Stories and Plays

Even a taste of Flann O’Brien is a treat. But this is not much more than a taste, and it’s not his finest work. I enjoyed it, but Stories and Plays is best for O’Brien completists. If you only have time for one book, At Swim-Two-Birds is his masterpiece. If I could read them all over again—like a virgin, touched for the very first time—I’d read The Dalkey Archive first, followed by The Third Policemen (where he gets supremely weird), followed by At Swim. The Hard Life is quite hilarious too…oh, see I can’t stop going on about Flann O’Brien (a pseudonym for Brian O’Nolan).

At any rate, this book contains the beginning of an unfinished novel (written just before he died) that has its hilarious moments, two very short show more stories, two plays and an essay about James Joyce. To give you a bit, this collection includes:

A man who thinks he’s a commuter train for a day.
A Scottish woman who plans to take over all of Ireland by planting Sago trees (in order that more of these drunken, whoring, gambling Irish folk don’t end up in the USA--where she lives--due to a potato famine).
A group of Irish politicians so annoying that they drive Satan himself out of town.
And a description of James Joyce as follows,
“Surely there,” observes our Professor, “you have the Irish artist? Sitting fully dressed, innerly locked in the toilet of a locked coach where he has no right to be, resentfully drinking somebody else’s whiskey, being whisked hither and thither by anonymous shunters, keeping fastidiously the while on the outer face of his door the simple word, ENGAGED?” show less

Not the best introduction to the flann, but a must-read if you're already a fan.