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/lit/ - Literature

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13893066 No.13893066 [Reply] [Original]

Why haven't you read Flann O'Brien yet?

>> No.13893071

Just had the Complete Novels everyman’s library edition delivered. Should I read it soon?

>> No.13893077

I have, and he’s fucking great. Third Policeman is probably my fave.

In a similar vein, I would also suggest Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino.

>> No.13893087

>>13893071
As soon as you can, he's fantastic.

>> No.13893096

>>13893066
My gf made me. It was incredibly weird, drily funny, and somewhat stretched. The end is better than the middle part, so tbqh it would have been better, if it had been written as a short story or novellette. But this is just my personal taste.

>> No.13893106

>>13893066
I have. I read that during the summer and enjoyed it. I've been meaning to pick up At Swim-Two-Birds.

>> No.13893123

>>13893066
i have at least the third policeman but its way to out there

>> No.13893131

>>13893066
The Third Policeman is brilliant

>> No.13893142

>>13893066
Why haven't you read Achille Campanile yet?

>> No.13893164

>>13893106
I think At Swim-Two-Birds is his best, get on it anon.

>> No.13893179

>>13893066
I agree with everyone. The guy is fucking awesome.

>> No.13893198

Third Policeman was okay. The humor was pretty much just making shit up as it went along by creating elaborate stupid explanations. I found it a little too moronic. Genius? I don't see how anyone could say that. One would have to give me an actual explanation to back that up but this novel lends itself to lots of subjective interpretation so many peoplr will come to false conclusions anyway. Not even a bad version of hell if I am honest. He seems like he had some fun during it.

>> No.13893206

rec me more Metaphysical Slapstick plz

>> No.13893212

>>13893206
Waiting for Godot m8

>> No.13893272

When he was a newspaper columnist he got bored how apathetic everybody in Dublin was over the issues he was writing about. He wrote a letter to the editor and either left it anonymous or used a heteronym, I don’t remember which, castigating O’ Brien’s column. O’ Brien followed up by defending his original column and viciously attacked the character and intellect of the letter writer. The letter writer replied in kind. Eventually the editor caught on and stopped printing any letters referring to O’ Brien or his columns. Even legitimate letters went unprinted because the editor could never be sure.
Basically he invented samefagging.
He truly was one of the giants.

>> No.13893429

>>13893272
It's much worse than that anon. He wrote under multiple heteronyms and pseudonyms and anonymously to the editor, because he thought the editor didn't get his complex humour and second/third language jokes etc. The editor stopped printing all letters to the editor about Flann's column, because he couldn't tell if it was a complex joke by Flann or not until someone (possibly even Flann, though sometimes cryptic crossword fans) would write him a letter after publication explaining the joke, and why he should not print such jokes.
He perfected samefagging.

>> No.13893455

>>13893198
>writing nuclear physics before the Manhattan project
If we ignore that you don't have the depth of reading to understand the mythic allusions, you're retarded enough you don't know why the frequency of wood or the interchange of elections are far too prescient and the satire of atmospheric theories too on point to not be considered a genius. You're basically making the argument that since daVinci didn't build all his machines, none of them were workable nor beyond their age, only with a greater background ignorance.

>> No.13893490

>>13893066
>Flann O'Brien
>Flannobrien
>Fannobrin
>Finnebran
>Finnegan
>Finnegan's Wake!

>> No.13893850

>>13893455
Are you implying his joke theories have actual science behind them?

>> No.13894057

>>13893850
>when you realise he actually gave you the resonance point of wood
deSelby's theories are a range of previous scientific theories, but the atomic theory he wrote only gets verified much later. It's like if you wrote a novel about how to build a large hadron collider in the 70s, and published it in 2010 without editing it. O'Brien's nuclear physics only seemed a little wacky when it was published in the late sixties, but he wrote it before the less wacky bits of the nuclear theory had been written. People still thought Bohr's model might be reworked to fill in the gaps and that Pauli was an insane mystic who hung out with Jung too much. Pauli literally had not written about regulating infinities in QM when O'Brien had finished the manuscript, and wouldn't for another decade.

>> No.13894101

>>13893164
will do

>> No.13894116

I've only read The Third Policeman and loved it - what other novels would you recommend and does the reading order matter?

>> No.13894145

>>13894116
At Swim is great but even better if you're familiar with Irish myth, classical education, and politics in the Irish Free State. You can read it without any pre-reading, just keep in mind the rambling bard has dementia and is a satire of myth in the same way the Catullus is reworked.
The Poor Mouth is better in Irish, but if you hate hipsters and back to native ways people, it's great.
The Dalkey Archive is part salvaged from the then unpublished Third Policeman, but it also has snarky bits about Joyce and others which Third Policeman doesn't have. Better to read that after Third Policeman so you get the new bits as a bonus rather than spoiling TP for yourself.
Third Policeman and Poor Mouth are probably the easiest to read without needing a Trinity education.

>> No.13894164

I tried once, but he just seemed a little too influenced by Joyce, if you know what I mean. I didn’t finish the book.

>> No.13894189

>>13894164
Nobody ever complains he was a little too influenced by Huxley.

>> No.13894293

>>13894145
Thanks mate. I'm Northern Irish so I know bits and pieces about Irish Free State politics and history. I'll dip back into him.

>> No.13894309

>>13893066
Its just a midwit James Joyce, no? I did read him, however because I was interested in reading something by every author satirized in If On a Winter's Night

>> No.13894326

>>13894309
Joyce is more of a midwit thing than him.

>> No.13894375

>>13893066
I love him, but never found anything other than At Swim-Two-Birds here in my country.

>> No.13894402

>>13894309
>Irish
>must be copying Joyce
Next you'll be telling me that Joyce is just a midwit Yeats....

>> No.13894998

>reading an Irish retard

Potato niggers are sub-human

>> No.13895379

>>13894998
>on a /lit/ board
Yes, yes, and France only writes about cheese and Russia only writes sci-fi and the USA has written the best novels of the 15th century. We all know the basic facts of retardation, you need not outline them.

>> No.13895519

>write yourself into a corner
>the protagonist was dead the whole time
Nice ending Shyamalan

>> No.13895623

>>13893850
Don't listen to that guy. O'Brien was a satirist and an Irish Catholic and that novel is, in part, a reductio ad absurdum concerning the supposed atheism and materialism you're left with when you take a purely scientific world view to it's absolute logical conclusion.

>> No.13896000

>>13895623
>Irish Catholic
He was rather famously Irish before he was Catholic, and the Brothers don't come off too well in the offing (The Hard Life, his various men of the cloth including Father Fahrt.) Third Policeman is specifically about limbo. I mean specifically in that O'Brien said so.

>> No.13896683

>>13896000
I'm American, it's just habit to say it that way.
>limbo
I had assumed it was hell. It's part of why I didn't like it.

>> No.13896696

>>13893077
>Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino
This novel is great. So is Flann ofc.

>> No.13896791

>>13896683
His dad was a nationalist nutter before those started a revolution, so he was raised Irish speaking. He learnt English when he went off to school basically, and a lot of that informs his views on Catholics (which are about as favourable as his views on everyone else). It's not hell exactly yet, because of a variety of obscure Catholic reasons (one of them being final judgment for him and Divney and all of us can only come after they've both died), but mostly because he wants you to imagine how much worse that whole scenario will work out when it's not just him seeing the police about his American gold watch but him and Divney.

>> No.13897117

>>13896791
>how much worse that whole scenario will work out
how do you mean

>> No.13897171

>>13897117
Well, by himself he got arrested, with Divney the gallows might even work. Or anything else. You're supposed to construct what would happen if it starts over with him and Divney riding bicycles again, and what happens when Divney shows up to populate the same space as him again.