Flann O'Brien (1911–1966)
Author of The Third Policeman
About the Author
Writer Brian O'Nolan was born on October 5, 1911. He graduated from University College, Dublin. This gifted Irish writer had three identities: Brian O'Nolan, an Irish civil servant and administrator; Myles Copaleen, columnist for the Irish Times, poet and author of An Beal Bocht (The Poor Mouth: A show more Bad Story about the Hard Life, 1941), a satire in Gaelic on the Gaelic revival; and Flann O'Brien, playwright and avant-garde comic novelist. His masterpiece, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), went almost unrecognized in its time. This novel, which plays havoc with the conventional novel form, is about a man writing a book about characters in turn writing about him. O'Brien starts off with three separate openings. The Third Policeman (1967), funny but grim, plunges into the world of the dead, though one is not immediately aware that the protagonist is no longer living. He died on April 1, 1966. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Courtesy of Dalkey Archive Press
Works by Flann O'Brien
Binchy and Bergin and Best 1 copy
No title 1 copy
Brian, Flann and Miles 1 copy
THE THIRD POLICEMAN 1 copy
Associated Works
The Vintage Book of Amnesia: An Anthology of Writing on the Subject of Memory Loss (2000) — Contributor — 228 copies, 2 reviews
The Penguin Book of Irish Comic Writing (1996) — Author, some editions; Author, some editions — 32 copies, 1 review
Great Irish Writing: The Best from The Bell (Classic Irish Fiction) (1978) — Contributor — 23 copies
The Brother [VHS] — Based on work — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Nualláin, Brian Ó
- Other names
- O'Nolan, Brian
gCopaleen, Myles na (pseudonym)
Gopaleen, Myles na (pseudonym)
Brother Barnabas (pseudonym)
Blakesley, Stephen (pseudonym)
Knowall, George (pseudonym) - Birthdate
- 1911-10-05
- Date of death
- 1966-04-01
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Blackrock College
University College Dublin - Occupations
- civil servant
dramatist
novelist - Organizations
- Literary and Historical Society (University College Dublin)
- Cause of death
- heart attack
- Nationality
- Ireland
- Birthplace
- Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland
- Places of residence
- Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland
- Place of death
- Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland
- Burial location
- Deansgrange Cemetery, Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland
- Associated Place (for map)
- Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland
Members
Discussions
"The Best of Myles" by Flann O'Brien in One Book One Thread (February 2020)
Reviews
Después de acabar de leer ‘El Tercer Policía’, sólo puedo decir que se trata de una absoluta obra maestra. El viaje al que te arrastra Flann O’Brien es de los más imaginativos, alucinantes e irreales que he leído jamás. ¡Hilarante, delirante, sorprendente! Aún no entiendo cómo no había leído nada de este escritor irlandés. Estas mismas sensaciones de estar leyendo una historia que te sorprende en cada página, es comparable a la que tuve hace años con la lectura de otra show more magnífica fábula metafísica, ‘El poema de los lunáticos’ de Ermanno Cavazzoni, novela en la que el inspector Savini investiga secretos mensajes aparecidos en los pozos, trasladándose para ello a extrañas tierras donde descubre a pueblos que habitan en tuberías y que espían nuestro mundo a través de los grifos. Absurdo, sí, pero vaya imaginación y menudas historias. Pues así es ‘El Tercer Policía’. Sin duda, todo un hallazgo.
La primera vez que escuché hablar de Flann O’Brien fue en 2006, cuando Nórdica Libros publicó el presente libro precisamente. Tras leer la sinopsis, sólo pude adquirirlo, porque ya se sabe que después no hay manera de encontrar los libros de estas pequeñas e imprescindibles editoriales.
Desmond y su 'The Third Policeman'
Posteriormente también me enteré que ‘El Tercer Policía’ era uno de los libros que leía Desmond en la genial serie ‘Lost’ (‘Perdidos’) y que se veía encima de su escritorio en uno de los episodios. Según uno de los guionistas, en la serie se hacen bastantes alusiones a la trama del libro. En la novela aparece un subterráneo en el que los números juegan un papel muy importante, así como una especie de caja que produce cualquier cosa que se desee, y también se sugiere un posible derrumbe de la estructura como no se mantenga todo perfectamente controlado. Esto no va más allá de una mera anécdota, y si hay que creer a los creadores y guionistas de la serie, los libros que van apareciendo en algunos capítulos tienen su importancia para una mayor comprensión de lo que está sucediendo.
Pero no hay que confundirse, porque lo que ‘El Tercer Policía’ tiene en común con ‘Lost’ es mínimo, aunque muy importante. Es difícil poder hablar del argumento de este libro sin desvelar parte de sus sorpresas. El protagonista y narrador, una especie de estudiante y filósofo autodidacta obsesionado con la obra del científico de Selby, vive con John Divney, un tipo ruin junto al que comete un asesinato y un robo, como se menciona en el primer párrafo. Lo que roban es una caja negra, que se convertirá sólo en el principio de una pesadilla fantástica que va más allá de la imaginación, un viaje afín al de la Alicia de Lewis Carroll, o al del Mundo de Oz, y no exento de humor absurdo al estilo ‘El hombre que fue jueves’ de Chesterton. Un mundo con una comisaría bidimensional donde conocerá a dos tipos asombrosos, el Sargento Pluck y el policía MacCruinkeen, totalmente obsesionados con las bicicletas, sus perjuicios y placeres.
Mención aparte para de Selby y su colección de disparatadas teorías, a cuál más peculiar y sublime, como por ejemplo, que la noche no existe como tal, sino que se trata de aire negro producto de la acumulación de gases volcánicos. Teorías que se irán volviendo cada vez más extrañas y complicadas. La novela contiene varias notas a pie de página que rompen con la trama convirtiéndose por momentos en una novela aparte, en una especie de metaficción; notas donde tanto críticos como seguidores de de Selby dan rienda suelta a sus filias y fobias por el controvertido sabio.
En cuanto al tercer policía del título, es todo un misterio del que no se puede mencionar nada, pero cuya importancia es crucial, aunque esté ausente.
Insisto de nuevo, cuanto menos se sepa del argumento de este libro, mucho mejor, para poder disfrutar plenamente con su lectura.
Flann O’Brien fue un exquisito narrador para el que las reglas a la hora de escribir no existían. ‘El Tercer Policía’ se puede leer como una novela de humor, de misterio, de suspense, de literatura fantástica, e incluso de terror, sobre todo al final, porque es todo esto y mucho más. show less
La primera vez que escuché hablar de Flann O’Brien fue en 2006, cuando Nórdica Libros publicó el presente libro precisamente. Tras leer la sinopsis, sólo pude adquirirlo, porque ya se sabe que después no hay manera de encontrar los libros de estas pequeñas e imprescindibles editoriales.
Desmond y su 'The Third Policeman'
Posteriormente también me enteré que ‘El Tercer Policía’ era uno de los libros que leía Desmond en la genial serie ‘Lost’ (‘Perdidos’) y que se veía encima de su escritorio en uno de los episodios. Según uno de los guionistas, en la serie se hacen bastantes alusiones a la trama del libro. En la novela aparece un subterráneo en el que los números juegan un papel muy importante, así como una especie de caja que produce cualquier cosa que se desee, y también se sugiere un posible derrumbe de la estructura como no se mantenga todo perfectamente controlado. Esto no va más allá de una mera anécdota, y si hay que creer a los creadores y guionistas de la serie, los libros que van apareciendo en algunos capítulos tienen su importancia para una mayor comprensión de lo que está sucediendo.
Pero no hay que confundirse, porque lo que ‘El Tercer Policía’ tiene en común con ‘Lost’ es mínimo, aunque muy importante. Es difícil poder hablar del argumento de este libro sin desvelar parte de sus sorpresas. El protagonista y narrador, una especie de estudiante y filósofo autodidacta obsesionado con la obra del científico de Selby, vive con John Divney, un tipo ruin junto al que comete un asesinato y un robo, como se menciona en el primer párrafo. Lo que roban es una caja negra, que se convertirá sólo en el principio de una pesadilla fantástica que va más allá de la imaginación, un viaje afín al de la Alicia de Lewis Carroll, o al del Mundo de Oz, y no exento de humor absurdo al estilo ‘El hombre que fue jueves’ de Chesterton. Un mundo con una comisaría bidimensional donde conocerá a dos tipos asombrosos, el Sargento Pluck y el policía MacCruinkeen, totalmente obsesionados con las bicicletas, sus perjuicios y placeres.
Mención aparte para de Selby y su colección de disparatadas teorías, a cuál más peculiar y sublime, como por ejemplo, que la noche no existe como tal, sino que se trata de aire negro producto de la acumulación de gases volcánicos. Teorías que se irán volviendo cada vez más extrañas y complicadas. La novela contiene varias notas a pie de página que rompen con la trama convirtiéndose por momentos en una novela aparte, en una especie de metaficción; notas donde tanto críticos como seguidores de de Selby dan rienda suelta a sus filias y fobias por el controvertido sabio.
En cuanto al tercer policía del título, es todo un misterio del que no se puede mencionar nada, pero cuya importancia es crucial, aunque esté ausente.
Insisto de nuevo, cuanto menos se sepa del argumento de este libro, mucho mejor, para poder disfrutar plenamente con su lectura.
Flann O’Brien fue un exquisito narrador para el que las reglas a la hora de escribir no existían. ‘El Tercer Policía’ se puede leer como una novela de humor, de misterio, de suspense, de literatura fantástica, e incluso de terror, sobre todo al final, porque es todo esto y mucho más. show less
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.
-Rita Mae Brown
The phrase practically screams common sense, does it not? And yet endurance, perseverance, and stubborn tenacity are all valued qualities in the face of a seemingly unobtainable goal. Personally, what immediately comes to mind are the trials and tribulations of scientists in countless laboratories scattered across the globe. Proclaiming a hypothesis, designing an experiment to match it, and show more then conducting it over and over and over again, enough to gain enough data points to exclude both systematic and random error, avoidable and unavoidable biasing of the results. Three is the magic number required to measure just how wrong the data could possibly be, but more is always encouraged, just in case a monstrous outlier rears its head due to some unforeseen amount of chaos.
And if that experiment proves faulty, scientific training demands a do-over. Correct the hypothesis a touch, adjust the variables a smidgen, re-calibrate the chemicals and fine-tune the machinery, then repeat the process countless times more. On and on and on, as one of the blessings of the scientific method is that conclusions can always be questioned, answers can always be tested ad infinitum, and theories that have lasted for millenia can have their sterling reputations cracked like an egg during the space of a single hour.
Now, what does this have to do with The Third Policeman? Well, the previous two paragraphs in essence described a major plot point, the "twist" if you will of the entire narrative, as well as an action that multiple characters take part in throughout the course of the story. More importantly, there are a surprising amount of passages that are grounded firmly in the 'insanity' that science is.
Human existence de Selby has defined as 'a succession of static experiences each infinitely brief'...From this premise he discounts the reality or truth of any progression or seriallism in life, denies that time can pass as such in the accepted sense and attributes to hallucinations the commonly experienced sensation of progression as, for instance, in journeying from one place to another or even 'living'....The illusion of progression he attributes to the inability of the human brain - 'as at present developed' - to appreciate the reality of these separate 'rests', preferring to group many millions of them together and calling the result motion...
Some of you may be familiar with the concept of integration in mathematics. For those who are not, imagine a line on a graph. Make it as curved and chaotic as you please. Now, imagine finding an equation to calculate the area underneath that line for however far it shoots out into infinity, bounded only by the horizontal (x) and vertical (y) axes that the line originates from. The accepted process is to imagine an infinitely narrow slice of that area, then add up as many of the slices as necessary. Realistically speaking, this is impossible. Mathematically, this is one of the fundamental bases of calculus, and is one of if not the most useful calculation skill to have under one's belt for engineering.
The parallels between seeming insanity and hard science don't stop there.
'How big is all this place?'
'It is no size at all,' the Sergeant explained, 'because there is no difference anywhere in it and we have no conception of the extent of its unchanging coequality.'
In engineering problems involving lines, shapes, and volumes, it is a very popular method to extend one or more of the axes of the shape out to infinity, thereby reducing seeming differences to insignificant in the grand scale of things, and ridding one of the necessity of calculation for that particular part. You would not believe how much easier this makes calculation, although it is true that these infinitely long, infinitely wide, and infinitely large objects have a very major issue:
They lacked an essential property of all known objects...Simply their appearance, if even that word is not inadmissible, was not understood by the eye and was in any event indescribable.
Regardless, the calculations always work out.
Another scientific curiosity, albeit a bit more grounded in fact than the previous.
'Some people,' he said, 'call it energy but the right name is omnium because there is far more than energy in the inside of it, whatever it is. Omnium is the essential inherent interior essence which is hidden inside the root of the kernel of everything at it is always the same.'
I nodded wisely.
'It never changes. But it shows itself in a million ways and it always comes in waves. now take the case of the light on the mangle.'
'Take it,' I said.
'Light is the same omnium on a short wave but if it comes on a longer wave it is in the form of noise, or sound. With my own patents I can stretch a ray out until it becomes sound...But ominium is the business-end of everything. If you could find the right wave that results in a tree, you could make a small fortune out of timber for export.'
Light is both a particle and a wave, waves that have a much higher frequency than sound waves. Every object in the physical world has what is called a 'resonant frequency', most popularly illustrated by an opera singer breaking a glass with their voice. At that point, the frequency of the noise matches the vibrational frequency of the multitudes of atomic bonds within the structure, causing it to absorb energy and eventually break apart. Whether this process can ever be reversed and form physical objects from vibrations is a fascinating question indeed.
And finally, the amazing properties of water.
[de Selby] praises the equilbrium of water, its circumambiencey, equiponderance and equitableness, and declares that water, 'if not abused' can achieve 'absolute superiority'...In Bassett's view the water was treated in the patent water-box and diluted to a degree that made it invisible - in the guise of water, at all events - to the untutored watchers at the sewer.
If you ever find yourself working with bioengineers, you'll run across drug delivery problems. Not only do they involve integration and shapes that break the laws of reality, they involve liquids of all densities, viscosities, and diffusion constants. Unless you're dealing with water or something that has been 'infinitely diluted' in water, essentially easing calculations by being deemed 'perfect' in its insignificant interactions. In other words, you can ignore it. The only problem with de Selby's approach is attempting to demonstrate these mathematical tricks in real life, resulting in a household usage of 9,000 gallons of water in one day, none of which was observed to ever leave the house. Again, realistically incomprehensible. But scientifically sound.
I could go on about the myriad reality-defying ways the book illustrates that in actuality are necessary for successful scientific reasoning. But I think that you have all had enough lessons in mathematics/physics/general engineering for one day. Rest assured, this is not all that the book has going for it. There are many passages of dry wit that had me flat out giggling, as well as wonderfully unconventional metaphors that raised the reality the words described to a unusual, yet beautiful art. You'll even find scathing critiques of society and profound existential meanderings within these pages.
However, what stuck with me the most were the uncanny similarities between the strange logic that the book operated on and the science of the real world. Not all of the book's weirdness is reflected in sound science, but science itself has its own cases of crackpot theories and misinformed conclusions. Ultimately, to discover the truth, scientists delve into these realms, these hells if you will, of supreme weirdness and nonsensical assumptions, bring back bits and pieces for the rest of humanity to benefit from, and then dive back for more. It's a wonder that more of them don't go mad from the effort. show less
This book is apparently quite well-known, but it was new to me - I was led to it by Brian Catling's list of favorite books in The Week of June 4th. Few things are better than finding a book as entertaining and peculiar as this one out of the blue. Although this surreal novel is overall quite disturbing, it is frequently as funny as anything I've read in a long while. When it was originally rejected, the reviewer at Longman's wrote, We realize the author's ability but think that he should show more become less fantastic and in this new novel he is more so. I find even this bit of associated history delightful. O'Nolan (O'Brien is a pen name) eventually claimed that the manuscript was lost, but it sat in open view on his sideboard for 26 years. It was, either ironically or appropriately, published a year after his death. That this book should lie in obscurity while Sartre's No Exit is so famous, confirms the greatness of the former by De Selby's second law.
Looking over my notes I see many great new words for me including, hereditament, oxters, and stoons. My one and only complaint is that the author did not recognize that, when executed, people are hanged not hung (this might be the work of a posthumous editor). show less
Looking over my notes I see many great new words for me including, hereditament, oxters, and stoons. My one and only complaint is that the author did not recognize that, when executed, people are hanged not hung (this might be the work of a posthumous editor). show less
"... the beauty of reading a page of de Selby is that it leads one inescapably to the happy conviction that one is not, of all nincompoops, the greatest."[return][return]I don't know why it's taken me so long to read Flann O'Brien. Perhaps his work has been a Schrödinger's Book, for me: as long as his books were unread, in their sealed box, they could be both the Greatest Surreal Irish Humor Ever Written and an incredibly lame disappointment. I could go along, complacently, in both states show more simultaneously. [return][return]BUT ... realities must be faced. The cat is scratching furiously at the inside of the box, and meowing plaintively ( ... The book is ... scratching furiously ... Sorry, the analogy kind of got away from me there ...), and my first Flann O'Brien has been read, and I am delighted to say that it is a TREAT. [return][return]OK, yes, it's like a Monty Python sketch, on acid, and inflated to the length of a 200 page book. And yes, O'Brien sometimes was inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity. (The four page footnotes, in 8pt font should be a bit of a giveaway ...) but it is very, very funny.[return][return]So many, many excellent excellent reviews here, entering fully into the spirit of the thing, that I don't feel that I have much that I can add. Some very enlightening reviews, too. (Learning that Brian O'Nolan/Flann O'Brien was so disappointed by the reaction to his novel, when he hawked the manuscript around in the late 30s/early 40s, that he claimed to have lost it, and it was only rediscovered and published after his death, is so meta I want to die of happiness.) [return][return]I just hope that, somewhere, he knows that what he's written was just the pancake.[return][return]One thought that I'd like to share: the fingerprints of The Third Policeman are on every example of Irish humor that I can think of. Father Ted? (With priests instead of policemen ... ) Derry Girls? (Girls swapped for boys. And James is a bicycle ...) Any of the works of Martin McDonagh, including the glorious In Bruges? Having read The Third Policeman, a LOT of things in that movie suddenly made a lot more sense to me ... [return][return]"Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed," I murmured, "to those who seek the higher places." show less
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Statistics
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