70 years ago today Flann O'Brien wrote to his friend William Saroyan that he had completed a new book, a metaphysical detective novel called The Third Policeman. Alas, when the novel was sent out to publishers, just before the Nazi blitzkrieg on Western Europe there was scant interest and O'Brien (nom de plume of Brian O'Nolan) decided to shelve the book. He later became a little embarrassed by its weirdness and told friends that the manuscript had been stolen from the boot of his car while he had left it parked by the side of the road. The manuscript was finally found after his death by his widow and published in 1967. Of course it is Flann O'Brien's masterpiece and one of the great Irish novels of the century. Certainly the strangest Irish crime fiction story ever written. If you really want a plot summary read it here on Wikipedia but be warned there are many spoilers. If you haven't read The Third Policeman you should add it to your TBR pile. It's work, but what good thing isn't?
Sunday, February 14, 2010
The Third Policeman
70 years ago today Flann O'Brien wrote to his friend William Saroyan that he had completed a new book, a metaphysical detective novel called The Third Policeman. Alas, when the novel was sent out to publishers, just before the Nazi blitzkrieg on Western Europe there was scant interest and O'Brien (nom de plume of Brian O'Nolan) decided to shelve the book. He later became a little embarrassed by its weirdness and told friends that the manuscript had been stolen from the boot of his car while he had left it parked by the side of the road. The manuscript was finally found after his death by his widow and published in 1967. Of course it is Flann O'Brien's masterpiece and one of the great Irish novels of the century. Certainly the strangest Irish crime fiction story ever written. If you really want a plot summary read it here on Wikipedia but be warned there are many spoilers. If you haven't read The Third Policeman you should add it to your TBR pile. It's work, but what good thing isn't?
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31 comments:
It's sitting here within reach of my hand, and it certainly seems a fitting day to start it.
I've only read the Dalkey Archives, which I happened to pick up in Ireland and read there.
I'd always heard that At Swim Two Birds was the one. Or I should say that that's the one that everybody mentions.
Seana
Its good.
This is great. I love your book recommends. I read Greenmantle, by the way. Weird but loved it!
Sheiler
Yeah Greenmantle is a very odd book. I hope you drank the beer that I reviewed with it.
Also, it's interesting that he and Saroyan were friends. I really like Saroyan's short stories.
A very short treatise on spades in Irish crime fiction:
The spade used to bash in Old Mathers' head in The Third Policeman was a nod to the spade used (allegedly) to bash in the father's head in The Playboy of the Western World, said spade (the one in Playboy) being specifically a turf-cutting implement called a 'loy', Ed Loy being Declan Hughes' private detective, Declan Hughes being initially a playwright whose first play was called I Can't Get Started, a drama about Dashiell Hammett, Hammett being the creator of Sam Spade, the prototype private eye, and possibly an inspiration to Seamus Heaney ...
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun …
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man …
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it. - Seamus Heaney
I'll get my spade, sorry, cloak.
Seana
I've only read a couple but I liked them.
Dec
Cecily: Do you suggest Miss Fairfax, that I entrapped Ernest into an engagement? How dare you? This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolen: I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.
Declan, that was brilliant. And Adrian, nice rejoinder.
I wish I could recite an instance of a spade in the literature of Saroyan, but of course, even if there was one that happened to be called The Spade, I can't.
I found a book at the library some years ago that Saroyan wrote about his youthful days of writing. It was called something like The Man on the Flying Trapeze--Fifty Years later. He lived in a cold flat in San Francisco, I think, and everyday for I don't know how many days he wrote a short story and sent it to (I think) The New Yorker. It was such a terrific book, a writer's thoughts on writing, that I think I copied half of it out by hand, because that was back in the days when I did that kind of thing. But the odd thing is that I have never been able to find it since--not at the library, not at the used bookstore and nothing on line has sounded like the right thing. Given and withdrawn again is kind of how it feels.
Seana
That sounds very interesting and maybe the sort of thing NYRB would publish in its reprints series.
That's a great idea. I wonder if you can write and suggest things?
Third Policeman is off to a good start, though I'm finishing another book so start is the key word here.
adrian, no beer. I am poor right now. too poor for beer - but not for peach snapple iced tea which I drink to aid my long drives.
I hope to rectify this soon.
Declan, I love the history of the spade.
seana, is the title the Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze?
Figures that I read a blog populated by booky people - my to do list has become littered with actions that include: lay down on couch, glass of water on right, blanket at feet, open book.
Seana
It cant hurt. It'll have some clout too coming from a bookshop.
Sheiler
Well you could always do other stuff too while listening to the audiobook.
I read At Swim Two Birds as it was recommended for some light relief after David Peace's Tokyo Year Zero.
It made my head hurt.
Rob
I like both those books very much. I have a friend who hated TYZ so much he took Dorothy Parker's advice and hurled it violently across the room. Peace went a bit crazy with the concept of Leitmotif in that book. But still I liked it.
There's an Irish gay coming of age novel called At Swim Two Boys that I liked too.
BTW
The Third Policeman is Lance Armstrong's favourite novel.
Nah, not really, but it should be.
Maybe it will be some day.
Sheiler, I think it did have that short story in the title, but it hasn't brought up the book I'm thinking of in my past searches. However, I will check again. And thanks for the effort. I'm kind of aghast that you are too poor to drink beer.
The guy who wrote At Swim Two Boys came to our store when that came out. I missed the event, but I think one of our receivers back then was just a bit in love with him.
And Rob, The Third Policeman doesn't really seem like it will be headache inducing stuff.
I'm more of a fan of "Swim Two Birds." In the end, "Third Policeman" felt too wrapped up in itself.
I don't want to spoil the ending for those who haven't read it, so I'll just say that the whole experience felt pointless at the end
SLIGHT SPOILER: There's no underlying rationale for all the weird stuff, and I kept hoping for something. Nothing that the protagonist does will ever matter.
In "Swim", even though it's just as surreal, I felt more connected to what was going on.
Seana
Apparently he spent 10 years working on that novel so he deserved the success.
Gav
Well I saw it coming so it didnt piss me off. And its not like Lost where they're just making it up as they go along, pretending its all part of the a bigger plan. Third Cop was all planned from the getgo. But yes you are allowed to hate the book and disagree with me!
Wonder what O'Neill's up to now. Just checked and though they brought out earlier works after that one, there's nothing newer slated.
I hope he's plugging diligently away and not just discouraged.
The leitmotif stuff messed with my head a bit and I'm still not sure exactly what happened at the end.
Swim Two Birds messed with my head because I had just finished TYZ which was quite depressing and distressing but it was either that or American Rust and that would have finished me off. I should have gone with a Katie Price novel.
As for hurling books across the room, the only book I've done that with (and the only book I've never finished) was Jude the Obscure. The character of Sue got on my tits so much the book went out the window of my fourteenth floor unit.
Adrian,
I certainly didn't hate it, I just thought it was dragging a bit by the end. By about 2/3 of the way through, I could also see where it was going, and I guess I wish he'd cut to the chase at that point, and jumped to the ending escape sequence. Whereas "Swim" never dragged for me at all.
I'll agree with rob on the hate for "Jude" though. I had to read it for high school, and I think it was the book I most detested that year.
Rob, Gavin
The end of Jude The Obscure is so goddamn campy though you have to laugh.
There's a bit in Far From The Madding Crowd where this dude who's been saving his whole gradually building up his sheep flock so he can ask a middle class girl to marry him discovers that his sheep dog has gone mad and driven the whole flock off a bloody cliff - I could not stop laughing at that in class.
Seana
I dont know what he's doing either. I named the hero of my lighthouse trilogy after him though.
I don't know if it was at the end of "Jude" but I remember laughing when the kid hangs himself -- it was just too silly. And then everyone in the class thought I was a cold bastard when I mentioned it.
I do wonder what Hardy thought when he wrote this stuff. I have to admit that I was pretty horrified at that child hanging, but not mad at Hardy for writing it. And I can certainly understand being detached enough from it to laugh, Gavin. It is, after all, fiction. If you laughed at a real life incident, I'd wonder.
I've heard two camps on writers writing tragedy, though. Some say they don't get broken up by their own words and some say they do. I think both camps dissimulate a bit. They do and they don't is more the right answer.
Adrian, that's pretty cool about the Lighthouse hero. It's still up pretty soon on my list, but now I have to read The Third Policeman. Maybe I'll do them concurrently.
Gavin
No you werent cold. Its funny in a campy ridiculous way. All of Thomas Hardy is campy and quite a bit of Dickens.
Seana
I'm not sure he earned enough from that book to retire but its bound to be a movie.
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