Cultural Dessert

'The Third Policeman' by Flann O'Brien

2 April 2007

I should both thank and blame David Lack for introducing me to 'The Third Policeman' by Flann O'Brien - a novel written in 1940 but only published posthumously in 1967. I hadn't come across it before but it seems to have had a cult following which has grown recently after references to it in the TV series 'Lost'. Not knowing what to expect I started to read and soon found myself totally bewildered, amused, confused and irritated. After a quirky start the novel soon launches into bizarre realms of surrealism. Our narrator stumbles around a strange world with its own rules and logic, helped and hindered by three policemen with an obsessive interest in dentists, bicycles and the county council. Like Alice through the looking glass everything is recognisable but different. Much of the writing is very funny - I particularly enjoyed the ongoing references to the theologian and mad scientist, de Selby, which appear in a series of footnotes throughout the novel (O'Brien later gave de Selby a book of his own - 'The Dalkey Archive', 1964). But as the dreamlike wandering (which reminded me of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel 'The Unconsoled') continued I grew increasingly restless. It was all very clever and often very funny but what was the point? Then there is an extremely satisfying final twist which made me want to go straight back and read the whole book again! 'The Third Policeman' is a bizarre, indescribable book - funny, puzzling, frustrating and very clever. "Is it about a bicycle?"

Labels: Books

posted by Robin Simpson @ 7:56 pm