitudes toward immigration in Ireland, the state of Ireland's public services, growing inequality during Ireland's economic boom,[9][non-primary source needed] theIraq War, and the U.S. military's use ofShannon Airport, among many other issues. In 2006, he spent six months reporting forThe Irish Times in China.[10]
O'Toole's former editor,Geraldine Kennedy, was paid more than the editor of the UK's top non-tabloid newspaper,The Daily Telegraph, which has a circulation about nine times that ofThe Irish Times. Later, O'Toole told a rival Irish paper, theSunday Independent:
We as a paper are not shy of preaching about corporate pay and fat cats but with this, there is a sense of excess. Some of the sums mentioned are disturbing. This is not an attack on Ms Kennedy, it is an attack on the executive level of pay. There is double-standard of seeking more job cuts while paying these vast salaries.[11]
In June 2012, O'Toole compared the IrishConstitutional Convention to the AmericanCitizens Union, a reformist political organisation that the New York City political machineTammany Hall did not bother to suppress so long as it did not threaten its hegemony.[12]
In August 2019, after the selection ofBoris Johnson asPrime Minister of the United Kingdom, O'Toole proposed to get Parliament to back an alternative Cabinet who would push back the October deadline forBrexit to allow a trade deal to be negotiated. The proposal required sevenSinn Féin MPs in northern Irish border constituencies to resign in favour of a pact between the four largest anti-Brexit parties in Ireland, thereby triggering by-elections at a certain date in mid-September. O’Toole believed they would result in a more hardline anti-Brexit parliamentary faction that would make a stronger case for a no-confidence vote in Johnson.[13][non-primary source needed] The proposal was sharply criticised by Sinn Féin leaderMary Lou McDonald, who claimed the existing anti-Brexit factions in Parliament were strong enough without the party making too many policy concessions.[14][non-primary source needed]
A 26 June 2018 column inThe Irish Times by O'Toole examined how theDonald Trump administration's policies and public-facing communications about immigration and asylum-seekers from Mexico might be deliberately calculated to bring elements of fascism to the U.S.[15][non-primary source needed] An April 2020 column inThe Irish Times asserted that Trump's destruction of the public image and reputation of the United States culminated with hisbungling of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis,[16][non-primary source needed] and that subsequently pity was the only appropriate feeling for the American people, the majority of whom had not voted for him.
In a 2024New York Review of Books essay, O'Toole rejects the common interpretation ofWilliam Shakespeare's tragedies in terms of protagonists' flaws leading to their own destruction. "So whatdoes Shakespeare teach us?" he asks, and replies: "Nothing. His tragic theater is not a classroom. It is a fairground wall of death in which the characters are being pushed outward by the centrifugal force of the action but held in place by the friction of the language. . . . We return to the tragedies not in search of behavioral education but because the wilder the terror Shakespeare unleashes, the deeper is the pity and the greater the wonder that, even in the howling tempest, we can still hear the voices of broken individuals so amazingly articulated."[17]
Fintan O'Toole, "Eldest Statesmen",The New York Review of Books, vol. LXXI, no. 1 (18 January 2024), pp. 17–19. "Biden's signature achievements as president [are] securing large-scale investment in infrastructure and in the transition to a carbon-free economy... [But t]here has been a relentless decline in absolute [economic] mobility from one generation to the next..." (p. 18.) "With the promised bridge to a new generation as yet unbuilt, time is not on Biden's side, or on the side of American democracy." (p. 19.)
Fintan O’Toole, “The Second Coming,”The New York Review of Books, vol. LXXI, no. 19 (5 December 2024), pp. 1, 6, 8. "Trump’s second coming may not quite herald the end of the world, but it will hand the ship of state over to a motley crew of libertines and libertarians, control freaks and fanatics. It will stage its own spectacles of mass roundups and treason trials for the amusement of the many millions who are, it now seems abundantly clear, entertained by exhibitions of cruelty. It will be a nonstop show, its cacophonous soundtrack amplified by Elon Musk and the thriving denizens of the digital manosphere." (p. 8.)
