At Swim-Two-Birds

Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman has long been one of my favourite novels (though it is due a re-read as it’s been many years) but his other major work, the curiously-titled At-Swim-Two-Birds has remained unread by me – until now. On paper, it is precisely something I should love. O’Brien was, and is why he remains such an interesting writer, doing what it took the postmodernist writers another 30+ years to do and anticipated their techniques of books-within-books and the blurring of fiction and reality by decades.

The frame narrative of At-Swim-Two-Birds follows an unnamed student in Dublin who lives with his uncle and spends most of his time getting drunk (with stout being a particular favourite beverage), lying in bed, and creating outlandish stories. This effort begins with him setting out to create a novel ‘without a beginning or an end’ and borrowing characters and story elements from works of Irish mythology and folklore. Periodically, he shares his manuscripts with his friend Brinsley who provides feedback, as well as making observations of his uncle as though he were an animal in the wild:

Bluff, abounding in external good nature; concerned-that-he-should-be-well-thought-of; holder of Guinness clerkship the third class.

The focus of the protagonist’s stories is the figure of Dermot Trellis, a fictional author who resides in The Red Swan Hotel. He seems to occupy a similar function here to the fictional philosopher De Selby in The Third Policeman. While Trellis is asleep, however, his characters come to life and get up to all sorts while he is not aware – becoming dormant in the rare hours he is awake. One of these sections is a pastiche of what I deduced was an Irish folktale, given its mention of ‘leaping across Erin’ (Ireland), a witch, and Finn Mac Cool, a significant figure in Irish mythology.

Another of the stories is of ‘The Pooka’, “a species of human Irish devil endowed with magical powers” as he makes his way to the Red Swan Inn to meet and subsequently corrupt Trellis’s ‘son’ Orlick. Orlick is born from a rape Trellis commits against one of his own female creations during one of his waking hours, and immediately after his birth, Orlick asks for a smoke and a pint. The Pooka makes this journey ‘the Good Fairy’ in his pocket, during which he encounters two characters by the names of Shorty and Slug, as well as a poet Jem Casey (I suspect based on the Irish poet and priest James Casey?). Given the mention of a ‘William Falconer’ at the end of the novel, the unnamed protagonist’s philosophy on re-using other fictional characters in his own work apparently also extends to the taking of authors themselves.

Anyway, following this, Orlick is brought over to the Pooka’s side and goes to live with Furriskey and Shanahan, where they convince him to write a story in which Trellis is made to suffer in order to get back at him. One of the punishments they give him include giving him an itch in the centre of his back that he can’t reach, as well as covering his body in sores. Later, while Orlick goes to the bathroom, they seize their chance to punish Trellis even more when the Pooka transforms him into a rat and himself into an Airedale Terrier, subsequently hunting him down and trapping him under his paw.

Towards the end of the novel, Trellis is put on trial by his own characters for what he’s put them through, which raises perhaps an interesting question about the nature of a writer’s relationship to their art and of our imagination. With its nested narratives, things start to get increasingly unclear as to who is ‘writing’ who and I’d been won over somewhat by O’Brien’s joke. However, I do think that had I been familiar with Irish folklore, I would have found this novel funnier than I did (especially the lengthy middle portion involving Sweeney, which was admittedly a little tedious) and I wonder if this novel is inherently less accessible than The Third Policeman for that reason.

There are several long tangents and run-on sentences sparsely punctuated with any full stops or commas that I didn’t find all that interesting, but I suspect O’Brien doesn’t actually expect you to, only that you recognise their frivolity - as how many times have you read or heard that kind of thing before, whether it be in literature or in a pub conversation? This is also the first novel I can recall reading with no speech marks around the dialogue. Despite that, the way it’s done meant that I was still able to work out who was speaking when and wasn’t ultimately an obstacle to my comprehension. While this will likely be one of those novels I admire or respect more than enjoyed, it is nonetheless rather fascinating.