There's two reasons to finish a book you can't stand: 1) you're forced to (by some puffed-up English teacher who's convinced he or she is the ultimate purveyor of Great Literature); or 2) if you give up half-way through, you won't be able to say you've actually read it. Well, I've earned the right to say I've read Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman (1967). But I just know that when I'm lying on my death bed, I'm going to wish I had those hours back again.
Part of my problem with the novel is it's surreal, something I'm not a fan of. I can handle eccentric (Roxy Music), unconventional (Memento), strange (Philip K. Dick), and absurd (Monty Python and the Holy Grail). I can even understand the place of surrealism in paintings or short stories. But in long form—novel, film, or anything with an extensive narrative—it's always struck me as a cop-out, a way to avoid structure and consistency. (It also gets tiresome, like an extended dream sequence.) Even the most improbable Fantasy novels have their own internal logic. But surrealism allows a writer to jump from idea to action to image and back again without such plebeian concerns as transition or motivation.
The Third Policeman also has the corniest, most affected, precious dialogue I've ever dry heaved my way through:
"The simple thing is," MacCruiskeen said calmly, "that you cannot enter the lift unless you weigh the same weight as you weighed when you weighed into it.""If you do," said the Sergeant, "it will extirpate you unconditionally and kill the life out of you."
In earlier, less sensitive days, we would have referred to this as really gay.
There was only one moment I connected with, when I felt O'Brien was referring to me as a reader:
I turned to the wall and gave loud choking sobs and broke down completely and cried loudly like a baby.
But at least I can say I read the damn thing.
Article comments
1 - Sean
I just thought I would say that it is a surreal book, but that does not mean it is without structure and rules. It is not a simple book by any means and I understand why you might not enjoy it. But, were you to know something of Irish speech, you would understand the humor in the dialog you found so irritating, and if you knew some Irish mythology, you would understand that there is a lot of sense to where the narrative goes at all times. There are transitions, but they require an understanding of the subtext to appreciate. Further, it is a commentary on the writings of James Joyce and much of it is an argument of literary style disguised as a novel. It is, in essence, a very big inside joke. I don't mean this to sound snobbish in any way and I would not have written at all, but poor Flann O'Brien was, and continues to be, underappreciated in his writing. It really is quite clever, though taxing and tiring to read in many ways.
2 - Denis Deasy
The review by Paul de Angelis confirms the stereotype of the smug Californian world view which seems totally unselfconcious in it's cultural tunnel vision and ignorance - if it dosen't conform to a recognised format (3 Acts blah blah blah), it's not structured.
Not only is this novel surreal, it's also a piss-take of the nerdy pseudoscientific novel with copius footnotes and references to the guru de Selby. It's a darker, more grownup 'Alice in Wonderland', with exaggerated 'Irishisms' (as explored further in 'The Poor Mouth'). It's a murder mystery, with a structure and form discernable to all but the most intellectually challenged - it packs a sting in the tail analagous to that in films such as 'Twelve Monkeys' and 'The Usual Suspects', and heh, even 'Memento' uses (borrows?) the amnesia plot device in a very similar way.
The surreal (not absurd!) humour employed by Monty Python & Co. is directly traceable back to Flann O'Brien, (via the Goon Show - Spike Milligan cites F. O'B as his main inspiration).
I think it's one of the masterpieces of surreal humour, with a dark edge and a light touch - the dialogue is a brilliant evocation of, and hilarious exaggeration of, the language and peculiar logic employed by local officialdom not just in rural Ireland in the 40's, but recognisable as a universal archetye.
To those with open minds, I also recommend 'At Swim Two Birds', O'Brien's 'Joycean' novel.
3 - Michael Turley
The only possible justification for this rather inept review is the excellent response above by Denis Deasy.
4 - F. Hornung
On the risk of sounding prententious let me say that The Third Policeman is the best literary treatment of Quantum Theory and Relativity in existence. O'Brien was acquainted with Erwin Schroedinger (who emigrated to Ireland) and this novel clearly shows that they talked more than just about the weather.
Behold the poetic illustration of the Principle of Superposition through the "coloured gowns" and winds in ch. 2, McCruiskeen's quantum-tipped spear, his wooden chest-within-a-chest forming an infinite recursion that reflects the structure of the novel itself, and the recurring image of "waves" as sound, heat and light.
Above all, the narrator himself and his "soul" are an eery impersonation of
Schroedinger's Cat, and the references do not end here.
These are more than just clever allusions, but poetic transformations of scientific facts.
This book is surreal not just for its own sake but because the very subject it deals with is.
And it's funny, too, even to a non-Irish German like me.
5 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
wow. i just finished reading this the other night, and wrote about old flann, in fact, in a recent article here, but i certainly didn't find it at all hard going or dull or kicking the heave up my gullet. i thought the dialogue was brilliant, absoloutely brilliant. it's a parody, for one thing, the dialogue is supposed to be incredibly daft in a lovely sorta way. maybe you need to be places where people talk like that, maybe not in that precise way but with the same beat, the same lilting going on. but the novel is a comedy. it's satirical and absurd and surreal and finds surreal wonder in the terribly mundane. i thought it was utterly blinding, to be honest.
6 - jon
I understand that it is a while since this review was written but i do need to know, are you Irish? If not that is why you didn't or couldn't come to grips with the third policeman...cultural references and satire on many works of literatyre! If you are Irish then all I can say is '??????'