Guardian Newspaper 1000 Novels discussion

Our October group read from Family and Self

Well, I said I'd touch in when I got started! I am actually about halfway now. Its a fairly quick read once you get going.

First impression: The style of the writing was hard to get into at first. I actually started the book in Oct, read about 20 pages, and put it back down. When I picked it up this time, I started from the beginning, but that previous 20 pages gave me an idea of what I was in for. The story line jumps around frequently and there are no quotes when someone is speaking, so it took time getting used to it. It seems to work just fine for me now.

The story itself I both love and hate. I really love the parts with the narrator and his story, as well as the story he is writing. Many parts of this book are actually laugh out loud hilarious, and its just so different and so fun to read. The Irish folktales (I'm especially thinking the 20ish page Sweeny part here...the intro to Finn was fine), though, are not doing it for me. These interludes are quite long, I can't see how (if) they are related, and I find myself not caring.

Can't wait to see what the characters are up to next! I see from the back cover of the book that I can expect the roof to fall in at some point. :-)

Random weirdness: Why does the beginning start "chapter 1" if there are NO other chapters in the entire book? Why not just have no chapter titles? I find that rather hilarious.

The ending is a bit meh, so be prepared for a bit of a letdown there.

I just adore this novel. The structure of a writer writing a book about a writer writing a book about a writer writing a book, is just amazing.

I'll fill in a little background of history about Flann O'Brien, in case people don't know,

This was his first novel - written in his mid-20s under the powerful influence of James Joyce and Dylan Thomas. On publication it got rave reviews from the likes of Graham Greene (reader for Longmans Press) - and Dylan Thomas reviwed it as being "just the sort of book to buy for your sister, if she's a foul-mouthed, boozy sort of a girl". It was all printed up and ready to be sent out to bookshops around the UK when the warehouse was bombed during the London blitz in WW2 and the debut novel of an unknown writer wasn't deemed worth the expense of a reprint, so it disappeared, not to reappear until the early 60s when a US publisher dug it out.

O'Brien was asked for another novel that was "less experimental" and a few years later he gave them the manuscript for his novel "The Third Policeman", telling them it was a run of the mill murder mystery - it's actually one of the strangest books you will ever read, involving armies of one-legged men, elevators up to the afterlife, a mad scientist who believes that sleep (and night) is caused accretions of anaesthetic black air seeping from the earth's crust, and a thesis about molecular theory that involves humans turning into bicycles and bicycles turning into humans. ..... the publishers turned it down and O'Brien put it in a drawer and it was only published posthumously. The only other major novel he wrote under the name was a gaelic novel called The Poor Mouth, which is a satire on the Irish Culture Industry and the exaggerations in traditional storytelling (there's a running gag about how "well never the likes of that again") and involved gaelic language recorders from the city believing a pig to be an old man and recording his gruntings on a tape recorder.

O'Brien (real name Brian O'Nolan) got a high level job in the Irish Civil service, writing speeches for government ministers, while at the same time writing a pseudonymous (lots of pseudonyms) column every day for the Irish Times entiled The Cruiskeen Lawn (Big Jug in gaelic) under the name Myles na gCopaleen. As unauthorised publication was a sackable offence in the civil service at the time, there's a story about him being hauled before a superior and asked point blank if he was na gCopaleen and nolan asnwered he was no more nagCopaleen than he was Flann O'Brien ... and got away with it.

After the rediscovery of At Swim-Two-Birds, O'Brien wrote a couple of minor novels in the 60s, The Dalkey Archive, which reuses a lot of The Third Policeman, and The Hard Life, which is nothing special, although not terrible either.

O'Brien died on April Fools Day 1966 after suffering injuries resulting from being forgotten about while undergoing radiotherapy treatment (honestly).

Re the Sweeney in the Trees section - like you, I found it tough going the first time, but when I reread it, it flew by and was one of my favourite parts. Perhaps it suffers from the surprise.

Phil wrote: "Re the Sweeney in the Trees section - like you, I found it tough going the first time, but when I reread it, it flew by and was one of my favourite parts. Perhaps it suffers from the surprise."

The surprise is definitely part of it. And part of it is that, for me, that is where the story really started picking up. So, there I am getting really into the story, when all of a sudden there is this part that is, no joke, 10% of the book all about something completely random. I just read it through wishing it would get back to the interesting stuff that was starting to happen in the rest of the book. Maybe if I do a re-read later it will be better since I will know what to expect.

I am sad that the ending might be a letdown! I am so close...I stopped like 30 pages out, so thats really all I have left.

I do love the story with the writer writing about a writer who writes about another writer and the characters are all interacting between the different stories...it is a really cool book.

I do wish more time was spent on the storyline, though. (And that was part of my disappointment with the sweeny section...its 10% of the book, and its a short book to begin with!) Most of the really exciting events seem to happen in a rehash and not in an actual telling or story part. ie. we learn about the characters and that they decide to gang up on Trellis in a brief synopsis. I'd actually want to read them planning that!!

It seems like I really like the structure of this novel, but I am a bit disappointed with the execution, so far. It also seems like, if the ending is a letdown, that that won't really change. Boo. :-(

To a certain extent O'Brien is trying to write a satirical low brow version of Ulysses. Where Joyce tried to incorporate every branch of mythology, human learning, language and emotion, all in the span of a single day in a wonderful, but very serious way. O'Brien incorporates cod-Oirish mythology, Cowboys and Indians on the Irish tram system, the price of bacon, vomiting after a night's student over-indulgence, drinking songs ("A Pint of Plain's Your Only Man") and the difficulties of staying in bed late when your uncle's too nosey and takes not one word serious - it's a love letter to Joyce, while simultaneously taking the piss out of him non-stop.

For me, it's a majestic work of comic fiction that repays several re-reads.

Hmm...ya, I've never read Ulysses, but I know that that stuff is going to annoy me in that book too, if I ever get around to it.

I do enjoy the book. I just wish it was, then, maybe less Joyce-ian and a bit more of a novel about what the storyline is actually already about. It is funny, though. Hilariously so at times.

I know what you mean, though. I have those books that I can re-read over and over and are the best every time. This one just might not be it for me.

When I say the end is a letdown, I really mean that it's low key.

Well, it was low key, but I actually quite liked it. I had no idea where they were going to go with that, but I was going to be a bit disappointed if the characters ended up permanently damaging or killing him.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. I probably didn't get out of it what you did, but I am glad you nominated it so I could find it!

Hope you're intrigued enough to try his other masterpiece, which is "The Third Policeman", the one rejected by Longman's PUblishers and that he put away in a drawer telling friends that it had been lost in the post, and eventually published after his death.

Ooo, interesting! I'll look it up!

I just started this yesterday & so far (20 pages in) it has been a struggle.

I did listen to "The Third Policeman" several years ago and my memory is it was extremely strange but enjoyable.

This might have been a 4* book for me if I had been more familiar with Irish legends and culture. After a bit of a rocky start, I started enjoying this. People who like or admire James Joyce will probably like this even more than I did -- I am not a fan of Joyce's style of writing in "Ulysses" which O'Brien parodies here. I ended up giving this 3*

I agree on pretty much everything, Leslie!

I finished this recently. I read in the introduction that this book was more "accessible" than Ulysses. If that's the case, maybe I won't read James Joyce anytime soon. (At least, not unless I'm drunk or stoned.)

I felt while reading this that I wasn't drunk enough or Irish enough to really get into this. The only parts I really liked were the bits with the Pooka.

just finished rereading this book. my latest review:

"Flann O'Brien is very much a "marmite" writer. When people don't like him, they REALLY don't like him. When I left my father-in-law The Third Policeman, he was genuinely enraged after finishing it. Properly angry. I have a feeling his reaction would have been the same to this. Perhaps it's the drifting lack of a firm centre, perhaps it's the feeling that the whole book is a series of digressions without a story to digress from, perhaps it's the awkwardness of someone showing off just how clever they are.

But they are all reasons I love his work. Ultimately I think this book isn't quite as good as The Third Policeman, which is his masterpiece. But it's still a great book, still perplexing, still fantastically modern and unsettling 80 years after publication.

The book begins with three separate openings, it's a novel about a man writing a novel about a man writing a novel, it ends with a tale about a man who thinks his bottom is made of glass. It's uncategorisable. It's a work of genius."