At Swim-Two-Birds

Categories: Rediscoveries , Staff Picks , Fiction

Flann O'Brien (one of many pen names--real name Brian Ó Nuallain) wrote a phenomenal novel, At Swim-Two-Birds, in the late 1930's.  It is a whacked out, hilariously psychedelic, and nearly indescribable work of postmodern metafiction.  The fact that it was originally published almost seventy years ago makes it even more mindbending.  I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting room, reading this book, laughing out loud to the extent that others must've thought I was nutty.  Because I enjoyed it so much I read four others by him--The Third Policeman, The Dalkey Archive, The Hard Life: An Exegesis of Squalor, and The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story About the Hard Life.

Though At Swim-Two-Birds is arguably his gem (and the most arduous to read) each book is humorously intriguing and very Irish.  The Third Policeman is a hallucinatory riotous romp.  The Dalkey Archive is filled with surreal passages, some involving the character James Joyce!  The Hard Life is an irreverently funny, almost pastoral tale, similar in theme and relatively simple style to The Poor Mouth.  Among other things, The Poor Mouth is a wickedly comical and hyperbolic satire of Irish poverty. 

The library also owns a biography, a recently published collection of short stories, a reader, selections from his Irish Times column of many years, a book of stories and plays, and numerous works of literary criticism and interpretation. 

I am of the opinion that Flann O'Brien is a largely unsung hero of early postmodernism as well as a praiseworthy satirical humorist.  Something of a melancholic Irishman with a pension for the drink in his short life, he also possessed an uncanny gift for language and, seemingly, an odd preoccupation with bicycles...