Derek Crozier – Irish Artist

Derek Crozier, cruciverbalist, died on 3rd April 2010. There have been warm tributes paid to his life and work.

Crozier composed the “Crosaire” cryptic crossword in the Irish Times for 67 years. The obituary tells a nice story of the column’s creation – his wife was a crossword fanatic and often complained about how easy she was finding her crosswords, how they no longer constituted a challenge. Nag, nag, nag.

So he set about designing a crossword that would cause her more trouble, a truly cryptic crossword. She was stumped (and impressed). A few days later, Christmas Eve in Emergency Dublin, Crozier met Big Bertie Smyllie, legendary editor of the Irish Times, in the Palace Bar on Westmoreland St. Crozier mentioned his crossword, Smylie had a look and was equally impressed and found him some space for a daily column. And so it began.

I won’t pretend I could solve these brain-teasers. If ever we had consecutive day’s newspapers lying around the house, I’d read the clues, have a superficial think, and then look at the solutions in the following day’s papers and marvel, for there is no other word, at the ingenuity of the clues and answers.

To celebrate his life, the Irish Times published a booklet with a selection of his most brilliant crosswords (with, thankfully, solutions), and it truly shows how talented, and original, was this man’s work. Try these:

• Country Rot, I See (6). (Rustic)
• May be in the form of arcs (4). (Scar)
• The buck still goes to the bad when he gets the girl (9). (Stagnancy)
• It’s ridiculous to have anything so light with nothing on the end (7). (Lampoon)
• Does Garry sound as if he needs a wig? That takes the biscuit! (9) (Garibaldi)
• With him you’re got to buy your own drinks (7). (Vintner)
• ETSETSETSETSETSETSETSETSETSETS ones holds (6). (Tenets) – To explain this one; there are ten “ETS” here, hence “tenets”, principles  one holds.

The booklet is good enough to list some Crosaire conventions:

• clues can usually be broken into three parts
• Clues often employ anagrams, synonyms, homophones, palindromes or letter plays.

An example of the reasoning given: “That miserable accountant is worth his weight in diamonds (5)” Solution: The solution is CARAT – miserable = RAT, accountant = CA (chartered accountant); RAT+CA (anagram) = CARAT (diamond weight).

Reading through these, you really have to marvel at the ingenuity of this man’s mind!

In all the acclaim following his death, there were suggestions that the column should be continued forever, starting over from column number one when the last one is published. I wonder has anyone considered whether this man’s work should not be studied as literature?

To me, he seems the natural successor to Joyce; think of the wordplay and classical learning of Finnegans Wake, the multi-lingual, multi-level puns, the use of words to transcend utilitarianism. And if he would be candidate to succeed Joyce, then he fits naturally in the same bracket as Flann O’Brien, playful and irreverent, a multi-generational Irish Times institution?

He fits so neatly into the canon, that it would seem a shame not to light the fuse and at least see what sort of fanfare is loosed.

The only objections to such a course that I can think of  are:
Can crosswords be considered literature? In anguished voice: “But is it Art?” Would Crozier have called it Art himself? Was it ever meant as Art?

Had Crozier artistic purpose? Joyce embarked on his fiendish and unreadable masterpiece with an aim. I’ve read the first and the last paragraphs of Finnegans Wake, and this is enough to say with confidence that he had a schema, an outline of how it was to be and what it was to say. This is enough to qualify as a work of art. \it could be said that Crozier made crossword puzzles, clever granted, but mere diversion for Dublin’s polymath eggheads with too much time on their hands. I don’t doubt that Crozier, by all accounts a modest man with no pretensions to anything, would have himself considered his work Art.

But for something to be labelled Art, does it necessarily have to have been meant as Art by its creator? Obviously it usually is, but i can think of many examples where some work has been acclaimed as High Art and the original creator would have been both gobsmacked and tickled pink to know about it. For example, listed architectural structures like the Georgian redbricks in town. These were built for a utilitarian purpose – yet in time became a symbol of an era, and a mark of distinction to the venerable capital among European capitals, like a cragged face who claims with pride to his equally battered peers that he still has some of his original teeth in his head. Another example is of the original comic books, Spiderman or Batman, that now sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars – a genre that dubbed itself “pulp fiction” but is now recognised as, culturally, a major influence on the second half of the twentieth century. These originals now reside in private collections alongside Picassos and Van Goghs, or in serious museums worldwide. Their original creators had no such pretensions; they were paid by the box, and the emphasis was on quantity, not quality. Graphic novels being produced now are the most innovative advance in literature since Joyce. More: the prehistoric cave painters in Lascaux were just simple cavemen. Outsider art?

No, lack of artistic intent does not disqualify a work from being called Art. “All art is quite useless” said Wilde. On this count too, Crozier’s crosswords qualify. Really, Art is Art when someone, anyone, says it is Art and appreciates it so. It needn’t be the creator. Ivan Goncharov disowned “Oblomov” thinking it was a piece of twaddle, and, indeed, threw the only manuscript of it into the fire. His horrified friends dived in after it, saving most of it, at their own skin’s expense. Its now considered a classic of Russian literature.

I, personally, look forward to a time when Irish students have a choice of Shakespeare or Crozier to study for the Leaving.