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The Third Policeman

4.03 of 5 stars 4.03 · rating details · 5,680 ratings · 650 reviews

The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and i...more

Paperback, 200 pages

Published March 1st 1999 by Dalkey Archive Press (first published 1967)

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Apr 24, 2013 Aubrey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-06-12, 1000-guardian, dalkey-archive, on-hand, reviewed, 4-star, barthelme

4.5/5

ABANDON HOPE OF (COMPLETELY) AVOIDING SCIENCE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.
-Rita Mae Brown
The phrase practically screams common sense, does it not? And yet endurance, perseverance, and stubborn tenacity are all valued qualities in the face of a seemingly unobtainable goal. Personally, what immediately comes to mind are the trials and tribulations of scientists in countless laboratories scattered across the globe....more 4.5/5

ABANDON HOPE OF (COMPLETELY) AVOIDING SCIENCE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.
-Rita Mae Brown
The phrase practically screams common sense, does it not? And yet endurance, perseverance, and stubborn tenacity are all valued qualities in the face of a seemingly unobtainable goal. Personally, what immediately comes to mind are the trials and tribulations of scientists in countless laboratories scattered across the globe. Proclaiming a hypothesis (ex: I hypothesize that chemical A will interact with chemical B like so), designing an experiment to match it, and then conducting it over and over and over again, enough to gain enough data points to exclude both systematic and random error, avoidable and unavoidable biasing of the results. Three is the magic number required to measure just how wrong the data could possibly be, but more is always encouraged, just in case a monstrous outlier rears its head due to some unforeseen amount of chaos.

And if that experiment proves faulty, scientific training demands a do-over. Correct the hypothesis a touch, adjust the variables a smidgen, re-calibrate the chemicals and fine-tune the machinery, then repeat the process countless times more. On and on and on, as one of the blessings of the scientific method is that conclusions can always be questioned, answers can always be tested ad infinitum, and theories that have lasted for millenia can have their sterling reputations cracked like an egg during the space of a single hour.

Now, what does this have to do with The Third Policeman? Well, the previous two paragraphs in essence described a major plot point, the "twist" if you will of the entire narrative, as well as an action that multiple characters take part in throughout the course of the story. More importantly, there are a surprising amount of passages that are grounded firmly in the 'insanity' that science is.

For those who are not inclined towards the hard sciences, feel free to skip this next part. For those who have some level of interest, continue on.
(view spoiler)[
Human existence de Selby has defined as 'a succession of static experiences each infinitely brief'...From this premise he discounts the reality or truth of any progression or serialism in life, denies that time can pass as such in the accepted sense and attributes to hallucinations the commonly experienced sensation of progression as, for instance, in journeying from one place to another or even 'living'....The illusion of progression he attributes to the inability of the human brain - 'as at present developed' - to appreciate the reality of these separate 'rests', preferring to group many millions of them together and calling the result motion...
Some of you may be familiar with the concept of integration in mathematics. For those who are not, imagine a line on a graph. Make it as curved and chaotic as you please. Now, imagine finding a way, an equation if you will, for calculating the area underneath that line for however far it shoots out into infinity, bounded only by the horizontal (x) and vertical (y) axes that the line originates from. The accepted process is to imagine an infinitely narrow slice of that area, then add up as many of the slices as necessary. Realistically speaking, this is impossible. Mathematically speaking, this is one of the fundamental bases of calculus, and is one of if not the most useful calculation skill to have under one's belt for engineering.

The parallels between seeming insanity and hard science don't stop there.

'How big is all this place?'
'It is no size at all,' the Sergeant explained, 'because there is no difference anywhere in it and we have no conception of the extent of its unchanging coequality.'
In engineering problems involving lines, shapes, and volumes, it is a very popular method to extend one or more of the axes of the shape out to infinity, thereby reducing seeming differences to insignificant in the grand scale of things, and ridding one of the necessity of calculation for that particular part. You would not believe how much easier this makes calculation, although it is true that these infinitely long, infinitely wide, and infinitely large objects have a very major issue:They lacked an essential property of all known objects...Simply their appearance, if even that word is not inadmissible, was not understood by the eye and was in any event indescribable.
Regardless, the calculations always work out.

Another scientific curiosity, albeit a bit more grounded in fact than the previous.

'Some people,' he said, 'call it energy but the right name is omnium because there is far more than energy in the inside of it, whatever it is. Omnium is the essential inherent interior essence which is hidden inside the root of the kernel of everything at it is always the same.'
I nodded wisely.
'It never changes. But it shows itself in a million ways and it always comes in waves. now take the case of the light on the mangle.'
'Take it,' I said.
'Light is the same omnium on a short wave but if it comes on a longer wave it is in the form of noise, or sound. With my own patents I can stretch a ray out until it becomes sound...But ominium is the business-end of everything. If you could find the right wave that results in a tree, you could make a small fortune out of timber for export.'

Light is both a particle and a wave, waves that have a much higher frequency (occur more often) than sound waves. Every object in the physical world has what is called a 'resonant frequency', most popularly illustrated by an opera singer breaking a glass with their voice. At that point, the frequency of the noise matches the vibrational frequency of the multitudes of atomic bonds within the structure (bonds between atoms are never static, and are always lengthening/shrinking/rotating about), causing the structure to absorb energy to the point of the atoms breaking their bonds due to the force of the vibrations. Whether this process can ever be reversed and form physical objects from vibrations is a fascinating question indeed.

And finally, the amazing properties of water.

[de Selby] praises the equilibrium of water, its circumambiency, equiponderance and equitableness, and declares that water, 'if not abused' can achieve 'absolute superiority'...In Bassett's view the water was treated in the patent water-box and diluted to a degree that made it invisible - in the guise of water, at all events - to the untutored watchers at the sewer.

If you ever find yourself working with bioengineers, you'll run across drug delivery problems. Not only do they involve integration and shapes that break the laws of reality, they involve liquids of all densities (weight of the object divided by volume of the object), viscosities (adherence of a substance's molecules to one another. Maple syrup is viscous, water is not), and diffusion constants (the rate at which something will move through water, ex: the speed at which ink spreads in a pool of clear water). Unless you're dealing with water or something that has been 'infinitely diluted' in water, essentially easing calculations by being deemed 'perfect' in its insignificant interactions. In other words, you can ignore it. The only problem with de Selby's approach is attempting to demonstrate these mathematical tricks in real life, resulting in a household usage of 9,000 gallons of water in one day, none of which was observed to ever leave the house. Again, realistically incomprehensible. But scientifically sound. (hide spoiler)]

I could go on about the myriad reality-defying ways the book illustrates that in actuality are necessary for successful scientific reasoning. But I think that you have all had enough lessons in mathematics/physics/general engineering for one day. Rest assured, this is not all that the book has going for it. There are many passages of dry wit that had me flat out giggling, as well as wonderfully unconventional metaphors that raised the reality the words described to a unusual, yet beautiful art. You'll even find scathing critiques of society and profound existential meanderings within these pages.

However, what stuck with me the most were the uncanny similarities between the strange logic that the book operated on and the science of the real world. Not all of the book's weirdness is reflected in sound science, but science itself has its own cases of crackpot theories and misinformed conclusions. Ultimately, to discover the truth, scientists delve into these realms, these hells if you will, of supreme weirdness and nonsensical assumptions, bring back bits and pieces for the rest of humanity to benefit from, and then dive back for more. It's a wonder that more of them don't go mad from the effort.(less)

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Feb 16, 2013 Christopher rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Christopher by: Cait

Shelves: 20th-century, british, fiction, future-classics, nameless-characters

It was as if the daylight had changed with unnatural suddenness, as if the temperature of the evening had altered greatly in an instant or as if the air had become twice as rare or twice as dense as it had been in the winking of an eye; perhaps all of these and other things happened together for all my senses were bewildered all at once and could give me no explanation.

Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman continuously defied my expectations. Before reading, I had no preconceived notions about it,...more

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Aug 14, 2007 Jacob rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 18, 2012 Geoff rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Third Policeman is a fantastic work of imaginative fictional wonder that by the end somehow manages to become a bit exasperating in all its fantastic imaginative wonderfulness. Each chapter by itself is a kind of magical and mind-bending set piece illustrating baffling physical and metaphysical conundrums, paradoxes, absurdities, and improbabilities, but this is perhaps a situation where the pieces are greater than the whole (a standout example is MacCruiskeen’s ever-diminutive reproductions...more

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Mar 03, 2009 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

The wackiness here is pure gold. I love a book that terrifies me on multiple levels, and I can certainly say that this book succeeded in that regard. Not to mention it is hilarious (particularly the footnotes on de Selby! Gold! Pure Gold! Don't skip them!)

I know that the conceit of this book may seem cheap, tired, cliche by this point in time, but that's not really important. This book has much more in it than plot alone. The sheer magnitude it took to create de Selby was a task of Borgesian pro...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Oscar rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literatura-fantástica, misterio-suspense, humor-comedia, míos, mainstream, 5-estrellas, favorites, mis-obras-maestras

Después de acabar de leer ‘El Tercer Policía’, sólo puedo decir que se trata de una absoluta obra maestra. El viaje al que te arrastra Flann O’Brien es de los más imaginativos, alucinantes e irreales que he leído jamás. ¡Hilarante, delirante, sorprendente! Aún no entiendo cómo no había leído nada de este escritor irlandés. Estas mismas sensaciones de estar leyendo una historia que te sorprende en cada página, es comparable a la que tuve hace años con la lectura de otra magnífica fábula metafísic...more Después de acabar de leer ‘El Tercer Policía’, sólo puedo decir que se trata de una absoluta obra maestra. El viaje al que te arrastra Flann O’Brien es de los más imaginativos, alucinantes e irreales que he leído jamás. ¡Hilarante, delirante, sorprendente! Aún no entiendo cómo no había leído nada de este escritor irlandés. Estas mismas sensaciones de estar leyendo una historia que te sorprende en cada página, es comparable a la que tuve hace años con la lectura de otra magnífica fábula metafísica, ‘El poema de los lunáticos’ de Ermanno Cavazzoni, novela en la que el inspector Savini investiga secretos mensajes aparecidos en los pozos, trasladándose para ello a extrañas tierras donde descubre a pueblos que habitan en tuberías y que espían nuestro mundo a través de los grifos. Absurdo, sí, pero vaya imaginación y menudas historias. Pues así es ‘El Tercer Policía’. Sin duda, todo un hallazgo.

La primera vez que escuché hablar de Flann O’Brien fue en 2006, cuando Nórdica Libros publicó el presente libro precisamente. Tras leer la sinopsis, sólo pude adquirirlo, porque ya se sabe que después no hay manera de encontrar los libros de estas pequeñas e imprescindibles editoriales.

lost

Desmond y su 'The Third Policeman'

Posteriormente también me enteré que ‘El Tercer Policía’ era uno de los libros que leía Desmond en la genial serie ‘Lost’ (‘Perdidos’) y que se veía encima de su escritorio en uno de los episodios. Según uno de los guionistas, en la serie se hacen bastantes alusiones a la trama del libro. En la novela aparece un subterráneo en el que los números juegan un papel muy importante, así como una especie de caja que produce cualquier cosa que se desee, y también se sugiere un posible derrumbe de la estructura como no se mantenga todo perfectamente controlado. Esto no va más allá de una mera anécdota, y si hay que creer a los creadores y guionistas de la serie, los libros que van apareciendo en algunos capítulos tienen su importancia para una mayor comprensión de lo que está sucediendo.

Pero no hay que confundirse, porque lo que ‘El Tercer Policía’ tiene en común con ‘Lost’ es mínimo, aunque muy importante. Es difícil poder hablar del argumento de este libro sin desvelar parte de sus sorpresas. El protagonista y narrador, una especie de estudiante y filósofo autodidacta obsesionado con la obra del científico de Selby, vive con John Divney, un tipo ruin junto al que comete un asesinato y un robo, como se menciona en el primer párrafo. Lo que roban es una caja negra, que se convertirá sólo en el principio de una pesadilla fantástica que va más allá de la imaginación, un viaje afín al de la Alicia de Lewis Carroll, o al del Mundo de Oz, y no exento de humor absurdo al estilo ‘El hombre que fue jueves’ de Chesterton. Un mundo con una comisaría bidimensional donde conocerá a dos tipos asombrosos, el Sargento Pluck y el policía MacCruinkeen, totalmente obsesionados con las bicicletas, sus perjuicios y placeres.

Mención aparte para de Selby y su colección de disparatadas teorías, a cuál más peculiar y sublime, como por ejemplo, que la noche no existe como tal, sino que se trata de aire negro producto de la acumulación de gases volcánicos. Teorías que se irán volviendo cada vez más extrañas y complicadas. La novela contiene varias notas a pie de página que rompen con la trama convirtiéndose por momentos en una novela aparte, en una especie de metaficción; notas donde tanto críticos como seguidores de de Selby dan rienda suelta a sus filias y fobias por el controvertido sabio.

En cuanto al tercer policía del título, es todo un misterio del que no se puede mencionar nada, pero cuya importancia es crucial, aunque esté ausente.

Insisto de nuevo, cuanto menos se sepa del argumento de este libro, mucho mejor, para poder disfrutar plenamente con su lectura.

Flann O’Brien fue un exquisito narrador para el que las reglas a la hora de escribir no existían. ‘El Tercer Policía’ se puede leer como una novela de humor, de misterio, de suspense, de literatura fantástica, e incluso de terror, sobre todo al final, porque es todo esto y mucho más.(less)

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Aug 17, 2010 Paul rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

If you ever want to find out what it's like being the only sober person in a room full of professors telling each other jokes in Latin and heffing and hawing and pulling each others' beards, here's a good place to start.

Otherwise not.

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Nov 17, 2008 Núria rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: los que tengan paciencia suficiente para aguantar pesadillas surrealistas

Recommended to Núria by: Donald Barthelme

Shelves: 2-ni-fu-ni-fa, 2008, literatura-en-ingles, siglo-xx, prestados

En el primer capítulo de la segunda temporada de 'Lost', cuando por fin abren la escotilla y entran en el búnquer, el libro que está leyendo en este momento Desmond es 'El tercer policía' de Flann O'Brien. No me acordaba yo de este detalle. Puede que no me fijara y, si me fijé, seguro que me pensé que se trataba de una novela de detectives al uso (no tiene nada que ver con detectives y algunos de los creadores de 'Lost' han reconocido la influencia de esta novela en la trama de la serie). No vol...more En el primer capítulo de la segunda temporada de 'Lost', cuando por fin abren la escotilla y entran en el búnquer, el libro que está leyendo en este momento Desmond es 'El tercer policía' de Flann O'Brien. No me acordaba yo de este detalle. Puede que no me fijara y, si me fijé, seguro que me pensé que se trataba de una novela de detectives al uso (no tiene nada que ver con detectives y algunos de los creadores de 'Lost' han reconocido la influencia de esta novela en la trama de la serie). No volví a hablar del libro hasta que lo vi encabezando el cánon personal de Donald Barthelme. Harold Bloom también la cita como una de las mejores novelas del siglo XX. Y la contraportada lo compara con Lewis Carroll, pero en oscuro. Aunque a mí me recuerda más a Samuel Beckett. Pero a pesar de todos estos referentes la novela no me ha gustado. No me ha gustado, no.

El protagonista es un hombre con una pierna de madera que un buen día se olvida de su propio nombre. Se crió en un internado y allí entró en contacto (y se obsesionó) con la obra de De Selby, un filósofo loco que quiere demostrar científicamente las teorías más absurdas como que la tierra tiene forma de salsicha. El protagonista quier publicar una magna obra (la definitiva) sobre De Selby pero no analizando tanto la obra del propio De Selby como la de todos sus críticos*. En definitiva, quiere hacer criticismo del criticismo, pero para esto necesita dinero. Así que decide matar un viejo que está forrado para quedarse con su dinero. Pero las cosas no salen como estaba previsto y el protagonista termina en una comisaría de policía con dos policías muy raros y un tercero que nunca aparece y del que los otros dos opinan que está absolutamente chiflado. Los dos primeros capítulos, antes de llegar a la comisaría, me gustaron mucho, pero luego se desinfla y a pesar de que en varios momentos parece que la cosa toma carrerilla para alcanzar el vuelo, para mí nunca consigue despegar. El giro final también me gustó mucho (ciertamente es brillante), pero lo cierto es que todo lo del medio me aburrió bastante.

Creo que el principal problema del libro es que el aire de pesadilla pocas veces funciona. Puede funcionar en Franz Kafka, pero porque sus pesadillas son las del mundo real. Lo que pasa es que la mayoría de veces las pesadillas están tan desconectadas del mundo real que para mí me es imposible entrar en ellas. No me dicen nada. Sí, me encanta contar mis pesadillas a otros, pero me parece tedioso tener que oir las de otros; ¿qué importancia tienen si no están para nada relacionadas conmigo? El otro problema del libro es que a mí nunca me pareció tan raro, tan divertido y tan horroroso (no en el sentido de "malo" si no en el sentido de "dar miedo") como dicen que es y como pretende ser. Para mí le falta consistencia y empaque. Da la sensación que son una serie de ideas buenas pero mal conectadas. A parte de la relación de simbiosis entre un hombre y su bicicleta, a mí las únicas ideas que me interesaron son las relacionadas con 'Lost': el tipo raro de la cabaña, una caja que contiene algo que te puede hacer conseguir todo lo que quieras, los dos policías que siempre están haciendo mediciones raras, un mapa en el techo, un búnquer subterráneo en el que el tiempo no pasa, etc. Sí, una obra singular e inclasificable y valiente y tal, pero que no cuaja para nada. De aquellas que me gustaría que fueran mejores.

______________
*La obra de De Selby nos es explicada con pelos y señales básicamente a través de una serie de larguísimas y tediosas notas a pie de página. Entiendo que pretende ser una parodia inteligente, pero es tan largo que no tiene puñetera gracia y acaba siendo un galimatías insufrible. No me avergüenza decir que me salté muchas. Y es que no se contenta en describirnos exhaustivamente (y agotadoramente) las teorías absurdas de De Selby, sino que encima tenemos que aguantar también la relación de las disputas que hay entre los diferentes críticos de De Selby y la supuesta auténtica identidad de estos. Un muermo.(less)

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May 21, 2008 Lori rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, lost-lit

Before I begin, let me warn you.
***DO NOT READ THE INTRODUCTION UNTIL AFTER YOU HAVE READ THE NOVEL** I made the mistake of reading the intro first, and that intro contains a spoiler. It gave away the entire premise of the novel. So I feel like I was gyped a bit here.

That being said, even tho I read the novel knowing the outcome, it didnt ruin the story for me at all.

TTP is hung up on de Selby (who is this dude?) some of his theories. Here are a few that really interested me: He felt that roa...more

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Nov 24, 2008 Powells.com rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the funniest books I have ever read, but also one of the most profoundly unsettling. This is a story told by a robber/murderer who ends up at a police station and discusses such vital issues as the location of eternity, the earth's sausage shape, houses full of strawberry jam, and bicycles (of the utmost importance). The narrator's utter confusion becomes our own, leading to some of the most hilarious dialogue ever put to paper — though by the end of the book you might just be laughing to...more

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Aug 10, 2009 Cait rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lost-lit, 1001, read-in-2009, favorites, owned, bloom-canon, covers-i-love

According to the "Atomic Theory", I am 80% couch.

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Mar 04, 2013 Eric rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I seem to be on a circularity reading kick. De Selby is still hooked into my brain.

"Then a certain year came about the Christmas-time and when the year was gone my father and mother were gone also. Mick the sheepdog was very tired and sad after my father went and would not do his work with the sheep at all; he too went the next year. I was young and foolish at the time and did not know properly why these people had all left me, where they had gone and why they did not give explanations beforeha...more I seem to be on a circularity reading kick. De Selby is still hooked into my brain.

"Then a certain year came about the Christmas-time and when the year was gone my father and mother were gone also. Mick the sheepdog was very tired and sad after my father went and would not do his work with the sheep at all; he too went the next year. I was young and foolish at the time and did not know properly why these people had all left me, where they had gone and why they did not give explanations beforehand. My mother was the first to go and I can remember a fat man with a red face and a black suit telling my father that there was no doubt where she was, that he could be as sure of that as he could of anything else in this vale of tears. But he did not mention where and as I thought the whole thing was very private and that she might be back on Wednesday, I did not ask him where. Later, when my father went, I thought he had gone to fetch her with an outside car but when neither of them came back on the next Wednesday, I felt sorry and disappointed."

"De Selby has some interesting things to say on the subject of houses. A row of houses he regards as a row of necessary evils. The softening and degeneration of the human race he attributes to its progressive predilection for interiors and waning interest in the art of going out and staying there. This in turn he sees as the result of the rise of such pursuits as reading, chess-playing, drinking, marriage and the like, few of which can be satisfactorily conducted in the open."

"Elsewhere de Selby makes the point that a good road will have character and a certain air of destiny, an indefinable intimation that it is going somewhere, be it east or west, and not coming back from there. If you go with such a road, he thinks, it will give you pleasant travelling [sic], fine sights at every corner and a gentle ease of peregrination that will persuade you that you are walking forever on falling ground. But if you go east on a road that is on its way west, you will marvel at the unfailing bleakness of every prospect and the great number of sore-footed inclines that confront you to make you tired.

"'Is it life?' he answered. 'I would rather be without it, he said, 'for there is a queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon.'"

"We were in an entirely other field by this time in the company of white-coloured brown-coloured cows. They watched us quietly as we made a path between them and changed their attitudes slowly as if to show us all of the maps on their fat sides. They gave us to understand that they knew us personally and thought a lot of our families and I lifted my hat to the last of them as I passed her as a sign of my appreciation."

"I looked carefully around me. Brown bogs and black bogs were arranged neatly on each side of the road with rectangular boxes carved out of them here and there, each with a filling of yellow-brown brown-yellow water. Far away near the sky tiny people were stooped at their turfwork, cutting out precisely-shaped sods with their patent spades and building them into a tall memorial twice the height of a horse and cart. Sounds came from them to the Sergeant and myself, delivered to our ears without charge by the west wind, sounds of laughing and whistling and bits of verses from the old bog-songs. Nearer, a house stood attended by three trees and surrounded by the happiness of a coterie of fowls, all of them picking and rooting and disputing loudly in the unrelenting manufacture of their eggs. The house was quiet in itself and silent but a canopy of lazy smoke had been erected over the chimney to indicate that people were within engaged on tasks. Ahead of us went the road, running swiftly across the flat land and pausing slightly to climb slowly up a hill that was waiting for it in a place where there was tall grass, grey boulders and rank stunted trees. The whole overhead was occupied by the sky, serene, impenetrable, ineffable and incomparable, with a fine island of clouds anchored in the calm two yards to the right of Mr Jarvis's outhouse."

"I opened the bed fastidiously, lay into the middle of it, closed it up again carefully and let out a sigh of happiness and rest. I felt as if all my weariness and perplexities of the day had descended on me pleasurably like a great heavy quilt which would keep me warm and sleepy. My knees opened up like rosebuds in rich sunlight, pushing my shins two inches further to the bottom of the bed. Every joint became loose and foolish and devoid of true utility. Every inch of my person gained weight with every second until the total burden on the bed was approximately five hundred thousand tons. This was evenly distributed on the four wooden legs of the bed, which had by now become an integral part of the universe. My eyelids, each weighing no less than four tons, slewed ponderously across my eyeballs. My narrow shins, itchier and more remote in their agony of relaxation, moved further away from me till my happy toes pressed closely on the bars. My position was completely horizontal, ponderous, absolute and incontrovertible."(less)

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Sep 06, 2010 K.D. Oliveros rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books; 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2010)

Shelves: 1001-core, 501, fantasy

An extended adult version of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Surreal yet endearing characters. Sharp witty dialogues. Entirely different worlds. The only difference between the two novels is that the world here (rural Ireland) is dark and at times creepy unlike the bright and colorful world of Alice.

Do you remember the structure of an atom?
An atom is composed of a nucleus with the positively charged protons and the electronically neutral neutrons. Around the nucleus are the neg...more An extended adult version of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Surreal yet endearing characters. Sharp witty dialogues. Entirely different worlds. The only difference between the two novels is that the world here (rural Ireland) is dark and at times creepy unlike the bright and colorful world of Alice.

Do you remember the structure of an atom?
An atom is composed of a nucleus with the positively charged protons and the electronically neutral neutrons. Around the nucleus are the negatively charged dancing electrons. In the book, it defines the Atomic Theory as the exchanges of these electrons between a person and a thing that he or she uses regularly. An example given is a man and his bike. Time will come, due to the continuous use of the bike, the man becomes partly bike, partly human. Likewise, the bike will become partly human.

There is a story in the book. A bicycle riding man committed murder. Both he and his bike had to go on trial. He was convicted. Because the bike was found to be more human, the court ordered the bike to be hanged. The man was freed.

There are many other funny scenes in this book. I was laughing out loud yesterday while reading in the sala. It was good that there was nobody around. Otherwise, the maids might think that there was something wrong with me. My wife and daughter are used to hear me laughing all by myself. Both maids are new (1 and 3 months of service). Maids do not stay long with us. They hate my books (dusting, rearranging, saving them from rainwater leaking from the roof when it rains hard and looking for a book from stacks and shelves of 1,400+ books when there is a borrower). They say that they are not trained as librarians.

As a child, if you loved, Alice in Wonderland, give this book a try. You might like this. Just don't ask my maids to look for this after 1-3 months. Chances are, I have a new set of maids and it will be harder to look for this book. I actually believe that having no training as librarian is the issue. I think it is more of the feeling that they are becoming partly book, partly human.

Or is it me and my books or me and my computer?

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Apr 05, 2008 Saxon rated it 5 of 5 stars

People turn into bikes, policeman decide how old people live by placing invisible cloths over them when they are born, underground shelters where times doesn't stop and the seemingly chaotic but highly systematic writings of an eccentric savant named de Selby to help guide us through all our thoughts and experiences.
The Third Policeman is a surreal, satirical and often highly comedic book in which the actual story matters very little in the context of the whatever the hell O'Brien is trying to c...more

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Jun 26, 2007 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Irish/Absurdist lit fiends

In the opening pages of the novel, the narrator, a one-legged man who has lost both his parents, falls in with a scoundrel called John Divney, who concocts a plot to rob Old Man Mathers’ cash box. The narrator agrees to this conspiracy, and the two men lay in wait for the unsuspecting fellow. When Mathers comes along the road, Divney hits him with an iron bicycle pump and urges the narrator to finish him off with a spade. The narrator complies, and when he does so he feels “the fabric of the sku...more In the opening pages of the novel, the narrator, a one-legged man who has lost both his parents, falls in with a scoundrel called John Divney, who concocts a plot to rob Old Man Mathers’ cash box. The narrator agrees to this conspiracy, and the two men lay in wait for the unsuspecting fellow. When Mathers comes along the road, Divney hits him with an iron bicycle pump and urges the narrator to finish him off with a spade. The narrator complies, and when he does so he feels “the fabric of the skull crumple up crisply like an empty eggshell.” What he does not feel is sorrow, sympathy or regret. Then things get weird.

Divney disappears with the money, leaving the narrator to bury the body. Eventually, Divney returns and reveals that he’s stashed the black box under a loose floorboard in Mathers’ house. The narrator stumps off to retrieve it and finds Mathers inside the house. Convinced he’s seeing a ghost, he proceeds to converse with him about all manner of things. What neither he nor the reader realize is that Mathers is not the only spook in house.

The murderer’s quest for the black box takes him to the last place he’d want to find himself: a policeman’s barracks. Here Sergeant Pluck and Policemen MacCruiskeen and Fox — the third policeman — bring law and order to a district inhabited by people whose atoms, after years of riding over rocky roads, are mixed up with their bicycles, leaving them part man, part machine. Time speeds up and stands still. The characters descend into labyrinthine networks of nonsensical rooms that are reminiscent of the dull deviousness of choose-your-own-adventure novel and “off the map” experiences inside of video games. This, we are told, is “Eternity,” and it feels like it.

O’Brien’s narrator is a disciple of the fictional philosopher De Selby, a man with an explanation for everything. De Selby’s theories are furnished in the footnotes, which become increasingly bloated and constitute a critical commentary that runs parallel to the story. In addition to De Selby, we are given glimpses of his colleagues and critics abroad: Basset, Du Grabandier, Hatchjaw, Kraus and Le Clerque, some of whom may be the same people in disguise. Given O’Brien’s penchant for pseudonyms, this should hardly come as a surprise. It is a catalog of names that would not be out of place in an Edward Gorey story.

Then there are the critics’ critics, exponentially generating blather. Everyone has had the feeling of lostness that comes with pointing two mirrors at one another and watching the worlds inside of worlds multiply into infinity; O’Brien has created its fictive equivalent and populated it with all manner of “queer ghastly things”. Doppelgängers lurch about, and a stifling aura bears down on everyone and everything until you can almost feel the déjà vu coming. It is a tale of ordinary fantasy; there aren’t any monsters in the moat, but the beast in the jungle is a bloke with a bicycle pump who brains you the moment your back is turned.

The Third Policeman is like a bad dream that refuses to end. The plot seldom excites, yet the metaphysical drama lends the proceedings an aura of dread that never quite goes away. Its tone is intensely impersonal; still, the proceedings crackle with humor. Howard Moss in The New Yorker captures what are, perhaps, The Third Policeman’s rarest qualities: “For no reason one can definitely point to, it is as strangely affecting as it is funny.”

(Excerpted from review published in the LA Weekly in May 2005:
[http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/wls...])

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Oct 23, 2007 Jenna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: irish-literature

Flann O’Brien asks something exceedingly personal of his readers when they encounter his work The Third Policeman, and many may not be wholly up to the challenge. For this book, a wild romp through some of the most interesting and most terrifying aspects of the human mind, O’Brien asks for his readers to throw down what they know as common sense, and to allow what might otherwise be considered the irrational to become at least plausible as he liberally breaks conventions of modernist literature....more

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Jan 02, 2008 Xysea rated it 4 of 5 stars

Okay, well I enjoyed this book immensely.

Some of it was just flat out bizarre, but other parts of it were brilliant! I went to Wikipedia to read up on its history, and was amazed to find that it was written almost 20 years before it was published and shelved due to lack of interest. Thank goodness things change, people learn to embrace the unusual and that someone, somewhere decided it was a good idea to publish this novella.

As mentioned by some of you, while I was reading, the bicycle stuff is...more

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Feb 09, 2008 James M. Madsen, M.D. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: tolkien, speculative-fiction, metaphysics, fiction

What a strange book! I picked this up partly because of its connections both to J.W. Dunne's equally odd book An Experiment in Time (which influenced not only Flann O'Brien but also J.R.R. Tolkien and others) and partly because of its reputed connections with the plot of the TV series Lost. Seeking an explanation of Lost in The Third Policeman is problematic partly because the producers of the series, while recommending the book as a source of potential answers to questions raised by the series,...more

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Jun 11, 2008 Shek rated it 2 of 5 stars

I am not ashamed to say that I came to this book because it made a cameo on Lost.

Okay, couldn't keep a straight face. I am, sort of.

This book has two gears: tedium and suspense. Tedium of the circumlocutory-conversations-with-crazy-people variety (already read Swift and C.S. Lewis, thanks) and suspense of the crazy-people-about-to-kill-you-for-no-reason variety. I would have liked it better if it had laid off the slavishly boring footnotes referencing a made-up philosopher. I get it. It's parody...more

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Aug 05, 2007 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: you-ll-snort-milk-thru-your-nose

Really this book deserves 4.5 stars.

From Wikipedia:

Flann O'Brien is rightly considered a major figure in twentieth century Irish literature. The British writer Anthony Burgess was moved to say of him: "If we don't cherish the work of Flann O'Brien we are stupid fools who don't deserve to have great men. Flann O'Brien is a very great man." Burgess included At Swim-Two-Birds on his list of 99 Great Novels.

The full Wikipedia entry is here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flann_O'...

"The Third Policeman"...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Nigel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Silly, surreal and sinister, it's long since past time that I got around to reading it. I was always a big fan of At Swim Two Birds and The Best Of Myles, so it's a mystery why it took me this long. Anyway, a work of genius, published after its' author's death and every bit as influential on modern literature and culture as, say, contemporaries and admirers Joyce and Beckett. The story of a murderer who finds himself confronted with his victim, apparently alive, and who visits a police station a...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Hilary G rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ex Bookworm group review:

I came to this book with no preconceptions at all, except that it was Irish. That conjured up thoughts of Joyce and Donleavy and J M Synge, which weren't far wrong as I would say this book was reminiscent of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the Ginger Man and The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, and the Playboy of the Western World. Similar quirkiness and quaintness. Irishness?

What I was most reminded of most strongly, though, was English, not Irish, though the w...more Ex Bookworm group review:

I came to this book with no preconceptions at all, except that it was Irish. That conjured up thoughts of Joyce and Donleavy and J M Synge, which weren't far wrong as I would say this book was reminiscent of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the Ginger Man and The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, and the Playboy of the Western World. Similar quirkiness and quaintness. Irishness?

What I was most reminded of most strongly, though, was English, not Irish, though the writer I have in mind was probably descended from Irish and his home town must have nearly as many Irishmen in it as does Dublin. It reminded me of John Lennon In His Own Write/ Spaniard in the Works. In His Own Write was published in 1964, this book was not published until 1967, though it had been written twenty years before. When the hero of our story (I'm not sure whether he had a name and he was certainly no hero) first told the policeman that he did not know his own name, the policeman said something like "so you have no idea of your originality?" which struck me as exactly the kind of play on words Lennon liked. I wonder whether Lennon was aware of O'Brien who had published his first novel in 1939 and who started writing novels again in the 1960s.

I read in the preface to the book that The Third Policeman had been rejected by publishers, despite the success of his first novel, and that he was so disappointed that he did not write an other novel for 20 years. I also read in the Publishers Note at the end of the book that O'Brien thought the only good thing about the book is the plot. Well, I thought the plot was very weak because it was glaringly obvious that the main protagonist was dead, things supposedly vital to the plot (like the black box) were forgotten by everyone, including him, then suddenly re-introduced, some events and characters seemed superfluous (like the thief in the ditch) and the whole thing seemed a bit meandering and cobbled together. I don't think I could really blame the publishers because it is hard to see what sort of an audience the book is aimed at and it certainly isn't as good as it could have been.

But I couldn't help liking it. It was inventive and funny and charming.

I often loved the language, especially where it turned inanimate objects into characters in the book, such as roads that were going somewhere, but didn't come back. Some of the ideas were positively psychedelic, such as people having a "colour" which is the colour of the wind prevailing at his birth. I thought Mathers's story about the annual gowns delivered by the police that intensify the colour and make it possible to estimate your span of life was positively psychedelic and very in tune with the time the book was published, yet it had been written more than twenty years before.

There was a lot of extraneous twaddle in the police station, but the bicycle business was truly comic. The idea that people and bicycles interchange is very funny and I think there is many a situation comic that would be envious of the first conversation in the police station or the "detecting" for a bicycle that had disappeared.

But most of all, I adored De Selby, the mad scientist. His journey from Bath to Folkestone was absolutely priceless. And although I found the footnotes somewhat irritating, they contained some real gems, such as De Selby's 'Codex', "a collection of some two thousand sheets of foolscap closely hand-written on both sides. The signal distinction of the manuscript is that not one word of the writing is legible." I notice from the back of the book that O'Brien wrote about De Selby again in his third book "The Dalkey Archive". According to the blurb, it features De Selby and his two drinking companions in aqualungs conversing with St Augustine in an underwater cave off Dalkey seafront". I might give that a go sometime to see whether O'Brien got his act together and improved on this one, for I think The Third Policeman could have been a great book, but is actually more like a series of experiments to see what does and doesn't work. I must say, though, that I found quite a lot of entertainment and amusement along the way, but the whole was somehow unsatisfying.

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Jun 02, 2012 Rich rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the strangest novels I have ever read. It was written in about 1940, but not published until 1967, a year or two after the author`s death. O`Brien is a pseudonym for the Irish writer Brian O`Nolan, who was also a celebrated newspaper columnist using the name Myles na gCopaleen, the latter name apparently Gaelic. O`Brien`s other masterpiece is At Swim-Two-Birds, which was published in 1939. His "Myles" columns is also well-regarded, and such novels as The Poor Mouth and The Hard Li...more This is one of the strangest novels I have ever read. It was written in about 1940, but not published until 1967, a year or two after the author`s death. O`Brien is a pseudonym for the Irish writer Brian O`Nolan, who was also a celebrated newspaper columnist using the name Myles na gCopaleen, the latter name apparently Gaelic. O`Brien`s other masterpiece is At Swim-Two-Birds, which was published in 1939. His "Myles" columns is also well-regarded, and such novels as The Poor Mouth and The Hard Life are well worth reading.

The Third Policeman is quite funny, quite absurd, and, at bottom, very disturbing. The narrator is a very unpleasant man, who announces in the first sentence "Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade;" not only is he a murderer, but a very lazy man who ruins his family farm, and spends his life researching the works of a madman named De Selby, who believes that, among other things, darkness is an hallucination, the result of accretions of black air. The narrator relates his early life briefly, leading up to his association with another unsavory character, John Divney, who parasitically moves in with the narrator and helps squander his inheritance. Divney and the narrator plot to kill their neighbor, Phillip Mathers, to steal his money. After the murder they decide to leave the money for a while until the coast clears: however they distrust each other so much that they never leave each others company. Finally they go to Mathers`s house to fetch the strongbox with his money: then Divney sends the narrator ahead to the house alone, while he stands lookout, and things get very strange!

The narrator meets Phillip Mathers, acquires a sort of soul which he calls "Joe", and sets out looking for three mysterious policemen. The first two are easily found, and the narrator discusses bicycles, boxes, and other unusual subjects with these policemen. Finally they decide to hang him (for bicycle theft, I think), but he is rescued by the league of one-legged men (the narrator himself has but one leg). He returns to Mathers` house where he encounters the third policemen, and eventually is reunited with John Divney.

The above summary, obviously, does not represent the action or interest of the book at all. The book is full of off-the-wall philosophical speculations, some based on the mad works of De Selby, others original to the policeman (the latter including a theory about bicycles and their riders which has to be read to be appreciated, also a mysterious trip to an underground cavern where anything you can imagine can be created). There are a lot of footnotes discussing De Selby and the controversy surrounding his work: these make the book somewhat reminiscent of Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (also reminiscent in being the first-person narrative of an insane murderer).

Wholly original, blackly funny, brilliantly written. A wonderful book. (less)

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Oct 02, 2011 Elvis Brown rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-favs

I couldn't believe it when I read the spoiler right in the front of the newer edition. How dumb is that? Luckily I had read this book before, in fact several times.

I'd rate this as one of the best 12 books in my life and would recommend for anyone to read it especially if you like cycling or feel an affinity to the Irish imagination.

A truly staggering story that will take your breath away and leave you light headed, smiling and never quite willing to take everyday events at face value ever again...more

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Jun 23, 2011 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars

‘Tis an odd little book, this one, with elements of the supernatural mixed with wry observations and assorted bits of absurdity. It was written by Irishman Brian O’Nolan under the pen name Flann O’Brien back in 1940, but wasn’t published until after his death in 1967. Since I’ve never read anything like it, I don’t quite know how to compare it. If pressed, though, I’d say it’s like James Joyce for the lilt, Camus for the angst, and Lewis Carroll for the false logic. The most enjoyable parts for...more

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Apr 23, 2011 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is by far the most amazing and funny book ever created by the human mind. (I am including Heller's "Catch-22" and DeLillo's "White Noise" in that list.)

The hook in the first Chapter is the best `hook' in any book, forget "The Da Vinci Code".

The first-person narration takes the reader on a journey through the universe that will make you wonder in awe at the mystery and beauty of it, and also will make you much smarter if you read it.

Issues explored in this heartbreaking work of staggering g...more

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Jan 08, 2011 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Pronoun, Cog, Surnoun

“It was not one of the colours a man carries inside his head…”

“It is true that de Selby is rather vague as to how precisely this new direction is to be found.”

Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman is not a book. It must be read from inside its inside pages. When you are inside its inside pages you will see it is not a book but the new direction and the new color proposed on the outside of its inside pages as if the pages, which are doorways to inside and outside, could wind-wa...more Pronoun, Cog, Surnoun

“It was not one of the colours a man carries inside his head…”

“It is true that de Selby is rather vague as to how precisely this new direction is to be found.”

Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman is not a book. It must be read from inside its inside pages. When you are inside its inside pages you will see it is not a book but the new direction and the new color proposed on the outside of its inside pages as if the pages, which are doorways to inside and outside, could wind-watch both new direction and new color simultaneously outside and inside themselves, where you are near, reading, inside the inside pages, finding more light (1) (see footnote), which will better enable you to notice the “subject of an idea,” such as, What is Death & how do you Know you are not Dreaming? When you are Compromised do you keep believing in a Substance that will make You Invisible? In addition it seems clear that The Third Policeman can only be written from the inside. Not from inside the inside pages where you are reading but from inside the new direction and the new color. On a hazy day I might call these side-swept and spark.

1
Not excepting even Flann O’Brien, who once remarked to Brian O’Nolan through direct address in the Bibliographie de Atoms that Myles na Gopaleen lived without certain records, without even masquerades or warnings, that he had extensive interests in the bottled languages of the porcelain atmosphere, preferring eggshells to temples, havens to engines. Myles na Gopaleen, in turn, has written extensively to Flann O’Brien (in his extraordinary Gesture of Defiance) about the watch-piece of Brian O’Nolan, said to contain within the upside-down spaces of each tic not only the lost time visitors of the present era, but, also, more significantly, and perhaps more awkwardly, the silent masterpieces of the dream-guards themselves, who, without any special requirements, social or historical or otherwise, be it posterity or immortality or a hidden doorway, often aim to keep one foot planted in stark daylight while the watch-piece wearer sleeps. It is further recorded in the stained-glass hinges of the Dialectical Watch-Piece, p. 48-51, that in Brian O’Nolan’s last dream he feverishly shouts out to Myles na Gopaleen that Flann O’Brien has also lived without certain records, that Flann O'Brien must have recognized and known such a thing with his outright overabundance of records, which are like recordings, Brian O’Nolan writes, but only harder in the context of the porcelain atmosphere—where bottled languages release from wispy cracks in hesitant forms. Living without certain records doesn’t mean never being recorded. Rather, telling time by dream records anew.

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Sep 15, 2010 Toddy rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Third Policeman can perhaps be best described as a ‘witty nightmare’. We follow the story of a young murderer, who years after the event goes in search of his ill-gotten gains in a baffling dream version of Ireland.

O’Brien displays use of the Wildean trait in which nonsense is presented to the reader in profound-esque wrappings. Leaving the reader wondering if he is being made fun of. Searching for the boundary where you feel you must cry out in protest at the work’s pure absurdness.

Often en...more

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Jun 29, 2010 Bruce rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is a clever story about a murderer (with a wooden leg) who seems himself to have been murdered, this individual being the narrator of the story. He has already encountered the man whom he allegedly murdered, not seeming yet to realize that he himself is now dead. As he goes about his activities in this dreamlike existence, he encounters apparent paradoxes that O’Brien plays with creatively - atomic theory, fractals, Zeno’s paradoxes of time and distance. At the same time, illogic often pred...more This is a clever story about a murderer (with a wooden leg) who seems himself to have been murdered, this individual being the narrator of the story. He has already encountered the man whom he allegedly murdered, not seeming yet to realize that he himself is now dead. As he goes about his activities in this dreamlike existence, he encounters apparent paradoxes that O’Brien plays with creatively - atomic theory, fractals, Zeno’s paradoxes of time and distance. At the same time, illogic often predominates - policemen obsessing about stolen bicycles, for example (bicycles that they themselves steal and re-find, convinced that the riders are themselves turning into bicycles). The narrator is taken into custody by two burly policemen, one of whom is perpetually carving smaller and smaller (now infinitesimal) chests nesting inside each other and both of whom are continually taking measurements, apparently related to the route to eternity (which all three visit on one occasion, eternity being a subterranean realm of numberless identical rooms the walls of which are on-demand vending machines). A third policeman, Fox, is occasionally alluded to but has never been seen, even by the first two policemen. The narrator is then sentenced to be hanged, his execution delayed day by day because the gallows has not been finished. Discovering that the gallows builder has a wooden leg, he shares that he has one, too, at which knowledge the builder goes off to enlist other wooden-legged men to rescue the narrator. The tale goes on and on, Fox eventually appearing, and the story culminating in a way unexpected, outrageously inventive, amusing, and perfectly satisfying.

A quotation I enjoy: “The beauty of reading a page of de Selby is that it leads one inescapably to the happy conviction that one is not, of all nincompoops, the greatest.” De Selby is mentioned and discussed in long footnotes having little apparent relationship to the primary story (except for the narrator’s interest in his writings); he was the author of multiple works of speculative philosophy and natural history, almost all of which were ludicrous. The footnotes are usually filled with disagreements among his five or six critics and commentators.

What a tour-de-force and feast for the imagination!
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Apr 20, 2010 rmn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This a bizarre book in which the author creates an absurdly farcical pseudo real fantasy world where concepts in physics such as atomic theory and even the Heisenberg uncertainty principle are taken to their ridiculous extremes. The humor is very dry and for most of the book you're not really sure what is happening as little of the story is steeped in reality, though that is perhaps the point. People merge with bicycles, eternity is found in an underground building, and a posse of wooden legged...more

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About Flann O'Brien

Pseudonym of Brian Ó Nualláin, also known as Brian O'Nolan.

His English novels appeared under the name of Flann O’Brien, while his great Irish novel and his newspaper column (which appeared from 1940 to 1966) were signed Myles na gCopaleen or Myles na Gopaleen – the second being a phonetic rendering of the first. One of twelve brothers and sisters, he was born in 1911 in Strabane, County Tyrone, in...more

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The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story About the Hard Life

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Quotes from The Third Policeman

“You mean that because I have no name I cannot die and that you cannot be held answerable for death even if you kill me?"

"That is about the size of it," said the Sergeant.

I felt so sad and so entirely disappointed that tears came into my eyes and a lump of incommunicable poignancy swelled tragically in my throat. I began to feel intensely every fragment of my equal humanity. The life that was bubbling at the end of my fingers was real and nearly painful in intensity and so was the beauty of my warm face and the loose humanity of my limbs and the racy health of my red rich blood. To leave it all without good reason and to smash the little empire into small fragments was a thing too pitiful even to refuse to think about.” — 42 people liked it

“Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.” — 40 people liked it

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