Flann O'Brien



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Flann O'Brien, born Brian O'Nolan, (Ireland, 1911)

At Swim-two-birds (1939) ++, first published in 1939 like James Joyce’s "Finnegans Wake", is a novel in which the characters interact with the author like in Miguel de Unamuno's "Niebla" (1914) and Luigi Pirandello's "Sei Personaggi in Cerca d'Autore" (1921). Written in a style that alternates between vernacular and erudite pomp, it is also an irreverent parody of Irish folklore and literature. An eccentric exercise in meta-fiction, it is a story within a story within a story. There's the book that O'Brien has written, the book that the student is writing inside his book, the book that Dermot Trellis is writing inside the student's book, and the book that Dermot's son Orlick is writing about Dermot. The author of the novel within the novel (Dermot) can't control his own novel's characters, who drug him and even seduce him, causing him to become the father of the man who will write a disparaging novel about him. At each level its labyrinthine plot can mix the characters and their author in the same story, a looping fractal structure that evokes a Moebius strip or an Escher oxymoron. To further disorient, the book begins and ends three times. The book has only one chapter: Chapter 1. There is no Chapter 2.

The unnamed author of the book begins by saying that, after chewing bread for three minutes, he decided that his book will have three beginnings and countless endings. The first beginning is that the demon Pooka MacPhellimey is pondering numbers, the difference between odd and even numbers. The second beginning is that John Furriskey was born at the age of 25 with a full-fledged memory of his first 25 years. The third beginning is an introduction to Irish legend Finn MacCool (a 3rd-century warrior chieftain, seer and poet). We then learn that the unnamed author is a student living with an uncle and the uncle is disappointed that the student never reads his books. The student in fact confesses that he spends most of his time in bed, smoking and thinking. He mentions that he owns books by Joyce and Huxley. He reads a letter from a horseracing tipster named Verney Wright and then begins t describe Finn (largely incomprehensible), summarizing legends that involve Conan Maol and Diarmuid Donn in the land of Erin (Ireland). It is mentioned the medieval legend of the madness of King Sweeny. We then read the first "biographical reminiscence" (first of a series that interrupt the narration): he goes drinking with fellow student Kelly and then interrogates himself with uncredited lines from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn", i.e. "What mad pursuit? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?" (one of the many plagiarisms in the novel). The student spends the next three days at home recovering from the hangover, hiding from his uncle, and is then visited by his friend Brinsley who has read the pages about Finn and they get into a discussion about literature. We now read the book that the student is writing. Dermot Trellis is the owner of a hotel called Red Swan but he has remained in bed for twenty years. The reading is interrupted by the student's uncle who comes to greet Brinsley, inquires about his goals in life and offers to help him to found a job. The uncle leaves the boys alone and the reading of the manuscript resumes. We are introduced to Dermot Trellis' servant Teresa. Brinsley interrupts the reading to express some opinions on the plot (so far irrelevant). A second "biographical reminiscence" is about the student asking his uncle for money to purchase a book, Heine's "Die Harzreise". Back to the main story, the student relates how he met Brinsley at the college and told him that Dermot Trellis (now referred to as "a friend of yours") is writing a novel of his own, and is "compelling all his characters to live with him in the Red Swan Hotel so that he can keep an eye on them" but he loses control over them whenever he falls asleep. Such characters are actually borrowed from other books, chiefly from the books of a writer called Tracy. The student also mentions that among the guests of the hotel are a cowboy (in Room 13) and legendary hero Finn MacCool, and that "the cellar is full of leprechauns" (fairies in the form of tiny old men). Trellis decided to write a philosophical and moralizing book because he is shocked by the spate of sexual crimes. His book contains "seven indecent assaults on young girls". The book is so bleak that he plans no hero, only villains. The central villain is going to be a depraved man called Furriskey. So we learn that John Furriskey (the student's second beginning) is a fictional character in a novel written by one of the student's fictional characters, Dermot Trellis. The student then stops summarizing and starts reading directly an extract from his manuscript. The two then discuss racing horses, based on a tip received from Verney Wright, and they are tempted to bet on a horse with the money that the student borrowed from the uncle to buy the Heine book.

The student and his friends Brinsley and Kelly get drunk. Then we read another extract from the student's novel in which Dermot Trellis begins writing his novel about the villain John Furriskey, whose creation is grotesquely celebrated in the press as a process of "aestho-autogamy". Dermot, however, admits that he borrowed the character from William Tracy, an "eminent writer of Western romances", who is an expert in having people born adults such that, after six miscarriages, his own wife delivered a middle-aged Spaniard. The sudden the birth of Furriskey as an adult also becomes the subject of a trial in which Trellis is accused of not having sketched him well enough. The third "biographical reminiscence" mentions that his uncle was upset that the student never exhibited the book for which he borrowed money. The student relates that he dind't leave his room for three months during winter. Then, disgusted by the filth of his bed, started attending college every day. The student and his friends Brinsley and Kelly go drinking again. We read another extract from the student's manuscript about Dermot Trellis’ manuscript about John Furriskey, and we read the fourth "biographical reminiscence" in which the student informs us that he lost the pages of his manuscript about a conversation between Furriskey and he divine voice. But then we get that precise detailed description of the conversation in which the mysterious voice instructed Furriskey to live a life of moral turpitude and admonished not to deviate from his mission of pure evil. Furriskey meets two other characters of Trellis' novel: Paul Shanahan and Antony Lamont. Shanahan is a character from Tracy's cowboy novels. We then read a newspaper announcement that Tracy died, and then we are introduced to two more characters of Tracy's novels: the cowboys Shorty Andrews and Slug Willard.

A fifth "biographical reminiscence" informs us that the student, finding himself in a kind of author's block and having lost some of the pages of his novel, decided to delete the entire book and replace it with a short summary of events (which are only part of what we read so far): Dermot Trellis is working on a moralizing novel whose characters include the devil and magician Pooka Fergus Macphellimey and the depraved John Furriskey; the latter is informed by servant Peggy that Trellis the author of their novel has fallen asleep; Peggy has been sexually molested by both the elderly Finn MacCool (who is her father in Trellis' book) and by the cowboy Paul Shanahan; Peggy informs Furriskey that Trellis is powerless on his characters while asleep; Finn and Shanahan molested her during Trellis' sleep; Furriskey and Peggy fall in love, and swear to behave secretly according to moral virtue when Trellis does not force them to be evil, while waiting to escape Trellis' novel and get married; Trellis can't resist the beauty of Antony Lamont's sister Sheila, originally created as an innocent victim for Furriskey's seduction, and rapes her (rapes one of his own fictional characters); Furriskey pretends in front of Trellis that he is indeed carrying out the required mission of evil. Now the student's novel can restart from these events.

While Dermot Trellis is asleep, Furriskey meets with Paul Shanahan and Antony Lamont, and someone retells the tale (with many poems) of Finn telling the story of the mad king Sweeny who was cursed to live on trees like a bird after insulting a saint. The conversation turns to Jem Casey, a common worker whom Shanahan considers a great poet.

The sixth "biographical reminiscence" is about an old friend of the student's uncle, Mr Corcoran, who comes to visit. His son has just won a school prize and the student's uncle is sad that his nephew has won nothing so far. The two old men play records on a gramophone. The student then walks out and meets a friend, Kerrigan, who invites him to visit Michael Byrne who is a "painter, poet composer, pianist, master-printer, tactician, an authority on ballistics." Byrne gives a speech about the delight of lying in bed. Suddenly, Brinsley (who doesn't seem to be there with Kerrigan and the student) interrupts the narrative to point out that Dermot Trellis too is a "great bed-bug". Byrne replies to Brinsley that he never heard of Trellis, and now the student replies to Byrne that Trellis is an author, as if Trellis existed in the real world that the students and Byrne inhabit. Brinsley then explains to Byrne that the student is writing a book about this Trellis who never leaves his bed and who is writing a book about some other characters. Another extract from the student's novel informs us that Trellis only likes green books and therefore has never read a multitude of books, for example the Bible. The student then summarizes to Brinsley what happens next in his novel: Furriskey, who doesn't want to be a villain, puts sleeping pills in Trellis’ drink so that Trellis sleeps longer hours, allowing his characters more free time. Whenever he wakes up, the characters resume their mandated behavior. Furriskey marries Peggy, they open a shop and live happily "for about twenty hours out of twenty-four". Byrne and Kerrigan congratulate the student for the idea of the characters making the author sleep. Furriskey and Peggy hang out with Shanahan and Lamont. These two cowboys meet two decadent Greek servants, Timothy Danaos and Dona Ferentes, both deaf and dumb, who are employed by an "eminent Belgian author who was writing a saga on the white slave question". At this point Byrne pulls out a book titled "The Athenian Oracle, being an Entire Collection of all the Valuable Questions and Answers in the old Athenian Mercuries intermixed with many Cases in Divinity, History, Philosophy, Mathematicks, Love, Poetry, never before published". And he reads an extract.

We then read a lengthy extract from the student's novel about the journey of the Pooka MacPhellimey. He wakes up as someone is knocking at the door but he can't see anyone: the visitor announces himself as an invisible Good Fairy. The fairy has come to tell the Pooka that Sheila is pregnant and about to give birth at the Red Swan Hotel. The Pooka and the Good Fairy discuss whether the Pooka's wife is a kangaroo. The fairy invites the Pooka to attend the event so that each can exert an influence (good or evil) on the baby, and "let the best man of us win the day". The invisible fairy jumps into the Pooka's pocket and they begin their journey. Along the way they meet Slug Willard and Shorty Andrews who are searching for a lost steer. They are surprised to hear a voice coming from the Pooka's pocket. They decide to follow the Pooka and the invisible fairy to the Red Swan Hotel, knowing that it's where Dermot Trellis lives. Then they meet Jem Casey, a small elderly man, who starts reciting his verses about working-men, and then Sweeny, the mad king who lives on trees. Sweeny falls to the ground and injures himself. Slug and Shorty have to carry him. They continue their journey reciting poems and singing.

The seventh "biographical reminiscence" relates how his uncle drafted the student as a secretary for an odd meeting with four other people.

The Pooka, the Good Fairy, Slug, Shorty, Jem Casey and Sweeny finally reach the fictional Red Swan Hotel. They play poker while the Pooka tells the story of how he played chess with Dermot Trellis and won the woman Granya. In the middle of the poker game, the fairy confesses to the Pooka that he has no money to pay what he lost at the game. The Pooka demands that the fairy surrenders any right to exert a benevolent influence on the baby that is being born. The fairy has no choice. The Pooka wins the soul of the newborn. Here the student interrupts the narrative to apologize for being unable to describe the birth of Trellis' illegitimate child, and so the baby is born already an adult. Sheila dies giving birth. Sheila's baby, Orlick, walks into the room and meets the characters already assembled there and even delivers a little speech to thank them for attending his birth. Here the student again interrupts his narrative and tells us how he spend his day, and compares it with a text taken from a volume titled "A Conspectus of the Arts and Natural Sciences". He then summarizes the situation: the Pooka brainwashes Orlick Trellis, Dermot Trellis is almost constantly asleep because Shanahan keeps administering sleeping pills, Furriskey and Peggy keep living a happy marital life. We then read another lengthy extract from the student's novel in which Furriskey, Shanahan and Lamont discuss music, Roman emperor Nero, and many other subjects. Shanahan then tells the story of Bartley Madigan who spent twenty years paralyzed in bed. The ninth "biographical reminiscence" is a conversation with Brinsley who complains that he cannot distinguish between Furriskey, Shanahan and Lamont. Then another summary of the student's novel so far, which in fact we haven't seen before: Orlick Trellis becomes a tenant in Furriskey's house, Shanahan and Lamont discover in Furriskey’s house a manuscript according to which Orlick has inherited his father’s gift for writing, The Pooka convinces Orlick (raised by the Pooka to be evil) to write an evil novel about his father Dermot Trellis so as to punish Dermot for what Furriskey, Shanahan and Lamont had to endure in Dermot's novel, as a personal revenge for what Dermot did to Orlick's mother Sheila (a rape that caused his death).

And so now we read the novel that Orlick (a character invented by his father Dermot's rebellious characters) is writing in front of his father's characters. A priest, Moling, climbs into Dermot's room using a ladder crafted by angels. Shanahan interrupts Orlick complaining that his writing is too high-brow. Lamont too demands a simple story. And so Orlick begins the story again. And then a third time, every time beginning with the sentence "Dermot Trellis neither slept nor woke but lay there in his bed, a twilight in his eyes." The third time Orlick places the Pooka next to his father Dermot. The two engage in a cryptic and erudite conversation with terms such as "allogamy" (the fertilization of a flower by pollen), "arachnoid" (a membrane that surrounds the brain) "azoic" (an era without living beings), and "anabasis" (the march of Greek mercenaries to Cyrus' Persia). Eventually the Pooka exerts his magical powers causing Dermot Trellis to become a monster and his room to become a stinking inferno, and then bestowing on the hated author Dermot all sorts of agonies. Orlick's tale includes completely new characters named Furriskey, Shanahan and Lamont that are something for them to be proud of (e.g. Shanahan is a well-respected philosopher in Orlick's novel). And they even speak Latin. The Pooka delivers to them Dermot as "a fugitive from justice" and they (previously Dermot's characters, now Orlick's characters) hold a court trial and appoint the two mute Greeks as Dermot's defense lawyers. Trellis is on trial for the evil depiction that he chose for them in his novel: one after the other, the characters of his novel come to testify how he mistreated them. Even the dead William Tracy testifies against Dermot. The characters are ready to issue the guilt sentence but the student interrupts the story for the last "biographical reminiscence": he has passed the final examination and receives a watch as a graduation gift from his uncle and Mr Corcoran.

The student concludes his novel: Dermot's servant Teresa burns by mistake Dermot's manuscript, thus destroying the characters of Furriskey, Shanahan, Lamont and Orlick, and thus freeing Dermot from the trial and saving him from the sentencing.

The book ends with the student discussing whether Dermot was mad, and comparing him with the madness of Sweeny and Shakespeare's Hamlet, quoting fictional scientists on the matter of mental illness, and telling the story of the German who was fond of the number three and made everything a triad. And in the end it is the student (the author of the novel) who sounds like a madman (obsessed with numbers).

Published only after the death of the author, The Third Policeman (1940) + is a comical romp that mixes absurdist theater, ghost story, Kafka, "Don Quixote", "Alice in Wonderland", David Foster Wallace's footnote-dense novel "Infinite Jest" and demented musichall farce. The narrator remain nameless throughout the book. He is a struggling scholar who, desperate to publish his life's work, accepts to murder and rob a man so he'll be able to pay for the publication (a veiled satirical stab at the cultural establishment). He finds himself stuck in an alternate dimension, which represents his Dantesque hell, in which the murderer is forced to endlessly confront both his victim and his soul/conscience (which, unlike him, has a name, Joe), except that it is a hell where the most ridiculous things happen. This nameless hero travels to an underworld that is both surreal and grotesque, including a visit to eternity, a labyrinth of underground chambers and corridors littered with wires and pipes that evokes a scientific laboratory and the mechanized plant of a factory. All the time he is rehearsing his scholarly research and all the time he is dialoguing with his soul/conscience, so that the novel is two books in parallel: one the elaborate pedantic mock-erudite discussion of the theories of a fictitious philosopher (who appears to be no less mad and absurd than everybody else), and the other a fairy tale of grotesquely implausible adventures. The story is set in rural world, the kind of world that is normally peaceful and bucolic. Here, instead, it is the antechamber of hell.

The book opens with a line in which the narrator confesses that he killed a man. The first chapter is a flashback that narrates his own life and what led to the murder. The narrator lost his parents when he was still a child. The parents managed to have him study in a boarding school, while a foreman called John Divney took care of his father's farm and his mother's pub. At the age of 16 he fell in love with the writings of De Selby. When boarding school ended, the narrator lost a leg, which had to be replaced with a wooden one. He was 20 when he finally returned to the farm and the pub, and met John Divney in person. Divney claimed that both farm and pub were losing money but in reality he was stealing it. The narrator didn't care because he was absorbed in his studies of De Selby's writings. This went one for years. In fact, Divney even started robbing the customers when they got drunk. At the age of 30 the narrator became inseparable from Divney but not out of real friendship. Divney convinced the narrator to murder and rob the rich Phillip Mathers so that the narrator could publish his studies on De Selby. After the murder Divney hid the box with the money, refusing to tell the narrator where it was with the excuse that they had to wait until things quieted down. That's why they became "inseparable friends": the narrator didn't trust Divney and didn't want to leave him alone for one minute. Eventually Divney decides that it was time to unearth the money and sent the narrator alone to Mathers' own house. The narrator finds the box but the box suddenly disappears and old Mathers' ghost appears, drinking tea. The narrator hears an inner voice, that he calls Joe, prompting him to speak with the ghost. The ghost in principle always answers "no" but the narrator finds ways to get answers. Eventually the narrator comes to believe that the money is now kept by policemen who have lived in their barracks for hundreds of years. He asks Mathers to sleep in the house, since it is already evening, and the ghost allows him. The ghost asks him his name and the narrator doesn't remember: he is now nameless. And he has forgotten all about Divney. In the morning he is excited about recovering the box of money from the police officers. He sets on foot towards the barracks. He is soon walking through an eerie unknown landscape. He is still talking with his inner voice Joe, and frequently quotes De Selby. He takes a nap in a field and, when he wakes up, he finds a curious man, Martin Finnucane, sitting next to him. Martin introduces himself as a robber and murderer who is about to kill him. Martin though spares his life when the narrator shows that one of his leg is wooden: it turns out Martin himself is a one-legged man. Martin directs him towards the barracks. There the narrator meets the big sergeant Pluck, who mistakes him for the son of an acquaintance, and cop MacCruiskeen. The narrator pretends to be there to report that his gold watch has been stolen. Undeterred, Pluck, who is obsessed with bicycles (he is convinced that people are slowly being turned into bicycles), files a report about a stolen bicycle. Meanwhile, a man walks into the station: Michael Gilhaney. The narrator keeps mixing the story with references to De Selby. For example, De Selby was intrigued by the fact that, due to the finite speed of light, your reflection in the mirror is an image of a younger you, and so he built a system of mirrors that created an infinity of reflections, such that the image of one as a child appeared. MacCruiskeen continues to utter nonsense, a mix of philosophy and dada. He is suspicious of the narrator because the narrator arrives in town with no bicycle. MacCruiskeen reveals his hobby: building nested chests. He shows the narrator his masterpiece, a set of nested chests whose smallest ones are invisible. He has also built an instrument that plays music that cannot be heard because the frequency of the notes is too high for the human ear. Meanwhile Pluck and Gilhaney are about to begin a search for Gilhaney's stolen bicycle. the narrator volunteer to help them. Here Pluck mentions Fox, the third cop, who has gone completely mad (and never spoken again) after a mysterious conversation with MacCruiskeen. Pluck finds the bicycle and later confesses to the narrator that he was the one who stole it and hid it. Pluck then indulges in an "atomic theory" according to which those who ride bicycles all the time become half bicycle. After a lengthy digression into De Selby's theories (notably that the Earth is a sausage, not a sphere, and that gravity is a jailer of humanity), the narration resumes with the entrance of inspector O'Corky, who has just found the cadaver of Mathers. The sergeant feels that he has to pretend to be on top of the event and announces that not only does he know about the murder but he has even arrested the murderer: the narrator (who is in fact the murderer, but the sergeant picks him simply because he's the only stranger available). Asked why the narrator/murderer is not in jail, the sergeant confesses that he keeps his bicycle in the jail. The sergeant coldly tells the narrator that he will be hanged, although he will be allowed to remain on parole outside the prison. The narrator protests that he has no name and therefore cannot be hanged. The sergeant finds a way to justify killing him anyway. MacCruiskeen walks in and prepares an odd machine that emits a strange light and a horrible sound. He then explains that his machine can stretch the light and turn it into sound, and that everything is ultimately made of omnium, which can be bent into different materials like light and sound. Sound in turn can be stretched into heat. MacCruiskeen and Pluck collect noises and save them for winter, when the machine can turn them into heating. Gilhaney walks in to report that the price of timber to build the gallows is quite high. He trips and accidentally hits MacCruiskeen, who gets furious because he claims that his invisible chest has fallen onto the floor. MacCruiskeen pulls out a pistol and forces the narrator and Gilhaney to get on their knees and search for the invisible chest. Gilhaney winks at the narrator and pretends to have found the invisible chest. MacCruiskeen believes him and lets him go, but then he tells the narrator that he knows that Gilhaney was only pretending, but also that Gilhaney accidentally did grab the chest with his hand, by pure chance and luck. (On one hand the story of the invisible chest sounds ridiculous, but on the other hand the narrator witnesses the odd machine emit light and sound for real). After a lengthy digression on De Selby's theory of sleep, and another dialogue with his alter Joe in which the narrator dies (but it's only a dream), we are informed that the scaffolding for the gallows is being built and Pluck is satisfied. The narrator only has 24 hours to live. The narrator asks Pluck what's in MacCruiskeen's black book and that begins another venture into a rabbit hole. The ceiling of MacCruiskeen's room is a detailed map of their village. Following a crack in the ceiling, they enter the road to eternity. In order to enter eternity, one has to weigh himself. Then they take a lift to eternity, a vast underground chamber. There the narrator can ask anything he likes. He asks for gold and other things and a weapon. But now he weighs more than he weighed when he entered and cannot take the lift down anymore, so he is forced to leave everything behind. Pluck and MacCruiskeen confess that they always sleep in eternity because there time does not flow and they remain younger. After a lengthy digression on De Selby's theory of (with several lengthy footnotes), and the notice that not a single word of De Selby's manuscript is legible (which of course makes the whole digression pointless), the narration resumes from the morning of the execution. The third policemen, Fox, informs the others that a group of one-legged men (Martin Finnucane's gang) are marching on the prison to free the narrator. MacCruiskeen confronts them with a bicycle which drives people mad. The two policemen cannot carry out the execution because of dangerously high readings in eternity. The narrator wakes up again. He discusses De Selby's theory of sleep and in passing he mentions that De Selby was a physician, ballistician, philosopher and psychologist. The detour becomes the story of De Selby's weird biographers and scholars: Kraus, Bassett, Du Garbandier, Hatchjaw, etc. Harchjaw, for example, was arrested for impersonating himself and ended up working for a brothel in Hamburg. MacCruiskeen has left the door open and the bicycle that Pluck has locked in the jail is also moving towards freedom. The narrator and the bicycle escape together. Suddenly a house appears: it is Mathers' house. The narrator looks forward to meeting Divney again and keep looking for the box full of money. However inside the house he finds the third policeman, Fox, who turns out to be a giant version of Mathers, running a tiny police station inside the walls of the house. Mathers doesn't recognize him and is only concerned that the narrator is riding a bicycle without a lamp. The narrator claims that the lamp was stolen and Mathers/Fox proceeds to file a report, adding that several pumps were stolen too. The narrator asks Mathers/Fox if he knows anything about a cashbox. Mathers/Fox replies that it was found and already delivered to the narrator's house, and that it contains... omnium! With so much omnium the narrator will be able to do just about anything. In fact, Mathers/Fox confesses that he has used the omnium to create the wildly irrational world of the other two police officers, including the illusion of time warping, and he also used the omnium to save the narrator from the hanging (by generating the high readings that distracted the other two cops). The narrator owes Mathers/Fox his life. The narrator gets back on his bike and bikes towards his own house. He is surprised to see from the window that Divney lives there with his fiance, who is pregnant, and a boy. Divney and his fiance look a lot older. When the narrator walks in, Divney has a fit and falls to the floor, agonizing. His wife and his boy, however, don't see the narrator at all. Divney screams that the narrator is dead, that instead of the cashbox Divney had placed a mine under the floor, and the narrator died in the explosion, blown to pieces with the whole house. And that happened 16 years earlier. A new house appears. The narrator walks towards it, realizes that it is a police station. The exact same words describe the barracks as in the earlier chapter. The narrator sees that Divney (presumably dead) is also heading there. The police officer, presumably Pluck, asks them if their case is about a bicycle, exactly what he asked the narrator the first time. And so at the end we realize that the story has been told by a dead man, who is condemned to re-live forever his actions in some kind of grotesque hell.

The Dalkey Archive (1964)

synopsis forthcoming


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