Special Circumstances

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular and by nature it is interminable, repetitive and very nearly unbearable.

Flann O'Brien

Flann O'Brien is considered one of the giants of Irish literature. The Third Policeman invites comparisions with the work of Lewis Carroll, Borges, Stanislaw Lem, Richard Brautigan and Jonathan Swift but it is important to consider that `Flann O'Brien' (a pseudonym for Brian O'Nolan) had finished this book in 1940, but didn't find a publisher until 1967. Some say it was the whiskey drinking that got in the way.

There are good reductionists and bad ones forming the foundation of good and bad scientific inquiry. O'Brien pokes fun at all reductionists in this book. The protagonist spends quite some time in a two-dimensional police station arguing the finer points of `Atomic Theory' with his interrogators. The theory turns out to have surprising consequences for the makeup of bicycles and men.

Anyone interested in Borges' work should read this book just for the footnotes which expound in great detail on the works of de Selby (according to the protagonist, the most brilliant physicist, ballistician, philosopher and psychologist who ever lived). The footnotes sometimes also quote the various annotations and critiques of de Selby's work. The footnotes at the beginning of the book span the usual one or two lines, while towards the end of the book span several pages (at one point engulfing the main text itself).

Like Stanislaw Lem (in "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub") and Borges (see e.g. "Ficciones"), O'Brien compares the criticism of some of de Selby's writings to cryptography. Especially the several decryptions of the `Codex' ostensibly written by de Selby in such bad handwriting that no one can decipher its message.

Some parts are far more inventive than others, and since most of the novel is either biting satire or surreal wandering, your mileage might vary. Here is an example of what O'Brien can accomplish in this genre:

The Sergeant looked at me incredulously. `That is a great curiosity,' he said, `a very difficult piece of puzzledom, a snorter.' He sat down by the turf fire and began jawing his knuckles and giving me sharp glances from under his bushy brows. ...

I was unwilling to give any lead to the direction of the talk and there was complete silence for five minutes. Then his expression eased a bit and he spoke to me again.

`What is your pronoun ?' he inquired. `I have no pronoun,' I answered, hoping I knew his meaning.

Like his later book "The Dalkey Archive", this book is a `study in derision'. The satire is so laden with invective and is so dense that I wish there was an annotated version of this book to read which would make it much easier to read. Although sometimes annotations are a liability, as is the case with versions of "Gulliver's Travels" annotated with copius amounts of historical details.

What is your pronoun?

%T The Third Policeman
%A Flann O'Brien
%I Dalkey Archive Press
%D 1967
%D :First Dalkey Archive Edition, 1999
%G ISBN: 156478214X (pb)
%P 200
%K fiction, literature

Review written: 2000/03/16

Posted by anoop at October 6, 2004 04:33 PM