At Swim-Two-Birds

by Flann O'Brien, 1951
239pp
12/22/07-12/31/07

For those of you keeping score, this is the third Flann O'Brien book I read in 2007. I never set out to do so. I don't pretend to 100% understand this phenomenon, which is fitting, because I don't pretend to 100% understand O'Brien.

I have this peculiar love of frame stories & metafiction. I can't justify it--really, I half-want to dismiss the stuff as gimmick & wankery--but it somehow thrills me to read a real head-trip of a book. Of course this was just such a book, one that might be easier to summarize with diagrams than with words. The outer frame follows an Irish student, more inclined toward drink & sleep than studies, who writes a book. In that book, a moralizing old man writes a book that draws on a variety of styles & characters: Celtic myth, medieval poem, and the improbable cowpunchers of Dublin. This "inner" author forces his characters to live with him, under his roof, until they conspire to hijack the narrative against him. Disparate literary styles are mimicked & mashed-up to comic effect, and with virtuoso skill.

For years the frequent mention of Joyce when discussing O'Brien mystified me. Over the past year this has made more & more sense.

A little after I read the book, this piece was posted on Slate, for some reason. It was really pleasing to read: I love to picture Nathaniel Rich saying "Y'know what? Flann O'Brien could fucking write," to which a cigar-chomping, green-visored editor must've replied, "Print it, my boy!" I of course anticipated Rich's comparison between O'Brien & Sterne, but it probably was never that original a sentiment to begin with.



This was also the third book from Dalkey Archive Press (Normal, IL) that I read in 2007. Whatever it says about me that I read three O'Brien books in '07, reading three Dalkey Archive books (The Dalkey Archive being one of them) probably says roughly the same thing.

"The Dalek Archive" popped into my head just now, which idea tickles the hell out of me. If you are similarly amused, you can rest assured that you're alright in my book.