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Title: At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien, William H. Gass ISBN: 1-56478-181-X Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr Pub. Date: August, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.73 (30 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: "Where will you find, these days, as joyous a throat?"
Comment: Published in 1939, the same year that James Joyce published Finnegan's Wake, this novel was lauded in its day by Joyce himself, Samuel Beckett, and Graham Greene. A wild concoction involving a completely disjointed narrative, multiple points of view, farce, satire, and parody, this "novel" offers any student of Irish literature unlimited subject matter--and equally unlimited laughs. In this unique experiment with point of view, author Brian O'Nolan has used a pseudonym, Flann O'Brien, to tell the story of the novelist/student N, who tells his own story at the same time that he is writing a book about an invented novelist (Trellis), who is himself developing another story, while Tracy, still another author, tells a cowboy story and appears in the previous narratives.
Believing that characters should be born fully adult, one of the writers tries to keep them all together--in this case, at the Red Swan Hotel--so that he can keep track of them and keep them sober while he plans the narrative and writes and rewrites the beginning and ending of the novel. But even when the primary writer stops writing to go out with his friends, the characters of the other (invented) fictional writers continue to live on in the narrative and comment on writing. Before long, the reader is treated to essays on the nature of books vs. plays, polemics about the evils of drink, parodies of folk tales and ballads, a breathless wild west tale starring an Irish cowboy, the legends of Ireland, catalogues of sins, tales of magic and the supernatural, almanacs of folk wisdom and the cures for physical ills, and even the account of a trial--and that's just for starters.
Totally unique, O'Brien's creation defies the conventions, both of its day and of the present, and even the most jaded reader will be astonished at the unexpected twists the narrative takes. Steeped in the traditions of the Irish story-teller, O'Brien keeps those traditions alive by creating multiple narrators to tell multiple stories simultaneously, while also skewering the very traditions of which he--and they--are a part. Mary Whipple
Rating: 4
Summary: Quare Bit of Bother
Comment: Trying to describe this one long joke of a novel is a bit like retelling someone else's disjointed dream with Chinese sign language. Aach, why bother. Suffice to say, the wee man of many monikers made his reputation with this book, getting lumped in with those other tricksters of narrative form, some of them his countrymen in self-imposed exile. With multiple openings, this madcap book discards quare old conventions like consistent point of view and plot. A Dublin student goes mouldy in his bedroom while characters rebel against their slumbering creator and the barmy Sweeney hops from tree to tree. Horseman, if you're looking for linear progression, pass by. All clever parody of Irish literature and mythology aside, the novel has a reassuring warmth. The student, branded a dozey ne'er-do-well by his blockhead uncle, has a small but delightful triumph near the end that makes his part in O'Brien's tangled web particularly satisfying. A novel to be read when whimsical, when life has lost its vim and bubble.
Rating: 5
Summary: Postmodern before postmodern was cool!!
Comment: Like the country music to which I allude, this book is not for all. It is something for the serious reader of experimental fiction. Note, I do not call it a novel. But, nor do I think of Finnegan's Wake as a novel. Flann O'Brien takes us through levels of levels which demonstrate the onionlike quality of what we call fiction. What/where is the real world? Fiction obviously comments on "real" events, for examlple Huck Finn tell us about the consequences of slavery. And after all in "The Agamemmnon" we hear the consequences of leaving the wife at home and concentrating on work. And the legends of Vulcan and Venus are a soap opera.
Still, when a character in a book creates characters who interact with him where is the line of reality? Borges gives us men who dream up other men. Woody Allen has charcters spending lazy afternoons at the Ritz with Madame Bovary, or Kugelmassing around the French countryside. Thus when a never get out of bed college student starts creating a world of imagination, the reader is in for an O'Brienesque spin.
It is obvious, I think, that I enjoyed this book, but I must include a warning. This is not a typical, standard, straight line plotted piece of fiction. It is not mere entertainment. If you want a tale of early twentieth century Dublin life, stick to Dubliners.
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Title: The Third Policeman (John F. Byrne Irish Literature Series) by Flann O'Brien, Denis Donoghue ISBN: 156478214X Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr Pub. Date: March, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story About the Hard Life by Flann O'Brien, Patrick C. Power, Ralph Steadman ISBN: 1564780910 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr Pub. Date: March, 1996 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Dalkey Archive (Irish Literature Series) by Flann O'Brien ISBN: 1564781720 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr Pub. Date: October, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Best of Myles (John F. Byrne Irish Literature Series) by Flann O'Brien ISBN: 1564782158 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr Pub. Date: August, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Bowen ISBN: 0385720149 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 14 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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