Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan (6 September 1965 – 20 February 2009) was an Irish poet and author.

He was born in Mullingar, Ireland, but later moved to Dublin.

He was educated at the Central Remedial Clinic School, Mount Temple Comprehensive School and at Trinity College, Dublin.

His first book was published when he was fifteen.

He won the Whitbread Book Award for his autobiography in 1987.

He was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in the UK, the medal of excellence from the United Nations Society of Writers, and a Person of the Year award in Ireland.

Because of his cerebral palsy, he experienced quadriplegia since birth.

He wrote an account of his childhood, Under the Eye of the Clock, published by St. Martin's Press, which won him the UK's Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1987 at the age of 21.

He soon dropped out of Trinity College to write a novel entitled The Banyan Tree (1999).

Nolan spent more than a decade writing The Banyan Tree.

According to The New York Times the book is a multi-generational story of a dairy-farming family in Nolan's native county of Westmeath.

The story is seen through the eyes of the aging mother.

It was inspired, he told Publishers Weekly, by the image of "an old woman holding up her skirts as she made ready to jump a rut in a field."

A review of the book was done in The New York Times by Maghan O'Rourke.

She reviews the book and relates it to James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in the story the protagonist leaves his mother in Ireland while he moves on to travel the world.

Nolan however, gives the reader a version of the mother's story.

"And so, in the end, one suspects that he wants Minnie's good-natured, commonplace ways to stand as their own achievement, reminding us that life continues in the places left behind."

He died due to choking on 20 February 2009.

Christopher Nolan was born to parents Joseph and Bernadette Nolan.

He grew up in Mullingar, Ireland.

Due to asphyxiation at birth, Christopher was born with permanent impairment of his "nerve-signaling system, a condition he said is now labelled dystonia."

Because of these complications, Nolan was born with cerebral palsy, and could only move his head and eyes.

At the beginning of his life people believed he was intellectually disabled, but his mother proved them wrong.

Bernadette brought her son to see Dr. Ciaran Barry.

He was a consultant of physical medicine and rheumatology who possessed a particular interest in children with cerebral palsy.

Dr. Barry was attached to the Central Remedial Clinic.

He played games with Christopher, the toddler, and in so doing noted the child anticipated his actions and informed his mother that he was of sound mind.

Due to the severity of the palsy, he used a wheelchair.

In an interview, his father explained how, at the age of 10, he was placed on medication by Dr. Barry that "relaxed him so he could use a pointer attached to his head to type."

To write, Nolan used a special computer and keyboard; in order to help him type, his mother held his head in her cupped hands while Christopher painstakingly picked out each word, letter by letter, with a pointer attached to his forehead.

He communicated with others by moving his eyes, using a signal system.

When he was young, his father told him stories and read passages from James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and D. H. Lawrence to keep his mind stimulated.

His mother strung up letters of the alphabet in the kitchen, where she kept up a stream of conversation.

His sister, Yvonne, sang songs and acted out skits.

His mother stated that "he wrote extensively since the age of 11 and went on to write many poems, short stories and two plays, many of which were published."

Many of the writings described here by Nolan's mother were compiled for his first publication, the chapbook Dam-Burst of Dreams.

Upon becoming a teenager, Nolan received his education from the Central Remedial Clinic School, Mount Temple Comprehensive School and at Trinity College, Dublin.

At the age of fifteen, he published his first book, a collection of poems titled Dam-Burst of Dreams.

He was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in the UK, the medal of excellence from the United Nations Society of Writers, and a Person of the Year award in Ireland.

While working on a new novel, on 20 February 2009, Nolan died suddenly, aged 43, in Beaumont hospital in Dublin, after a piece of salmon became trapped in his airway.