At Swim-Two-Birds

Flann O'Brien

It was stated that while the novel and the play were both pleasing intellectual exercises, the novel was inferior to the play inasmuch as it lacked the outward accidents of illusion, frequently inducing the reader to be outwitted in a shabby fashion and caused to experience a real concern for the fortunes of illusory characters. The play was consumed in whole-some fashion by large masses in places of public resort; the novel was self-administered in private. The novel, in the hands of an unscrupulous writer, could be despotic. In reply to an inquiry, it was explained that a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham to which the reader could regulate at will the degree of his credulity. It was undemocratic to compel characters to be uniformly good or bad or poor or rich. Each should be allowed a private life, self-determination and a decent standard of living. This would make for self-respect, contentment and better service. It would be incorrect to say that it would lead to chaos. Characters should be interchangeable as between one book and another. The entire corpus of existing literature should be regarded as a limbo from which discerning authors could draw their characters as required, creating only when they failed to find a suitable existing puppet. The modern novel should be largely a work of reference. Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before--usually said much better. A wealth of references to existing works would acquaint the reader instantaneously with the nature of each character, would obviate tiresome explanations and would effectively preclude mountebanks, upstarts, thimbleriggers and persons of inferior education from an understanding of contemporary literature. Conclusion of explanation.
That is all my bum, said Brinsley.

What is wrong with Cryan and most people, said Byrne, is that they do not spend sufficient time in bed. When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body. Put it to sleep, that is a better way. Let it serve only to turn the sleeping soul over, to change the blood-stream and thus make possible a deeper and more refined sleep.

Sweeny the thin-groined it it
in the middle of the yew;
life is very bare here,
piteous Christ it is cheerless.

Grey branches have hurt me
they have pierced my calves,
I hang here in the yew-tree above,
without chessmen, no womantryst.

I can put no faith in humans
in the place they are;
watercress at evening is my lot,
I will not come down.

I'll see you damned first, said the Good Fairy excitedly.

Do anything to spoil the good yarn you have made of it so far, and I will arise and I will slay thee with a shovel. Eh, boys?

The vocation of the pooka, said the Pooka, is one that is fraught with responsibilities, not the least of these being the lamming and leathering of such parties as are sent to me for treatment by Number One, which is the First Good and the Primal Truth and necessarily an odd number. My own personal number is Two. As regards the second objection you make about the tail, I mus state that I personally belong to a class that is accustomed to treat with extreme suspicion all such persons as are unprovided with tails. Myself I have two tails in the bed here, my own tail of loose hair and the tail of my nightshirt. When I wear two shirts on a cold day, you might say that I appear to have three tails in all?

Perhaps more than Joyce, Flann O'Brien captures a lyrical limerick-like speech that is most like you'd imagine Irishmen to speak if Irishmen were allowed to speak. I doubt if you go to Ireland, you will hear many men or women speak like Flann's characters. Maybe if you go to a pub where beers with names such as 'The Wrastler' are served. But give the Irish some time to get soused and pound down a couple of pints of a good dark porter or perhaps a mealy stout and their speech turns to the lilt O'Brien captures. Like a primal instinct or an urge of nature, the poetical discourse of the Irish people is rooted deep and it will take many generations of English and American tyranny to abolish it. Perhaps never.
But books like At-Swim-Two-Birds are doing their best to stem the tide of the hegemony of foreign discourse on the green isle. It takes a good deal more work to read something by Flann O'Brien than it does by Mark Twain, but O'Brien's payoff is better. The form may bewilder you. The storyline may lack sense. The wording may be excessive and more stuck on itself than any prima donna, but you'll never find something so pleasing to the ear and stomach. The words in At-Swim-Two-Birds go deeper than most. The small intricacies of the book are more pleasant for the fact that they don't serve too many purposes. They are there because they weren't put elsewhere, especially nowhere.
How can you not love a book that audaciously begins with Chapter 1 and forgets to ever put in another chapter?