The Dalkey Archive

by Flann O'Brien

Hailed as "the best comic fantasy since Tristram Shandy" upon its publication in 1964, The Dalkey Archive is Flann O'Brien's fifth and final novel; or rather (as O'Brien wrote to his editor), "The book is not meant to be a novel or anything of the kind but a study in derision, various writers with their styles, and sundry modes, attitudes and cults being the rats in the cage." Among the targets of O'Brien's derision are religiosity, intellectual abstractions, J. W. Dunne's and Albert Einstein's views on time and relativity, and the lives and works of Saint Augustine and James Joyce, both of whom have speaking parts in the novel. Bewildering? Yes, but as O'Brien insists, "a measure of bewilderment is part of the job of literature."

Genres: Fiction, Irish Literature, Ireland, 20th Century, Humor, Novels, Classics

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Pseudonym of Brian Ó Nualláin , also known as Brian O'Nolan.

His English novels appeared under the name of Flann O’Brien, while his great Irish novel and his newspaper column (which appeared from 1940 to 1966) were signed Myles na gCopaleen or Myles na Gopaleen – the second being a phonetic rendering of the first. One of twelve brothers and sisters, he was born in 1911 in Strabane, County Tyrone, into an Irish-speaking family. His father had learned Irish while a young man during the Gaelic revival the son was later to mock. O’Brien’s childhood has been described as happy, though somewhat insular, as the language spoken at home was not that spoken by their neighbours. The Irish language had long been in decline, and Strabane was not in an Irish-speaking part of the country. The family moved frequently during O’Brien’s childhood, finally settling in Dublin in 1925. Four years later O’Brien took up study in University College Dublin.

Flann O'Brien is considered a major figure in twentieth century Irish literature. Flann O'Brien novels have attracted a wide following for their bizarre humour and Modernist metafiction.

The café and shop of Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich (www.culturlann.ie), at the heart of the Belfast Gaeltacht Quarter, is named An Ceathrú Póilí ("The Fourth Policeman"), as a play-on-words of the title of O'Brien's book The Third Policeman.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is hagiarchy? Hagiarchy is government by saints and holy men. I guess this political regime exists in Heaven…
The protagonist of The Dalkey Archive encounters many eccentric beings: scientific, theological, religious, antic and even otherworldly. When he meets a spectre of Saint Augustine on a visit from Heaven he learns some quite peculiar things about holy manners…

I invented obscene feats out of bravado, lest I be thought innocent or cowardly. I walked the streets of Babylon with low companions, sweating from the fires of lust. When I was in Carthage I carried about with me a cauldron of unrealized debauchery. God in his majesty was tempting me. But Book Two of my Confessions is all shocking exaggeration. I lived within my rough time. And I kept the faith, unlike a lot more of my people in Algeria who are now Arab nincompoops and slaves of Islam.
– Look at all the time you squandered in the maw of your sexual fantasies which otherwise could have been devoted to Scriptural studies. Lolling loathsome libertine!
– I was weak at the time but I find your condescension offensive. You talk of the Fathers. How about that ante-Nicene thooleramawn, Origen of Alexandria? What did he do when he found that lusting after women distracted him from his sacred scrivenery? I’ll tell you. He stood up, hurried out to the kitchen, grabbed a carving knife and – pwitch! – in one swipe deprived himself of his personality! Ah?
– Yes. Let us call it heroic impetuosity.
– How could Origen be the Father of Anything and he with no knackers on him? Answer me that one.
– We must assume that his spiritual testicles remained intact. Do you know him?
– I can’t say I ever met him in our place.

And all that eccentricity makes the main character wonder what will happen if a couple of such oddballs finally meet…

…how would two exquisitely cultivated but distracted minds behave on impact with each other? Would they coalesce in some quiet and fruitful way, or clash in murderous disarray?

The heavenly ideals are perfect… But our prosaic earthly doings just don’t let us go.

[Fionnuala]

This is the third title I’ve read by Flann O’Brien in as many weeks, and as it happens, I read it alongside the third book in François Rabelais’ Gargantua series, Le tiers livre (The Third Book). Can I find further correspondences in that unlikely set of circumstances? Have you three minutes to waste…

While I admit that the possibility of finding a correspondence may seem logic-defying at first glance given that Rabelais’ book is set in the 1500s in France and O’Brien’s is set in the 1900s in Ireland, that the former is peopled with a cast of giants and magicians and the latter with some distinctly ordinary citizens of Dublin, when you give the problem a third glance, and especially after a third tumbler of your preferred brew, you come up with some odd convergences - which bears out the theory that truth can be verified through creation or invention as much as through observation.

The hero of Rabelais’ third book is called Panurge and the narrative is concerned almost entirely with searching for an answer to a question that is preoccupying him: ought he to marry, and if he were to, what would be the chances that his wife would cheat on him? In his search for the correct answer to this very tricky question, he consults an entire bookfull of wise and foolish people, and drinks bucketfulls of wine.

The hero of Dalkey Archive, which incidentally is a partial reprise of O'Brien's then unpublished Third Policeman, is called Mick, and at the beginning of the story, he is pondering marriage to his girlfriend Mary. By the end of the book, that question has been resolved, alongside the question of whether Mary is likely to be a faithful wife or not. In the meantime, Mick has consulted quite a variety of foolosophers, and spent much time with a glass in his hand, but in contrast to Panurge, he appears to be preoccupied all along with something completely other than marriage, though that ‘something’ disappears in a puff of smoke just before the end of the book.

So while the two books converge quite a bit, they fall short of a complete overlap. In any case, a complete overlap would probably have been too logic-defying a coincidence even for a lover of logic-defying coincidences like myself. I sometimes draw the line at complete absurdity.
___________________________

However, Mick’s puff-of-smoke preoccupations are not far off complete absurdity in and off themselves thanks to O’Brien’s ability to laugh at such axioms as 'knowing where to draw the line' (he resembles Rabelais in this): a lot of the action of Dalkey Archive is set in the verdant, vertical and vertiginous vicinity of Vico Road in the high and hilly hamlet of Dalkey, just south of Dublin city. On the very first page of the book, O’Brien makes a link between Vico Road and eighteenth-century philosopher Giambattista Vico whose cyclical view of history provided the framework for James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. So the reader is warned from the first page that Joyce is relevant to this book, and when Mick soon develops a fascination for Joyce's whereabouts, we are not surprised in spite of the fact that Joyce has been dead for fifteen years at the time of this story (see the update from August 6th).

But Mick is also preoccupied with a substance which a physicist called De Selby has invented in order to tamper with time. In the course of planning to steal the substance from De Selby by breaking into his house in the dead of night, Mick loses track not only of his girlfriend's activities but also of his best friend's whereabouts - exactly the scenario Panurge envisaged happening to himself centuries before and which caused him such anxiety that he needed a dose of a certain mysterious grass-like substance. How's that for an unlikely parallel?

I'm guessing you've had enough unlikely parallels for one review.
No?
Ok, here’s another absurd scenario: this one concerns the new goodreads homepage. I consulted De Selby about the possibility of turning the clock back and restoring the old format. He says there may be a way but it won't be easy. It would require all you goodreads librarians to break in during the dead of night and remove every book blurb on the site as well as all those 'continue reading' links which send us around in crazy circles at the moment. While that is happening, De Selby engages to commandeer the complete stock of Amazon advertising material, Oprah included, and send the whole lot back in time to Rabelais to help publicize his third, fourth and fifth books which didn't sell as well as the first two. With the free space available, the rest of us would then be able to rearrange the furniture on the homepage and soon have everything back to normal.
It's a good plan except for one thing - there's no 'dead of night' on goodreads...

[Anni · Rating 5 out of 5]

FLANN IS YER MAN!

"He sat down at the piano and after some slow phrases, erupted into what Mick with inward wit, would dub a headlong chromatic dysentery which was ‘brilliant’ in the bad sense of being inchoate and, to his ear at least, incoherent. A shattering chord brought the disorder to a close. –Well, he said, rising, what did you think of that? Hackett looked wise. –I think I detected Liszt in one of his less guarded moments, he said".

Do yourself a favour and get hold of this surreal comic masterpiece in which O’Brien manages to combine a satire on Irish culture with an absurd fantasy concerning nuclear physics and religious transfiguration. But the genius of O’Brien’s storytelling is that the plots don't really matter - it's the effervescent use of language, the witty punning and inventive turn of phrase, with all the delirious flourishes of the native Irish vernacular that make his writing such a joy and laugh out loud funny.

P.S. I feel I should add a warning that there is a non-PC word used in one episode which is deemed to be highly offensive today, but was not considered so at the time the book was published.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

1. Have you read Ulysses? If yes, proceed to (2). If no, do so then proceed to (2)
2. Have you read At Swim Two Birds? If yes, proceed to (3). If no, do so then proceed to (3)
3. Have you read The Third Policeman? If yes, proceed to (4). If no, do so then proceed to (4)
4. Have you read the Dalkey Archive? If yes, proceed to (5). If no, do so then proceed to (5).
5. Have a celebratory tipple

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Flann O'Brien's last novel, and reads like a companion piece to his second, The Third Policeman, which was rejected by his publishers and only published after his death. Once again it is a surreal comedy with religious and philosophical elements, and there is some duplication of ideas, notably policemen who believe that people turn into bicycles and vice versa.

I could attempt to say more about the plot, whose characters include James Joyce and St Augustine, but that seems pointless since the book itself says everything so much better.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

62nd book of 2021.

3.5. Not as good as the glorious The Third Policeman (one of my favourite books), but still good. James Joyce features as a character so it wasn't going to be bad, was it?

This was O'Brien's final published novel and acts like a sequel (now) but a prequel (then); this is what I mean: The Third Policeman was written first but not published till after his death so if you were reading Flann back in the 60s and then years later read The Third Policeman, it would appear to you as something like a sequel. To me, though (now), this is the sequel to the aforementioned (and better) novel, The Third Policeman. Some stuff appears again, particularly the idea of riding a bicycle too much and thus becoming part bicycle yourself (identifiable by much leaning, having one foot up on the curb, etc.) and the bicycle becoming part human too (identifiable by bicycles being seen by open fires, near food that later disappears, etc.).

James Joyce himself is a character, yes, imagined un-dead, e.g. not-dead, and well. He appears in the latter part of the novel, but his feature is quite something to read. O'Brien fell out of favour with Joyce in his later life, apparently, and began to bitterly refer to him and his work. Perhaps living in his shadow did that. Either way, Joyce is a funny chap in the novel. It mostly centres around De Selby though, a man who is essentially trying to kill everyone on the planet. Mick must stop this (for obvious reasons). He's also got other problems, like with his wife, Mary.

**************************************

I read At Swim-Two-Birds a while ago and thought it was good but not great and now realise I must read it again. It is held high. I told S. (my old loyal and frequently-appearing-character-in-my-reviews professor from university) that I didn't like it much, not compared to Policeman, because I had come onto O'Brien thanks to S.—he loves The Third Policeman and recommended it in hope I would too, as so far, he told me, not many people have loved it after he recommended it to them (a bit like trying to find a Henry James fan in today's world not in a coffin). He was very pleased that I loved it, and when I told him I didn't like At Swim-Two-Birds he agreed with me again, and said that, yes, O'Brien was perhaps trying too hard to be like Joyce there. I'm not sure what he means by that, but maybe he's right. Either way, The Dalkey Archive lacks a certain flare that The Third Policeman had.

There's still some O'Brien novels to come but I'm starting to wonder if I'll just love one, really love one, and that is all. We'll see. O'Brien is still my second-favourite Irish writer behind Joyce because he's so mad and beautiful (if not a bit bitter at times).

There was a young monk of La Trappe
Who contracted a dose of the clap,
He said Dominus Vobiscum,
Oh why can't my piss come—
There's something gone wrong with my . . . tap.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once again adjacent reading adds an interesting aspect to a book. Having just finished both War and Peace and The Dalkey Archive I find that these two very disparate writers come to the same conclusion: man is a fool if he thinks he can carry out a grand plan.

I also read At Swim Two-Birds very recently, which with Dalkey bookends O’Brien’s novel writing career. Birds is completely anarchic, a wild parody of Irish folklore and blarney. Dalkey has equally surreal episodes embedded in a more traditional narrative, and asks us to semi-believe that Joyce lived on another twenty years to become something quite unlike we would have expected, and that science might allow us to converse with the saints. It is the book of a mature man, who still thrills in his ability to compose grand fugues with his language, but who uses that skill to tackle bigger questions: art, morality, religion.

I enjoyed Dalkey much more, which is probably down in part to my being somewhat more familiar with the material here than with Irish folklore. But it is more due, I think, to the edge that he brings to Mick and Hackett’s exposure to Saint Augustine’s dodgy answers to de Selby’s questions about some Biblical figures with baggage. Also to the bizarre encounter with a docile and prim Joyce, since I am simultaneously reading about the pugnacious Joyce’s erotic/pornographic letters to Nora in The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses.

But I have to say for pure O’Brien hysteria, Sergeant Fottrell’s riff on mollycule exchange between bicycle rider and his bicycle can’t be topped.

O’Brien’s loving but clear-eyed evocation of his countrymen is a treat. At the same time you get a multi-faceted picture of the Church, from Augustine, and the fathers fabricating the Holy Spirit, to the lure of the ‘closed orders’ for someone looking for a peaceful escape hatch from present problems; say, the Jesuits and their quite comfortable approach to serving the Lord. Debate about Judas’s motives and destination after death. Finally, there is the Big Question, of whether the whole lot of us deserve to be obliterated.

I have been debating between 4 and 5; writing the review pushes it to 5.

[Kaptan HUK · Rating 4 out of 5]

HESABI KAPATTI
Hasretliğini çektiğim İrlanda Edebiyatı okumak adına tercih ettiğim Dalkey Arşivi'yle tam adrese gidip doğru zili çalmışım.       Dalkey Arşivi İrlanda Edebiyatı'nın mirasını çalıştıran-yiyen değil çalıştıran- bir roman. Monodiyalog ve tasvirlerle anlatıyı anlamından bağımsız bir sanata dönüştürüyor. Zevkli okuma kovalayan benim gibilere de romanın keyfini sürmek düşüyor.       Dalkey Arşivi'nin 'aslında' bir içeriği, olay örgüsü yok, eylemler var ama tüm bunların anlamı da yok fakat baş karakterin bahsi edilmeli diye düşünüyorum:       Baş karakter Mick; tipik Dublinli annesiyle yaşıyor, memur, işinden ölesiye nefret ediyor, iş arkadaşlarını beğenmiyor gıcık; tipik geveze, üçüncü tekil anlatıcı devrede değilse ya kendisiyle (kafasında) konuşuyor ya da biriyle; içten pazarlıklı, detaycı, hesapçı. Yabancımız değil yani.       Dalkey Arşivi sonuçta bir diyalog romanı ve Flann OBrien'in hangi konularda gezindiğini anlatması açıısndan Mick'in kimlerle konuştuğunun listesini de şuraya yazalım: Gıcık kaptığı arkadaşı kuyumcu çırağı Hackett, aşk adına hiçbir şey hissetmediği sevgilisi Mary, babacan polis Çavuş Fottrell, insanları icatlarıyla büyüleyen planlarıyla dehşete düşüren tanrıbilimci, fizikçi De Selby, Cizvit cemaatinden Peder Cobble, kendi otelinin barını işleten uyuşuk barmen bayan Laverty... Dalkey Arşivi oyuncuları (karakterleri) aşağı yukarı böyle. Ama bir saniye,  en önemli oyuncuyu James Joyce'yi unuttuk. Joyce hayatın anlamı konusunda boşluğa düşmüş ve çare diye bir cemaate bağlanmayı uygun gören karakteri oynuyor romanda.        Mick işte bu oyuncuları temsil eden konularda konuşuyor, bu oyuncular üzerine planlar yapıyor, uyguluyor, tahmin edersin ki planlar tutmuyor derken roman adete film kopmuş gibi oldu bittiye getirilme havasında bitiyor, dünya soru cevapsız ortada kalıyor.       Gülden Hatipoğlu'nun kitabın sonundaki dört sayfalık sonsöz yazısı hızır gibi yetişti. Sonsöz, romana ilişkin bütün soru ve kuşkuları silip süpüren bir makine gibi yazı. Fakat sorular konusunda değil belki ama Hatipoğlu'yla cevaplarda farklı düşünüyoruz. Hatipoğlu enfes yorumunu "(...) roman aslında tam bir gizem ve bilinmezlikle son buluyor" diyerek bağlıyor. Oysa romanın sonu tam tersi bir görüntü veriyor: en küçük bir soru ve kuşkuya yer vermeyecek netlikte bitiyor roman. Çünkü O'Brien 'son'da hesap kapıyor. O'Brien o karakterlarde, o sorularda değil ki cevabını versin. Mick ve diğer karakterler ve konuları O'Brien için amaç değil araç, görevleri bitti hesap kapandı. Flann OBrien din, bilim, felsefe, edebiyat konularında anlatı yapıyor; İrlandalıları Çavuş Fottrell anlatıyor, teoloji konusunu tanrıbilimci De Selby değerlendiriyor, dindeki yozlaşmayı peder Cobble ifade ediyor.       İrlandalılar için bir güzellik ama bir o kadar da-tabulaştırılmasından ötürü-sıkıntı olan James Joyce hadisesini yine James Joyce karakteri üzerinden enine boyuna ciddi ciddi yeri geldiğinde şamatayla yapıyor.       Nerden baksan şölen. Ama tabii benim İncil, fizik ve James Joyce bilgim olmadığı için diyaloglarda Fransız kaldığım kısımlar vardı.       Çeviri bozukluğu kabuledilebilir sınırı aştığından bir yıldız eksik verdim.       James Joyce 'bilen'ler Dalkey Arşivi'ni kaçırmasın; bilmeyenler yanına bile yaklaşmasın.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rightfully eponymous, ultra-uproarious, The Dalkey Archive sets the standard for what you can expect from Dalkey Archive: wit as the first and last weapon of literary self-defense, audacious formal inventiveness, pugnacious sagacity, merciless disillusionment, chthonic eloquence, and contemptuous disregard for standard literary expectations.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flawless little novel centred around Mick who single-handedly saves the world from asphyxiation, rescues his ailing marriage with the restless Mary, and helps steer a still-living James Joyce into the Jesuit Order.

All in a day's work.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not quite the equal of O'Brien's other brilliant novels, but still sui generis, slyly madcap, and laugh out loud funny. Some say you need to have read his other work to fully appreciate this swansong, but that's bosh. Labeled by its author "a study in derision," this philosophical caper and its attitudes toward notions of time, faith, literature, and bicycles are never quite what they seem, the plot only clicking into place with the very last line. Among its achievements are making scuba diving to talk with St. Augustine and James Joyce joining the Jesuits seem downright plausible. Hats off to the peerless Flann.

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sin llegar al nivel de 'El Tercer Policía', por otra parte difícil de superar, ‘Crónica de Dalkey’ es una obra con la que divertirse y en la que da gusto sumergirse. El mundo creado por O’Brien es disparatado y lleno de ironía; pero eso sí, has de dejarte llevar y entrar en su juego, dejarte embaucar.

En esta novela hay de todo: cuevas submarinas, debates sobre teología y filosofía, diálogos con San Agustín, disputas sobre lo ocurrido realmente con Jonás y la ballena o sobre Judas, un sargento de policía que, Dios le libre, nunca ha montado en su bicicleta, la búsqueda de James Joyce, que parece que no está muerto, y por supuesto ese gran genio excéntrico llamado De Selby, con sus extrañas y estrambóticas teorías y sentencias, como la que dedica a Descartes: ”He escrito majaderías, luego existo.”

Todo empieza cuando Mick Shaughnessy, el protagonista, y su amigo Hackett, se encuentran en el pueblo de Dalkey con De Selby, y este les invita a su casa, en donde De Selby les explica sus planes para acabar con el mundo mediante un ingenioso invento. Mick entra entonces en una fase paranoica en la que se propone desbaratar los planes de De Selby a toda costa. Pero si no tenía bastante con esta idea, Mick se entera de que su admirado James Joyce puede seguir vivo y que se oculta en la misma Irlanda, así que empieza a buscarle. Y entre estos planes, encuentros con personajes excéntricos, diálogos en el pub, y mucho alcohol, van sucediéndose las andanzas de Mick.

Sorprendente, demencial, divertido, erudito, inteligente, Flann O’Brien nos deja un nueva muestra de su maestría a la hora de escribir buenas historias. Sin duda, se trata de un “buen bocado” literario.

[Cosimo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un sacerdote del visionario narra le avventure di confine di un irlandese aspirante salvatore del genere umano, alle prese con scienziati pazzi e eretici, uomini bicicletta, poliziotti improbabili, esilaranti conversioni, amori e amicizie ad alta gradazione alcolica, evocazioni spiritiche teologiche e incontri surreali con scrittori resuscitati divenuti camerieri in incognito. Lingua ineffabile veicolo di epistemologie linguistiche: da non perdere.

[Leni Iversen · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the Dalkey Archive we meet mad genius De Selby, whose work the main character of The Third Policeman is so obsessed with. We also meet a younger version of some of the other characters from that book. But since O'Brien huffily decided not to have The Third Policeman published after he was refused by one publisher, The Dalkey Archive was published first and even contains some of the dialogue from The Third Policeman.

This book features a mad scientist who can do things to time that allows him to speak with long dead theologians, and who plans to destroy all life on earth. It also contains an unrelated side plot where a befuddled James Joyce is alive and living secretly as a bartender in a nearby village. O'Brien was heavily influenced by Joyce, but hated being compared to him and seems to have written him in mainly for spite. I think The Third Policeman is the better book of the two, but meeting De Selby and hearing him rant about Descartes and debate with Augustin was fascinating and highly entertaining.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I've read in weeks! I gather O'Brien felt a bit stereotyped as a one-book author based on At Swim-Two-Birds but I preferred this one. I guess it could be called a comic novel, but subtly so, and it incorporates some supernatural elements that are not intended to be ludicrous or unbelievable.
Every character has some sort of grandiose obsession that remains somewhat ambiguous as to whether it is actually true. There is, 1) the "mad scientist" who has invented what he says is a mechanism to destroy all the oxygen in the atmosphere - aside from the potential to bring about the apocalypse, the side-effect is that time somehow stops or reverses and early Church fathers, saints, apostles and Old Testament prophets appear out of the ether to dispute theology with the contemporary characters - perhaps a nod to The Inferno is intended, 2) another man suddenly declares that James Joyce faked his own death 7 or so years prior and is actually living incognito in a seaside resort town just north of Dublin - the central character goes off to locate him and sure enough finds a man tending bar in a pub who admits to being James Joyce but is very conventionally pious and disowns most of the work published under his name, 3) the policeman who reveals his theory of molecular exchange in which humans who spend too much time on bicycles become a sort of human-cycle hybrid (the bicycle undergoes a reciprocal transformation); the fact that this exchange involves no visible change could be a subtle dig at the doctrine of transubstantiation; in any event the policeman spends a lot of time combating this by stealing people's cycles, giving them flat tires and so on.

[Wreade1872 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well that was very much a shaggy dog story. Quite all over the place but still 4-stars until near the end. Despite nothing amazing it was still a solidly interesting piece. The problem though with such random narratives is always the ending and not enough to keep the 4th star. No regrets on the read though, or the fact i have the complete novels.

[Dan Witte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a kind of literary lunacy, a book of seriously funny ideas that is intellectually heavy and dramatically light. I’ve seen it described variously as a farce and a satire, but to understand or experience it as such you’d have to know what it was meant to skewer. Aside maybe from the Irish author James Joyce, or the world’s obsession with him, I wasn’t sure, so to me it reads like an absurdist comedy. Joyce appears as a character, more than twenty years after his real-life death, as does St. Augustine, but the central plot, to the degree there is one, involves our protagonist, Mick Shaughnessy, trying to foil the doomsday plan of a mad scientist named De Selby. De Selby also appears in hilarious footnote form in O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, as do some other characters and ideas in this book, which though published in 1963, was written some twenty years after The Third Policeman -- which wasn’t published until after O’Brien’s death in 1966. (Yeah, that’s confusing.) I’m not sure if there is a “proper” order for reading the two books, but I read The Third Policeman first, and though initially harder to read, I enjoyed it more. Though they share some characters and ideas, they are very different stories, both in substance and structure, and they both flew over my head quite a few times.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably the weakest of Flann's five novels, but that isn't necessarily bad, since his other work is so awesome. This is the tale of the fickle in love and alcohol Mick who meets a local scientist (De Selby from the "Third Policeman") who intends to destroy the world, shades of Ras al-Ghul, with a deoxygenating substance he calls the DMP (Dublin Metropolitan Police). De Selby can also use DMP to stop time and visit with apparations from heaven, like John the Baptist and St. Augustine, so you can imagine how this goes down (e.g. Augustine complains about his hemorrhoids, and so on). Mick decides to stop him, discovers James Joyce is still alive and tending bar, and has a "spiritual crisis" for about five minutes. For the Flann completist only, probably.

[Lukasz Pruski · Rating 3 out of 5]

"One might describe a plenum as a phenomenon or existence full of itself but inert. Obviously space does not satisfy such a condition. But time is a plenum, immobile, immutable, ineluctable, irrevocable, a condition of absolute stasis. Time does not pass. Change and movement may occur within time."

Flann O'Brien (pseudonym of Brian O'Nolan) is my literary discovery of 2017. This great yet not widely known Irish writer is the author of The Third Policeman , to me the funniest novel ever written in the English language. His critically acclaimed At Swim-Two-Birds is a masterpiece precursor of post-modern literature. So I am more than a little disappointed with his The Dalkey Archive (1964), an interesting and readable novel, yet in no way even close to the greatness of the two other works.

Dalkey shares two motifs with The Third Policeman: the character of De Selby, the "mad scientist", and the idea that humans and bicycles can morph - perhaps transmute would be a better term - into each other. This fabulously deranged idea, first introduced in Policeman is dwelled upon here and explained via Sergeant Fottrell's Mollycule Theory. Mollycules are transported from a bicycle to a human and presumably vice versa through repeated contact of human body with the bicycle saddle. Alas, because of repetition, what is out-of-this-world hilarious and unprecedented in its sheer audacity in Policeman becomes just slightly amusing here. Also, De Selby is side-splittingly hilarious when he is talked about; when he gets a speaking part in the story the hilarity is much lessened. (In an essay on O'Brien I read that he was unable to publish Policeman during his lifetime, which may explain the repetition of motifs that the author wanted to save from oblivion.)

The plot of Dalkey is demented but not as wonderfully wacko as that of Policeman. Neither is the novel as masterfully constructed as Swim. Mick, an Irish lad in the little town of Dalkey, and his friend Hackett encounter a stranger who happens to be De Selby himself. Over whisky they discuss the erroneous ways of Descartes' philosophy, the nature of time (see the epigraph), and De Selby's plans to destroy all life on Earth by totally eliminating oxygen from the Earth's atmosphere. De Selby leads them to an undersea cave where - equipped with diving gear - they have a lively religious and philosophical discussion with none other than Saint Augustine. De Selby has the power of control over time: bringing back dead people to life is not a big deal for him. Even better, he can easily change one-week-old-whisky to several years of age - a feat quite useful in Ireland, one presumes. By the way, most scenes are accompanied by consumption of certain types of liquids in the form of stout, whisky, gin, or - gasp! - wine.

To me, the Saint Augustine scene is the best in the book, which sort of goes down from there. True, we have plenty of things happen, such as conversations with St. Francis of Assisi, attempts to rehabilitate Judas Iscariot, and - most impressively - several meetings with James Joyce, who had only pretended to have died. Joyce maintains that ... No, let's not spoil the plot as this might be the funniest thing in the novel for readers who do not know the author's other works.

To sum up, neither the insanity nor the originality of the plot reach the top registers. The prose is still wonderful and reading the book made my fascination with English - the language that I would like to master one day - even stronger.

Three and a quarter stars.

[Michiel Scheen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In het dorpje Dalkey raken de bewoners in allerlei absurde situaties verzeild. De met Ierse humor gelardeerde hilarische theo-filosofische discussies worden afgewisseld met krankzinnige scenes vol alledaagse onhandigheden. Je kunt niet anders dan schuddebuikend genieten van de semi-intellectuele spitsvondigheden van de personages. De inventieve woordgrappen zijn een feest en het Iers is subliem vertaald. Lezen!

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every O'Brien novel I've read has been really funny, and The Dalkey Archive is no different. The book centers around Mick and his struggles: him and his friend Hackett's interactions with the mad scientist De Selby; his efforts to help James Joyce join the Jesuits; and his arms-length relationship with his girlfriend Mary. While it somewhat recycles a few plot elements of The Third Policeman (the De Selby character, policemen on bicycles), as well as the literary playfulness of At Swim-Two-Birds (James Joyce is a character suspected of not having written his own novels and desirous of becoming a priest), it has its own identity in the protagonist's struggles with religion and relationships. But irreverence is paramount, and aided by some of the most continuous drinking I've ever seen in a novel, O'Brien makes fun of Ireland, the Church, authorship, and just about everything else.

The De Selby plotline is the one I enjoyed the most. I could probably read about the "Mollycule Theory" forever:

"Every­thing is composed of small mollycules of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable various other routes too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. Do you follow me intelligently? Mollycules? ... The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky road­steads of the parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycles as a result of the interchanging of the mollycules of each of them, and you would be surprised at the number of people in country parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles.... And you would be unutterably flibbergasted if you knew the number of stout bicycles that partake serenely of humanity."

Never mind that De Selby is attempting to destroy the world with DMP, a lethal substance which also has the property of allowing conversation with important Christian religious figures. Mick and Hackett try some out, scuba diving along with De Selby to have an enlightening conversation with no less a personage than Saint Augustine. Much like in The Third Policeman, our hero plots a mission to retrieve the fatal supply, though not before using the theologically troubling revelations to engage in further barroom debate over Judas, the merits of various theologians, and other doctrinal disputes: is the bicycle/man duality similar to that between God and Jesus?

Probably the most important portions of the novel from a "literary" perspective are those of Joyce. Reams of analyses have been written about the most influential author in Irish history, but O'Brien's personal attitude toward Joyce is nowhere near as deferential as Brahms' artistic intimidation by his own famous predecessor, that "To follow in Beethoven's footsteps transcends one's strength". Mick's response to a question about why he wants to meet Joyce brings him firmly down to earth:

"I believe the picture of himself he has conveyed in his writings is fallacious. I believe he must be a far better man or a far worse. I think I have read all his works, though I admit I did not properly persevere with his play-writing. I consider his poetry meretricious and mannered. But I have an admiration for all his other work, for his dexterity and resource in handling language, for his precision, for his subtlety in conveying the image of Dublin and her people, for his accuracy in setting down speech authentically, and for his enormous humour."

In real life O'Brien was a famously under-achieving figure. That he makes Joyce a central figure, especially one who wants to join the Jesuits but is assigned the task of "in charge of the maintenance and repair of the Fathers' underclothes in all the Dublin residential establishments" is his own way of poking fun at the legends of literature, even as he pokes gentle fun at the trappings of religion. The Joyce character's ignorance of his fame, or even of authorship of his own works, is an interesting commentary on the unreality of fame to the famous, as well as a jab at Irish over-humility. Though Mick's eventual reconciliation and marriage to his pregnant girlfriend Mary is as serious an ending for an O'Brien protagonist as you'll find, I think his playful attitude towards life is best summed up by a limerick Hackett recites on learning that Mick has delusions of becoming a monk:

"There was a young monk of La Trappe
Who contracted a dose of the clap,
He said Dominus Vobiscum,
Oh why can't my piss come
There's something gone wrong with my... tap."

[Noah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. An original, odd, bizarre, sometimes humorous novel about two main characters, Hackett and Mick, who meet some odd characters. They are lured by De Selby to witness De Selby’s conversation with Saint Augustine. They learn De Selby is a mad scientist who plans to destroy the world by removing all the oxygen. They meet a policeman who has a belief that the more you ride a bike, the more likely you will turn into a bike. Mick finds out James Joyce is serving pints in a small pub. Joyce had forged his own obituary to escape being drafted.

Readers new to Flann O’Brien should firstly read ‘The Third Policeman’.

This book was first published posthumously in 1964.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

some good jokes but not nearly as good as at swim two birds.

[Vittorio Ducoli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Piccoli tesori nascosti sotto la superficie

Flann O'Brien è un autore irlandese di culto, che ha scritto pochi romanzi, essendo innanzitutto giornalista, ma che ha lasciato un segno indelebile nella letteratura del '900 con opere come At Swim-Two-Birds (titolo intraducibile, ma che probabilmente poteva essere interpretato meglio dell'orribile Un pinta di inchiostro irlandese con cui Adelphi ce lo propone) e Il terzo poliziotto.
Questi due romanzi furono scritti da O'Brien prima della seconda guerra mondiale (anche se il secondo fu pubblicato postumo), mentre L'archivio di Dalkey è uno dei due romanzi della sua ripresa letteraria dopo una ventennale stasi, e venne pubblicato nel 1964, due anni prima della morte dell'autore.
Mentre i primi due romanzi possono essere considerati dei piccoli capolavori, per il loro inconfondibile humor, per la brillantezza della scrittura – che soprattutto nel primo romanzo (1939) raggiunge apici di sperimentalismo quasi Joyceiano – e per l'impiego, sempre in At Swim-Two-Birds, della metanarrazione nella quale i personaggi interagiscono con il loro autore (analogamente a quanto avviene in un altro grande romanzo del primo '900, Nebbia di Miguel de Unamuno), L'archivio di Dalkey, pur riprendendo i temi cari al primo O'Brien, o forse proprio per questo, è sicuramente il prodotto di un periodo di stanchezza creativa dell'autore. Egli aveva infatti smesso di scrivere romanzi dopo la mancata pubblicazione nel 1940 de Il terzo poliziotto (che vedrà la luce solo due anni dopo la sua morte) e i due ultimi romanzi scritti negli anni '60 sono sicuramente caratterizzati da una maggiore convenzionalità espressiva rispetto alle ardite opere d'anteguerra.
L'archivio di Dalkey è comunque sicuramente una storia piacevole, giocata come al solito in questo autore sul filo dell'assurdo, di un assurdo tuttavia che ci rivela abissi di torpore quotidiano, che diventa quotidianità in un'Irlanda fatta di pub, di whiskey e di birra, di chiacchiere inconcludenti, di un paese, sembra dirci O'Brien, in cui lo stereotipo corrisponde ad una immutabile realtà. Tuttavia, soprattutto chi ha letto le due opere precedenti avverte come questo romanzo risenta della impossibilità di rinnovare, nel clima del dopoguerra, la vivacità e la vitalità sperimentalista dei primi romanzi, indissolubilmente legata a quel periodo storico, e si risolve in buona parte nella riproposizione di atmosfere e anche di personaggi e brani de Il terzo poliziotto. Quest'ultimo romanzo, infatti, non era come detto ancora stato pubblicato (anzi, O'Brien disse di averne distrutto il manoscritto), per cui l'autore poté tranquillamente saccheggiarne alcuni contenuti, senza che nessuno all'epoca se ne accorgesse.
La trama è ovviamente apparentemente sconclusionata e complicata: due giovani amici (tra i quali il protagonista, Mick) incontrano a Dalkey – sobborgo a sud di Dublino – uno strano personaggio, De Selby, che confida loro di essere in grado, grazie ad una misteriosa sostanza da lui sintetizzata (la PMD), di eliminare dall'atmosfera l'ossigeno a quindi di distruggere il mondo, cosa che intende fare, perché considera l'umanità definitivamente depravata e perduta. Accidentalmente, De Selby ha anche scoperto che in piccole quantità la sostanza è in grado di annullare il tempo (offre infatti ai due un whiskey invecchiato di anni che ha prodotto in una settimana): insieme si recheranno in una grotta sottomarina dove, grazie ad una piccola dose di PMD incontreranno lo spirito di Sant'Agostino, con il quale De Selby intrattiene una dotta conversazione di stampo teologico.
Mick decide di impedire a De Selby, che pure ammira, di mettere in atto il suo catastrofico disegno, e chiede l'aiuto del sergente Fottrell. Questi è uno stupefacente personaggio (preso in prestito, al pari di De Selby, da Il terzo poliziotto) sostenitore della teoria dello scambio molecolare secondo cui chi passa molto tempo in sella ad una bicicletta lungo le sconnesse strade della Contea diviene a lungo andare in parte crescente bicicletta, mentre le sue molecole si trasferiscono analogamente nel mezzo meccanico, determinando comportamenti cicleschi nell'uomo ed umani nel ciclo (anche questa teoria è ripresa da Il terzo poliziotto).
La storia si complica ulteriormente quando Mick viene a sapere che James Joyce non è morto nel 1941 ma vive, sotto falso nome, nei dintorni di Dublino: lo incontra e discutono della sua (di Joyce) opera letteraria.
Questi sono solo alcuni elementi del romanzo, che ci permettono tuttavia di assaporare il mondo di O'Brien, la sua fantasia sfrenata, il suo modo peculiare di innestare l'assurdo nella quotidianità. L'assurdo di O'Brien, a guardar bene, non è mai comunque fine a sé stesso, semmai è volto a sottolineare come la vera assurdità stia nella quotidianità stessa della periferica Irlanda, in quel vivere di pub in pub che caratterizza Mick e i suoi amici, quasi fossero dei Vitelloni della verde Eire, per i quali la Guinness e il whiskey al Colza hotel rappresentano la meta ultima di ogni giornata. Tutto ruota attorno al pub ed all'alcool: praticamente ogni incontro avviene davanti ad uno (o più) bicchieri, e significativamente quando Mick decide di dare una svolta drastica alla sua vita la prima cosa che fa è passare all'acqua minerale. L'assurdo, ci dice O'Brien, è già qui in mezzo a noi, nella nostra vita quotidiana, in questa Irlanda culturalmente isolata, nella quale persino un Joyce redivivo (non dimentichiamoci che nel 1964 l'Ulisse non era ancora stato pubblicato in Irlanda, con l'accusa di oscenità) non può fare altro che il cameriere in un pub ed aspirare ad entrare nella Compagnia di Gesù con l'assurdo intento di riformare la chiesa.
Proprio l'incontro con Joyce e le discussioni sulla sua opera tra lui e Mick sono tra le pagine più interessanti del libro. O'Brien ammirava profondamente l'autore dell'Ulisse e ne era ricambiato (Joyce si espresse in maniera entusiastica a proposito di At Swim-Two-Birds): facendo tornare Joyce in Irlanda egli lo fa diventare irlandese nel senso più provinciale del termine, tanto che Joyce rinnega le sue opere maggiori (Oltre all'Ulisse anche Finnegan's wake) definendole porcherie, sconcezze, ed attribuendosi solo, oltre a Dubliners, gli opuscoli scritti per l'Associazione cattolici d'Irlanda al servizio della verità e un pezzo biografico su San Cirillo. E', nella sua assurdità un'accusa pesante alla cultura irlandese, ed alla cappa di oscurantismo di stampo cattolico che la avvolgeva in quegli anni: del resto la critica alla chiesa cattolica ed ai suoi dogmi si rintraccia in tutto il libro, principalmente nella figura ambigua del gesuita (e gesuitico) padre Cobble, ma anche nel colloquio tra De Selby e Sant'Agostino e nelle disquisizioni sulla figura di Giuda.
Il tremendo e brusco happy end del libro ci sorprende ancora una volta per la sua ineluttabilità, perché ci dice che l'assurdo continuerà, che il pub sarà sostituito dalla famiglia come centro del mondo di Nick, ma che nulla cambierà. E' magistrale, a mio avviso, come ancora una volta O'Brien riesca a rovesciare il tavolo, facendoci sentire tutta l'assurdità della normalità nelle poche frasi finali del libro.
Come già detto sopra, chi come me ha letto le precedenti opere di Flann O'Brien non potrà non rilevare una certa stanchezza dell'autore: chi non ha ancora affrontato O'Brien potrà viceversa entrare nel suo mondo, e se saprà immergersi, come Mick andando ad incontrare Sant'Agostino, sotto la superficie della leggerezza narrativa troverà molti spunti sui quali riflettere. Non credo che O'Brien si possa accostare a Joyce quanto a complessità di produzione letteraria, come alcuni fanno, ma è indubbio che la sua scarna opera si innesta con originalità nel solco di una tradizione artistica in grado di produrre opere fortemente irlandesi e capaci al tempo stesso di parlare al mondo intero.

[Joe Simpkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story about a protagonist who goes on an adventure for the sole reason that it makes him feel important.
Upon meeting a mad scientist, Mick, who sees his life as being pretty bog standard and insignificant, becomes madly drunk off the idea that what he is doing is incredibly important for the whole world.

What I like about this story is how perceptive it is. There's been times in my life where I have felt important or 'special' and it has made me act for the worse. I get all these grand ideas in my head but really I'm just a nobody. Like everyone else.
I think if the world was filled with people who all felt equally unimportant, comfortably so, the world would be a better place.

It's nice to love oneself and his life, but at what cost?

[David]

Again, I turn to the writer himself: "The book is not meant to be a novel or anything of the kind but a study in derision, various writers with their styles, and sundry modes, attitudes and cults being the rats in the cage." Not a bad description at all at all. A rollicking send-up of many things, both the peculiarly Irish and the universally peculiar. Death is no barrier to the participation of some famous characters. The world is at risk. Or not. Leaves no unanswered questions except for the ones there aren't any answers to. I liked it better than At Swim-Two-Birds but I think I might have been more patient with this one.

[Shane Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most enjoyable reads of the last few years. While not as good as The Third Policeman (it borrows quite a bit from it - De Selby appears, as does the Atomic Theory of the Bicycle), it's nonetheless genuinely laugh out loud funny at times, and properly surreal at others. Where else would James Joyce and Saint Augustine exist in the same timeline.

Bonus points for taking place largely on the Vico Road and environs. I think the Third Policeman needs a re-read off the back of this

[Anne Bergsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jaren geleden las ik dit boek in de uitgave van Everyman’s Library. De vertaling van Robbert-Jan Henkes is sprankelend, al vind ik de wijze waarop hij het idioom van brigadier Fottrell weergeeft een beetje te exuberant. Maar misschien vergat ik de wijze waarop O’Brian deze man lexicografisch karakteriseerde. Er komt in dit boek in ieder geval geen normaal mens voor.