185: The Third Policeman

School days out of sight.

Welcome back to Sophomore Lit, where we reread your tenth grade rating list. I'm your host, John McCoy, and with me is returning co-host Shannon Garrity. Hello. Hi, Shannon. Uh you want to introduce yourself again? Uh yeah, I am Shannon Garrety. I don't know if I really have any like authority here except for the fact that I read a lot. I do write a lot, but it's mostly like Science fiction and fantasy and such and also comic books.

Uh I've done various webcomics over the years. I have a graphic novel coming out. Um in February called Steam with artist Emily Holden. And you can also check out my two existing graphic novels, The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor and the Nefarious Nights of Willowweep Manor, uh w uh drawn by Christopher Baldwin and written by me. I've also you can also look up my prose fiction online. I'm kind of all over the place. Well, that's uh typical of the go getting uh

millennial generation, I want to say, you know, you guys oh my gosh, you flatter me. I'm so old. I'm Gen X. You're Gen X? I'm Gen X. I'm elderly, yeah. Uhhuh well I I I I guess you're on the other uh and end of the Gen X side. I'm kind of on the young Gen X side. Well, Gen X was also uh in its day was criticized for being

apathetic and uh and lazy. So Yeah, we're the most apathetic generation actually. But I'm on the young end of Gen X, but you can tell I'm Gen X because I I care about He Man and I don't care about the movie Hocus Pocus. That's the The cutoff point. I had a a strong hand in bringing up my uh younger brother Dan, who was ten years younger than me. So I was uh exposed to a lot of uh millennial stuff.

Yeah, I had a younger brother too, so I have some of that. I have some access to the The old the sort of the older millennial material.

Well, this is not a podcast about generational theory. This is a podcast about literature and particularly literature we read when we were young. Uh the book we read this time is not a book I read when I I was young, but it was a book that you

uh have a history with. You wanna talk about it? Yeah, I didn't read it when I was young either, but I have um I have been a ri it's and Rother I've been interested in for a while, so it's fun to talk about. We're gonna talk about The Third Policeman by Flan O'Brien. And um I actually didn't read this until adulthood but I and I didn't even learn about Flan O'Brien until I was in college and did a junior year abroad in Ireland. I did a year at Trinity College Dublin and was exposed to

some Irish and also Scottish writers that I hadn't been familiar with before that um should probably be better known in the US than they are. And Flano Brand, I think, is pretty well known in Ireland, but maybe not so well known. elsewhere, which is a shame'cause he's a lot of fun. He's a really f uh fascinating, kinda weird um writer with a great nasty sense of humor.

Um, so I read the I actually the first book of his I read was his debut novel at Swim Two Birds, which I think is the novel he's best known for in the US if he's known for anything and um that one is kind of like it's it's kind of his sort of it's a semi sincere, semi piss take version of his version of um Ulysses, you might say. It's a sort of um Mod postmodernist

novel. It's it's pretty good. Um but then The Third Policeman was his um second novel, but it wasn't actually published until after his death. And it's I think might be the one he's best it's most read in Ireland now. It's it's very funny and it's very darkly funny and I I like it a lot. I I again I'm a big fan of Novrit, some of his um other writings since then and kind of And been following this this guy's legacy.

Right. Well I I I want to point out a couple of things. First uh that you went going to Trinity College Dublin, I want to inform all my listeners out there that whenever you see uh meme posts about uh the greatest libraries in the world, that's that's one of the ones that comes up all the time. Uh yeah. It's quite it's quite remarkable if you ever get to see it there. You know, that's also

It's also where the Book of Cells is, isn't it? Uh oh yeah, it's right there with the Long Library. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh I mean the Long Library is not really functioning as a library now. It's a basically just you can go look at how gorgeous it is. But one of the big perks of going to Trinity is that you can just Go there all the time. You can look at the Long Library and the Book of Kells and um several other some of the other illuminated manuscripts.

that they have in their collection, like just any time. So yeah, I used to go look at that all the time. It's great. And they they turn they have the Book of Cals and then they have some other Um they have some other beautiful illuminated manuscripts and it's all part of the same tour. You see that, and you see the Long Library and you see the Harbour of Brian Baru, which used to be on Irish money, but they're on the Euro now, so it's not. But

Um, they try and they turn the pages of the manuscript every few days. So I got to see a lot of pages, which is fun. Yeah, no, it it it was great. I loved Trinity. The other thing I wanted to say is while I have never read uh before now uh Flan O'Brien, uh I I have a a a good friend and colleague uh at the university where I work.

who is a professor of literature and of Irish studies and The Third Policeman is one of his favorite books in the world. He actually uh has had me to come to his classes some time to talk about podcasting'cause he also does podcasting. And i in fact that the first uh he had a symposium on podcasting, which he said was actually a backdoor attempt to get everyone to read the the third policeman. So uh I Joe, if you're listening, I finally read the the third policeman.

That's a good plan, Joe. I approve entirely. I think it should be more widely read. I think it would be a good book to assign in like high schools because it's um It's funny and dark and it's kinda and it's pretty short, so it doesn't really it wouldn't take it doesn't take that long to read. It's got that going for it. Right. It's a great book.

You mention um you you you mentioned this was published after O'Brien's death. Uh yes. O'Brien by the way, uh Flan O'Brien is a pin name. This is not his real name. No. Yeah, his his real name is Brian O'Nolan. We will not refer to him by that through this and I will probably forget that now that I've I've closed the Wikipedia page on that. But um but What I find remarkable is this book was actually written

by nineteen forty and not published until after his death. Uh and it was published in nine nineteen sixty seven. And as you say, he's a kind of he he reads as a postmodern uh author, but that's so out of sync with what we think of as postmodernism. We think of postmodernism as being, uh, you know, the the writers of the sixties and seventies in America was people like Barrett.

Um it was uh people like Paul Paul Auster, uh, you know, it much a much later development, but but here is Flan O'Brien doing this kind of thing uh back in the of the forties.

It's true. I mean, it it does feel more recent than it is, although you have to remember that again, like he was a contemporary of James Joyce and Joyce obviously pioneered stream of consciousness and um modernist writing and a lot and like at swimto birds a lot of that is sort of him playing around with uh what Joyce was doing sort of

borrow like um borrowing from it and also kind of making fun of it a bit. He he poked fun at Joyce a lot too. Right. Well I mean there's there's a whole there's there was a whole scene of like um modernist Irish writing that he's sort of drawing from in writing this. Joyce, um, you know, is famously known for taking classical material and putting it into the um a modern stream of consciousness

uh and mixing it in with popular songs in Ulysses. If you if you run through that book you have to have a big uh book of footnotes open uh because all he's making references to all these nineteenth century songs that were at one time popular in Ireland, never popular in America. There's no possible way you would you would know them. But the thing about uh Flan O'Brien in this novel that makes it so postmodern is

This is a book that uh creates a whole apparatus around it. There this of this this fake scholarship around this character. Yes, there is a there is a fake scholar that um that f figures prominently in the book and it's constantly mentioned. Yeah, there's a whole there's a whole imaginative imaginary imaginary scholarly world in this book.

I'm gonna look it up in a bit. I'll I'll find in a bit. De Selby, thank you. De Selby is the this the imaginary skull like intellectual philosopher that the protagonist in worship.

Right. Well he's he's he's kind of a a strange philosopher. He's more of a I guess what you would call a metaphysician and his metaphysics are exceedingly weird. They they you know even even Even for the main character who uh professes to be the world's expert in in Disalbi, uh he is constantly recognizing that DeSalby's ideas are often wildly incorrect. or very out there or unprovable and that DeSelby himself was a

strange and problematic character. One of the quotes from the book one of the quotes that the narrator gives is that the beauty of reading a page of Decelebi is that it leads on inescapably to the happy conviction that one is not of all nincompoops the greatest. Um let's see believes that the earth is sausage shaped. He has complicated theories about gravity. He believes that darkness is caused by an accretion of black air caused by volcanic eruptions. And uh he's also obsessed with water.

Among many, many other things. Right. Well, uh in addition to uh De Selby, we have this fictional apparatus of a whole society of people out there who form different schools of thought around DeSelby, there are lots and lots of footnotes. Um this is also something that's very postmodern and probably has its apotheosis and something like uh David Foster Wallace, the c this kind of Obsessive

making of marginalia. Um typically when when people do that there are they are creating a uh complicated world that they're but but Sylvie is sort of inscrutable and i in that way he's like a lot of the characters in the book, including the the narrator who never gets a name. Um

I don't know how to how to s how to start into this book. This is kind of a Th th this is this this is another book um like I I just did on the podcast uh I Am the Cheese, which is Oh, that's a good book. Right. Well well that's another book that's a book I read as a kid. Right. Well that's a book that you have to um figure out what's going on. And likewise, this book has a sort of a central puzzle that you're trying to figure out.

Um, I think that uh, you know, I I I don't want to necessarily spoil it this early in the in the in the podcast, but it's one of those things that I think if you've read enough, you've probably figured it out pretty quickly. Um but um But what it's framed with this this device of this character who who love he's he's orphaned at a young age, he's somewhat destitute, he loses his his leg under mysterious circumstances. It's very peculiarly written in the book, how he loses his leg. Um and

He wants to bring out an addition of an index to the works of DeSelby. The the opening tone of the book is completely different from the rest of the book. It starts as like this grim rural gothic tale, like like an Irish Thomas Hardy novel. It's very s more or less realistic. He's going through this horrible childhood and he loses his leg and

is plotting crimes and things and then it just veers off into a completely different thing. He forms this plan with this this h hi his um his co conspirator. There's this um What's his name is um The the the guy who runs his farm for him. is going to they they decide they're gonna kill an old man who and and steal the money that he has secreted away in a in a in a money box.

And i as you say, it's like Thomas Hardy. This is this part reminded me entirely of Crime and Punishment. Uh the kind of Yeah, or that too, yes. This kind of dumb crime that's not really well thought through. that that anyone with any sense could see is going to only bring grief for everybody involved. Or it's like some horrible Dickensian tale. Yeah, yeah. So he and uh th the two of them go and they they attack this guy, this w w what's his name? His name is Philip Mathers. All of it mathers.

Right. And uh he uh the the narrator, again unnamed, and his friend Div Divney, uh kill him with uh his spade. Um probably the most brutal, horrible way they they can. And then after that, um in the in the the kerfuffle uh that that that follows um wait wait, I have to interrupt because this is extremely important. This is a one of the books most important themes is that they don't just kill him with a spade.

They kill him with a spade and a bicycle pump. Right, yes. This is going to be this is very important to the rest of the world. This is very you are right. This is very important to the book. Um also important they ride bicycles to the murder. Right. Actually, it it it turns out that the narrator does the killing because uh Divney has has kind of wandered off in the midst of the fight and when he comes back he has secreted the uh money box somewhere.

And then this creates this unbearable tension uh relationship between the two of them where the narrator will not let Divney out of his sight for the next three years because he's He's convinced that Divney's just looking for the opportunity to double cross him and run to wherever the uh money box is hidden. They have to sleep together. Yeah. Eventually Divney appears to give in and tells him, well, I hid it actually under the floorboards in Mathers' house.

the narrator goes to retrieve it and then suddenly everything changes in the book. With no explanation. It just says something happened. Right. And then the book just takes on a completely different tone from that point. Right. Well from this point it becomes I don't know what you would call it. It it becomes the movie Brazil or it becomes a a Kafka short story. It becomes a very dark version of Alice in Wonderland. It's like an adult Ali it's like an adult Alice in Wonderland, yeah. Yeah.

It's i i in this in this world, uh the narrator i has has lost the box somehow. He doesn't know where it's gone, but he runs into a uh highwayman who threatens the narrior's life, but this high man named uh Finnic Finukane is he also has only one leg and because of that he takes pity on our our narrator and declares that they are now, you know, brothers and if he ever needs his help, he can send for him and his and his band of

One legged man. Yes. So brother there's a brotherhood between all the one legged men. Right. And there's a surprising number of them. And and

And so uh now we get to the titular policeman, or actually not the titular policeman, two other policemen first. Our narrator has been told by this highway man maybe you should try out the police station. The police station is a very strange station indeed. It it's it's run it has it's run by this guy, Sergeant Plock. uh, who is this big fat uh red haired guy and he's accompanied by policeman m McCruskeen, who is this big fat, uh black haired guy.

And they aren't don't seem to be engaged actually in police work so much as they're engaged in various impossible uh tasks and in some strange study of involving numbers that are never really explained.

Yeah. Well it there it I mean it's eventually sort of explained. It doesn't make sense, but it's sort of explained. It is very allo there's The the policeman's various projects do ha have this very Alice Wonderland like logical illogic to them, especially um Vakrishkine's ongoing projects and experiments, which are all which a lot of them are he he has all these inventions that are sort of based on logic or illogic or different impossible concepts.

He has created a spear so sharp that the point like extends beyond the spear itself and into space. He has made an infinite series of chests within themselves that just until they become microscopic. Um, he he has a um laundry mangler that he has converted so that it stretches light into sound that he can convert light into sound and vice versa. It's just many, many things like that. Um or in the police station.

And yes, there's also this ongoing project with um numbers that is not explained until much later and it's not that the explanation makes sense either, but you do find out what they're where they're getting the numbers, at least.

Right. I mean one thing that links all these peculiar activities of the police department together beside the continuing theme of bicycles. Which the police officers seem to be absolutely obsessed with. In fact, bicycles are very important in this universe. Right. Bicycles are extremely important in this universe. But one thing that I think links together all these strange

Projects is they are all based upon some concept of infinity or of eternity. You know, the the the the sphere whose point i is too sharp to be seen and

may actually extend forever for all you know. It's becoming smaller and smaller because you won't even feel it if it goes through you. That's a sort of a Xeno's paradox of of having space and then there's the he builds these boxes fit into one another and as you get far farther and farther inside this nesting set of boxes they become so small you can't actually see them and you just have to take it on faith that they're there.

There's a lot of discussion. There's there's a re repeated phrase about um you you can't believe it at all. The the the the the police officer says you, you know, you if you think about it too long, you you won't believe it. And and so there's a lot about credulity, about faith. Um and and about infinity and etern eternity, there's isn't there like a room where all time has stopped? Yes. Eventually this all needs to go. Yes.

Later this eventually leads up to going to a room where there's no time and playing around with different concepts of what you could do in the room with no time. Um, and also it gets into the concept of objects with no properties. They have this material called they introdu like he introduces the idea of this material called omnium, which is a proto-matter that can become everything because it has no properties. He comes up with different ideas of what you could be you could do with this.

There is also and this is ends up being important to the plot. an a pre an imprecise color. There's a color that is no particular color and trying to figure out what color it is drives people mad because people need to have some sort of be able to like identify something and being unable to figure out like what this thing is just drives people insane. The I mean the other thing is about

What does it mean for anything to be distinct? What why why how can we call anything distinct? The uh the Sergeant Pluck is v has this theory that when people ride bicycles all the atomic matter and the bicycle is rubbing up against you, you're exchanging atoms with the bic the bicycle and eventually the bicycle takes on a certain portion of you and you take on a certain portion of the bicycle.

Yeah. So people you're constantly turning into bicycles. When you see a bicycle like leaning against the wall in somebody's house, it's not because they brought the bicycle in. It's because the bicycle is turning into a person and has developed the the human habit of like coming in and leaning on the walls. Yeah.

So the policemen are like constantly stealing bicycles to like save people from being co con mingled with the bicycle, but then they get hired to find the bicycle. So they're constantly committing the crimes that they are then being brought in to solve. I'm sorry, I've I've interrupted. So excited about Mikey Mons. You mentioned this um matter omnium, which is in in It's I find it a little unclear. It's it's either

everything is made out of it or it has the potential to become anything. Um, it's it's a funny word because Omnium also has a a a meaning for bicycles. There was a Victorian com competition called the Omnium where different kinds of trials would go, including speed trials and endurance trials and all sorts of things. It was one of these kinds of mini day events that the Victorians loved. Uh and The police officers themselves, uh, in their obsession and attachment to bicycles.

S in in many ways they strike me as a sort of a Victorian Edwardian idea of a police officer, you know, the There certainly ha have been police officers on bicycles since, but It was during the 1890s into the 1910s that you get that vision of that of that little sort of London police officer wandering around on a bicycle on his beat. Ironic in some ways because Here in America the

cliche of policemen that that comes out of the of the mid century is that they're all Irish. You know, you see an old you see an old movie and they're all like Irish people and they they uh you know, that's that's a cliche based upon the fact that you know there was uh in in New York, um immigrants would form c communities and one of the communities that that the Irish immigrants were able to get into was the the police service.

My great gr my great grandfather was a police detective. He was very corrupt. You know, I I I've I've read some commentaries on this that's that that say this is this brilliant satire on mid century Ireland. I don't know that I'm a I'm close enough to the material to see that. To the extent that it is a satire, I feel like the satire is on um the idea of authority, on the idea of uh expertise, on the idea of intellectual

um endeavors of any kind. Um a I don't know that they are there's there's a lot of Irish names thrown about here. There's but I don't know that it it feels as Irish to me as like reading Frank O'Connor, for example, or uh certainly Joyce or

Well, Flano Brain is extremely Irish. I mean if I could um If you want, I could go into a little bit about his background'cause it's really interesting. Sure, go ahead. Well, like I said, it is like you said, his real name is well, he was b he was real name was Brian O'Nolan, or Brian O'Nolan. I actually don't know how it was pronounced. And he grew up in an Irish speaking household.

um in uh Gaeltocht, um Irish speaking community. So he grew up speaking Irish gay like as a first language and then he got a scholarship to study at like as a child as I think it was teens or early teens maybe. You got a scholarship to study it like a really one of the really tony um, British boarding schools m like English run boarding schools in Ireland. So He had like this background that was extremely Irish, um, but then he had a very tr like a very upper crust English education.

And it so his back his intellectual background is really fascinating, uh, that really unusual. uh that way. He's um extreme he was extremely educated. He spoke a bunch of languages, um, and um but was also very aware of like um Irish culture and language. He's a big fan of the Irish language. Um, I've read Some of what, some of it is...

column that he wrote for the Irish Times. He was actually not he was not successful very uh for a long time he was not very successful as a novelist. Uh but Swim Two Birds was not very successful when it came out. It was his first novel. And the third policeman did not get published in his lifetime because it got rejected by the first publisher he tried to sell it to and then he kind of gave up.

And then he didn't try to sell any th he didn't try to publish anything for a while, or at least he didn't try to publish any books for a while. Um he did have success with his third book which was published which was written in Irish, Angelga. Um On Velbacht or the poor mouth of the And I think it got attention for that'cause there wasn't that you know, there was an interest in Ireland at the time and like building up a w um a library of like Irish literature, Irish language literature.

Um so his last three books I think are a little more were a little more successful. than that, but like a lot of his output during his lifetime was this column he wrote for the Irish Times, where they just kind of let him write whatever he light wanted every week. So I read I read a bunch of that as Khrushchev Law and Columns and um

They're pretty fun and it is just whatever the hell he wants to write about. There's like political commentary, there's like things where he writes just like comical dialogues, often in some kind of like dialect or copying the ways people in different social classes or communities talk. Um, there's essays on things he f is interested in. There's feuds. He's obviously feuds he's carrying on with various writers and critics and stuff. But like Um it's pretty fum, but he's like

Extre obviously extremely uridite erudite. Thank you, Erudite, and extremely educated, um, also very opinionated. Um in these columns and also like is fluent in like four or five different languages and which of which he insists that like the only line like only like three languages are appropriate for poetry. One of them is Irish. I think it's like Irish, Latin and Greek maybe. I forget. But um he's a big f but um so he's not

He's a he's like a very atypical person and a very atypical writer. Like is so he's not gonna come across as stereotypically Irish in his writing, but there is there is a deep well of Irish culture and that he's drawing from here. Um and there's a lot of There's a lot of Irish wordplay in his writing that is not going to come across if you don't speak Irish, which I don't really. I studied Irish in the Irish language in college, but I'm very bad at languages, so I know virtually nothing of it.

But anyway, so there's there is like Irish stuff going on in this book, but it's not obvious. And certainly the policemans are like they're very much English policemen and these writing during a time when You know, the Ir Ireland is not on the best terms with

England or with policemen. So that's an interesting choice to have as like the one of the central images in the book. I don't know what's going on with that. I don't know what's going on with a lot of things in this book, but that's one of the things that I like about it. Anyway, that's the background of third f of Plan O'Brien also

He had another pseudonym for his calling which was Miles Nagoplin, which is an even more insane pseudonym. Yeah. I I'm I'm I'm charmed by hi your disc description of him working for a newspaper writing a general interest uh essay.

uh column because that was that was what newspapers were yeah for a very long time. I I I think that People don't realize today that in the nineteenth and and early twentieth century up till World War II, newspapers were for general readers and there were columnists

who would write poetry, who would write stories, i sort of anything goes. One one of these days on the podcast I I do want to do uh an episode on Archie and Maheta Bell uh by Don Marquis because that's another thing that came out of a of of a newspaper uh and and

It it it's hard to believe when you read it today that that came out of a newspaper. Uh you know it it was sort of after World War Two that newspapers got all stodgy and the whole idea of the the the Woodward and Bernstein, the kind of like news newspapers as the uh you know, b their their primary Uh purpose was

to speak truth to power and to go out and do investigative reporting. You know, and unfortunately that's gone too now. Uh so, um, I don't know. I uh but I used to think that newspapers, you know, when they were s when they were floundering so badly back in the early days of the internet. I used to think, why don't they just go back to like being a more general readership sort of thing? But I guess today, um

Culture has become so fragmented uh that people don't don't go to general readership places. I mean, there's a few places like the New Yorker that that continue to do that, but they're They're uh s sort of ic they're seen as very eccentric and th they're they're kind of a rallying point for the last uh eggheads out there to read this sort of thing.

Yeah. Though I don't know if I'd call his column general interest so much as of interest to Flan O'Brien and possibly Flan O'Brien only. I cannot stress enough. This is just they get let him write whatever the hell he wanted from week to week. Right. It's pretty gray. Can you imagine how great it would be to be a writer in that time? They you just get the sinecure where you just write whatever insane thing you want in a newspaper.

Yeah. No, I I had a j his actual day job he had a day job for his entire life too. He was a um civil servant, so this was not he was not making a living from any of this, by the way. Yeah. I I I wish I could rem remember I I I I read someone's autobiography once where he was a writer and he talked about he got a job at at the New Yorker at write you know, the first

The first decade or so, uh Harold Ross hired him and they were s and he said, Well what do I do? And he goes, Well you you write what you want and we pay you more than you've ever been paid in your life. Why? Why is that not me? Well, in in any case, um you know, uh we get you get to write whatever you want now, you just have to put it on the internet for free. I appreciate exactly.

Um so uh back to back to the third policeman. There is there is a third policeman that is refer that the other two policemen speak of in kind of Whispers and and rumors, this policeman Fox um who is at some other undisclosed location and the withholding of this third policeman is is one of the the points of tension in the book. Um the other point of tension being that whatever else is happening in this strange

topsy turvy wonderland of a world, uh, the body of the old man has been found and the policemen are now determined to uh hang uh our our narrator. Um in spite of the fact that he has no name, um, and therefore the narrator argues should be outside of the law, the police officers say, Well, since you have no name, you are not a person and killing you is not even killing you. Yes, this is one of any illogical conversations they have.

This is where I think um you have to be a certain kind of reader to enjoy this book because th from I would say about uh a quarter of the way in to about Uh f I don't know, d eight ninths of the way of this book. Nothing happens to advance the plot. The plot is the narrator is being held in this station. He's going to be put to death at some undetermined time once the police officers finish creating a gallows to hang him.

And in the meantime, he's going to have all these nonsensical discussions with the police officers and also with a voice in his head named Joe, who he uh believes is his soul talking to him. That's correct. And that's that's the real point of the book. All these in bizarre conversations and concepts. So if you're the kind of person who gets frustrated

uh watching television and you with with establishing shots or with shots where people are kind of wandering around the house looking for things and you're like, just get on with the plot. Uh this book may not be the book for you. But if you're the kind of person who loves made up uh academic papers on made up uh philosophers or puzzling over uh logical conundrums, uh then this book is is is a a great one.

I think if you're the type of reader gets frustrated by this kind of thing, you probably gave up back when the initial like Thomas Hardy type plot was in was abruptly abandoned. And the re and the care and the taggers wandered off into an Alice in Wonderland bicycle themed fantasy land. So I think I think by the point by the by this point, um O'Brien has shaved off anyone who wasn't gonna be on board with this.

Eventually um it it seems as though our our our hero is a is going to be hanged because they seem to have finished the uh the scaffold, but he is able to get word to his one legged friend, and they and the the army of un one legged men come. And this is one of those kind this is where it becomes Monty Python actually is the Right I like it's actually there isn't a great logic to the whole thing. that these setups sort of come together at the end. The bicycles and the one-legged man and the

paint in the color that people can't comprehend, like all the and the gallows, they all sort of come together in the climax. Also, it has just now occurred to me that Possibly the one legged men are the natural enemies of the bicycles'cause they can't ride bicycles. Well that's a good thought. Um I had thought of that before. In the uh I don't know if you would call it a battle per se, in the in the confusion, uh our our narrator wanders off. He he's able to he's able to escape on uh on uh

the sergeant's bicycle. Um Yeah, the the one that the sergeant has. kept uh in solitary confinement because he's worried that the bicycle may have taken on too many unsavory characteristics from the people that have ridden it. Yes. Uh human characteristics and they are they are a little naughty. And and and our the criminal bicycle. And our hero in question marks goes back to the scene of the crime. And he he finds living within the old man's house the third policeman, uh policeman uh Fox.

who has the face of the old man, um, Mathers. And he's living in the walls of this house, uh, in his own special

police office that has been made inside the the walls of this house. And this is where You know, I I I as as you read it, it feels like all of these things need to have some sort of a thematic explanation, that there's some symbol that you're just not getting. Um, and and that's the thing I kinda like about this book is it's it f it feels like it should be allegorical, but it confounds any attempts to interpret it allegorically.

Just a little too it's just a little too slippery to like pin down. Yeah. Right. I mean the the the the idea of running into a policeman whose face is the face of the man he's killed, that that Th that would seem to be leading to something, but I don't know what. Exactly. It seems like it should obviously mean something. But it doesn't obviously mean something. Yeah. So I I mean we we should probably uh go ahead and spoil the book. Um you know if you don't want to be spoiled, you know, go read.

This is a version of Alice in Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland ends in one of the two big cliche endings. It was only a dream. And this one ends in the other big cliche ending. So there you are. Right, right. Well, yes. And and and as I said If you are a modern reader, you probably picked it up on this. However, It's it's funny because in the book I ha the the version I have, the there's um an afterword, which was a letter that um

that uh was was written uh by O'Brien to of all people, William Soroyan. Um Explaining the explaining in the dumbest terms what the book is, you know, like like completely like no no mystery whatsoever. and kind of describing it in in like the way you would have to you would have to pitch it to a a a Hollywood producer who was kind of unimpressed by your uh by your

themes or your or your style or whatever. You just kinda like, what's this book about? And I I have so many questions about this. First I want to know, how does he know William Soroyan? That's a very odd I have no idea. We di I did um the time of our of your life, the play by William Soroyan on this podcast earlier and um

I know H William Sorrian for that. I know him from his novel The Human Comedy. Uh, but he's a you know, he's an American fiction um and uh playwrighter uh you know, who lived in San Francisco and I I just don't know w what the connection is there. No idea. Again, Flynn O'Brien was a civil servant who wrote a newspaper column. in Ireland and to the best of my knowledge was not super well known until after his death and I'm not even sure he was super well known outside of Ireland then.

So I am n but I guess William Saroyan liked him. He must have had like he must have had other there must have been other modernists who were like knew that he was good stuff. Right. You know...

The the the parts of this that are postmodern i are interesting to me because uh there was a time in the early seventies where even the most popular art artists uh authors in America were were kind of doing this this thing of of creating these odd apparatus for their um for the novels. And I I think here of even like William Golding in his original novel of The Princess Bride.

had this elaborate fantasy about the author of the original Princess Bride and again about uh scholars who studied this guy, S. Morgenstern, who wrote the the book. Uh you know, for people who know the that primarily from the movie. Which is a fine movie that was screenplay also by William Golden, who uh Gold Goldman who who who realized you can't he can't put that into a into a a screenplay. So he simplified it.

Um, but I have to say as some as a person who read the novel first, I always feel I always prepare prefer the novel because it's much more um it's I I feel like it's it's richer, it's much more sardonic. It's it it it it plays with the idea of what uh narratives mean to people, you know, and it does it in a very funny, accessible way, but it is uh you know, a cousin to what's going on here. I also read the novel first and I'm all I'm the same way.

Well, maybe we should do that for a podcast. Oh my gosh, yes, because it's fun. It's a fun book. Yeah, yeah. It also creates like an entire in addition to that, he creates an entire fictional family for himself in this for the book. It's it's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a whole fictional dysfunctional family going on in this in the in the book version of uh

William Goldman's life. Anyway. Right, right. Well that I mean, yeah, yeah, and and I mentioned Paul Auster and the New York trilogy. He's there's a character in there that is Paul Auster. Um but you know, people we get these people injecting themselves into their s the novels. We're we're kind of more familiar with this sort of thing, I think, today as as readers. In fact, to the point that it is

a bit of a cliche, uh, in some ways, and sometimes people get a little frustrated with it. You know, I remember when um the movie adaptation came out, uh, a lot of critics were s like saying, Well, this is he's just gotten too too far up his own his own butt writing this thing. And uh I don't know, I I I I always kind of like these things because I feel like i it's all fiction anyway, you know. Why why not, you know?

Anyway, I'm I'm I'm I'm always Oh, I am always a sucker for a metatextual narrative. You also brought up like um you brought up the the many footnotes in this book and um the later later authors of footnotes like David Foster Wallace. I had asked if you've ever read um Alice Dare Gray?

Oh yes, definitely. Yes. Because his book Lamarck, A Life in Four Books, was one that or is it five books? Lamarck is one of the books that I that's one of the uh books that I read in at Trinity College and That is like the be all and end all of o

Right. Overtaking the narrative. Well Al uh Alistair Gray is a good example because uh also Poor Things, which was made into a a good a good movie. I like the movie, but i the the novel is so complex in its apparatus that and it it has a lot more to say about um gender and about um the the way in which um you know the the women and men relate to the the story and and what it means.

uh you know, in the in the movie everything is treated like, well, this is actually happening. Uh in in the book, what happens at the end of the extra level. Right. There's an extra level where at the end the uh the the main character the main female character comes up to say, This never happened. This was something that was made made up above by my sick husband.

And you know, the the the movie plays with this idea that men only want women who are literally born yesterday or fantil infantilized. But the book goes way beyond that, I think, in its in its examination. of the way, yeah. I love the movie though and also the movie led to the book getting reprinted in the US, which is great. That I was able to read it, which is wonderful. But yeah, no, I mean, um, if you I have to tell everybody that if you enjoy lots and lots of

ridiculous footnotes and ridiculous postmodern footnotes, then you should read Lamarque by Alistair Gray because it has the most ridiculous postmodern footnotes. Like David Foster Wallace wishes he could put do this many. Ridiculous box equipment.

Well, um for for those of you out there who may not uh who who for whom metatextuality may not be your thing. Th there's there still are, I think, many charms in this book. That it is it is beautifully written sentence from sentence. Again, he's like There's like parts of this book again, like again, bringing back to the Irishness of it, there's like amazing turns of phrase in this book and

I'm not 100% sure how much of it is imaginative wordplay on the author's part and how much is it ch is it is just like the way Irish people talk. There are just so many great little lines in it that I cannot get over. Uh um I wrote some of them down. No. Well go ahead, dude. You wanna read some? I'm I'm looking at them. My eyes got tired of inactivity and closed down like a public house at ten o'clock. At one point, pregnancy is described as a very advanced state of sexuality.

And also it's like incorrect but evocative usage of words. Like I think it is entirely acotylectic. They uh a nay oh. Like use of the wor name were the name the wrong word for name frequently. Cog, surnoun It correct uh appropriate in a book that is frequently about names and not having names.

Uh there's just so many beautiful like turns of phrase. It's a beautiful it's a beautifully written book. He's like it's he's a very good wordsmith and again his newspaper column is full of clever wordsmithy and dialogue and s and such. He's he's very good. Yeah, the sentence I had underlined was he was tricky and smoked a tricky pipe and his hand was quavery. I don't know what a tricky pipe pipe is, but I can sort of sort of picture it. Yeah.

Yeah. That's the one-legged man. He's described as tricky a many, many times. His eye oh wait. His eyes were tricky also, probably from watching policemen. In in chapter seven early on, this is after he's been captured, he talks about um Yeah, which I encountered soon after re entry to the barracks. with a sergeant, set me thinking afterwards, of the immense consolations which philosophy and religion can offer in adversity. And Boethius, the wrote a book, The Consolations of Philosophy,

one of the the prime primary texts of of of medieval philosophy. And um and that's about sort of how philosophy helps us through uh through uh pr uh privation and hardship. Um of course the thing about The philosophy in this book is it just is confusing and nonsensical. And I don't know exactly what the constellation is here, but it's uh maybe it's just very little constellation.

distracts one. I guess in some ways that's that's all literature is in a way is a distraction. So the protagonist is a terrible person, so maybe he doesn't deserve consolation. Yes, no, he is not a he's not a good th there's no one uh there's not really anyone in this book is that that great, I don't think. But um

Anyway, um so that's a that's a resounding vote in its favor. Um everyone's terrible. As we wind down here, do you have any last thoughts? Um, let's see. I think a lot of it it's um this book has actually had more influence than you might think for a book that I again I I am frustrated is not better known outside of Ireland. Maybe it's well known in England. I don't know. Um

Uh for example, like um Robert Anton Wilson, um, who wrote the uh the Illuminatus books, um, was a big fan. And Cell the Selby appears is is like a character in the Illuminatus book. So he comes up as like he's a philosopher in the Illuminatist books. Have you read those books, by the way? Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. I read those.

obsessively in college. Those are very strange, but they they're they are very of their time, is I I guess I would say well I love that time. And as a matter of fact as a matter of fact I read them while I was at Trinity. When I went to Trinity I had like there was this was before we had Well, we had internet, but I did not have my own computer. So my source of entertainment was like I brought a bunch of books.

and a Walkman and Tape, so I got to be very familiar familiar with the books I brought with me, which included the Illuminati trilogy. So that was me reading Irish literature and the Illuminatus books. But Did you guys for just a second here? If you ever do read the Illuminati's books, you have to get your hands on the original paperback. which have the most bizarre uh psychedelic covers. Uh and they're they're just

An absolute delight to look at. Um you know, the current editions look very uh I don't know, very very dull for the for the actual story that those those books uh do because it's yeah, no, they're not representative of how How bonkers these books are. But yeah, um De Selby appear is he doesn't appear in he doesn't exactly appear in Illuminatus, but he is a philosopher. His philosoph his works of philosophy exist in the Illuminati universe.

Which in turn led to them existing in the world of the Church of the Subgenus, um, which was and I guess still to a degree is a an ironic cult started in around the eighties. Um Which popped up in like ironic eighties counterculture and nineties counterculture for a long time. Um another thing I was another countercultural thing I was really into in the nineties. Um so it had this odd so DeSelby had this odd

Second Life for a while as as part of the uh part of the secret uh world of s of Illumina the Illuminati and the sub genius. Oh also he's in some of the he's in some of other some of um

Flynn O'Brien's later books too. He continued to use De Selby as the philosopher, but I haven't read his later books, so I don't know much about them. I d I don't know any of this except for what I read on on the internet and I did notice uh I was kind of amused to see that he's also the name of a couple of tracks for a housier uh uh album uh in in twenty twenty three. I think a lot of that came out of well actually part of it came out of

Irish culture and then part of it came out of like him being part of this the Church of the Sub Genius. Right. Well I I listened to those tracks and they don't the lyrics don't have anything to do with the book, but you know, I just names there. Um okay, sorry. I interrupted you as I asked you to cl to close us out here. So No, that's it. I don't and um I just this is a really fun book. I think this is a book that people should assign in high schools because I think um I think a lot of like

I think a smart and very sarcastic teenagers would like it. Um it's um very dark and very smart. and funny and in its in its very weird circular way. Um, I certainly I I am a big fan of it. I've read it a couple of times now. And I really should read um the rest of O'Brien's books. Again, I've just read the first two. I've read um this and it's Swim Two Birds, which I also recommend. Um it's um it's Swim Two Birds is like a sort of

Joyce and modernist novel about an a boarding house full of people who all live inside the head of a writer who is one of the other residents of the boarding house. Um, that's a lot of fun too. The title is the literal translation of an Irish place name. Um so yeah, he's a lot of fun. Um this book is a lot of fun and I think um I think you should read it and um beware of like riding bicycles too much because you'll turn into a half bicycle. Thanks again.

Shannon Garratti. If you have an idea for a book or a story or anything else you For school or when you were a kid. Or if you have a suggestion, Literature at gmail dot com log on John McCorry. org Subscribe and new. It's available. The theme song is by Malcolm Niger. Podcast is brought to you by the Incomparable Net. More smart and funny pop culture podcasts are available at the incomparable dot com.

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