At Swim-two-birds
by Flann O'Brien
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Read in July, 2006
this is from my blog, it starts out with me mentioning a ron silliman book but quickly dives into At Swim, Two Birds
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Amidst The Age of Huts compleat-ing itself, Silliman posits this sentiment:
"What happened to fiction was a shift in public sensibility. The general reader no longer is apt to identify with a character in a story, but with its author. Thus the true narrative element is the development of the form."
This is something particularly interesting (worst wo...more
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Amidst The Age of Huts compleat-ing itself, Silliman posits this sentiment:
"What happened to fiction was a shift in public sensibility. The general reader no longer is apt to identify with a character in a story, but with its author. Thus the true narrative element is the development of the form."
This is something particularly interesting (worst wo...more
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Read in April, 2008
recommends it for:
every critter, living or dead
Whew! Double-Whew! Zillion-Whew! I had the vague notion that I'd read everything by Flann O'Brien & then I realized that I hadn't read this one. &, OH SHIT!, it's the most amazing one yet. Rilly. Definitely in my top of my top 10 all-time favorite novels. Utterly hilarious, utterly brilliant, utterly inspired, utterly tangential in the sneakiest most mischievous way. Even the introduction by William H. Gass is fantastic.
The tale? An author (unnamed) who spends much of his ...more
The tale? An author (unnamed) who spends much of his ...more
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Read in November, 2006
recommends it for:
Literature Snobs
One of my favorites, At Swim-Two-Birds is a huge achievement in literature and has fallen out of recognition, ironically, because of its confusing story telling but more importantly because it is the other Irish classic released the same year as Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, which dwarfed At Swim-Two-Birds credit for years.
Far more readable than Finnegan's Wake, At Swim-Two-Birds follows a young Dublin college student who only leaves his room to drink with his friends, and who spends the rest o...more
Far more readable than Finnegan's Wake, At Swim-Two-Birds follows a young Dublin college student who only leaves his room to drink with his friends, and who spends the rest o...more
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
Those who like this sort of thing
Ok, it's official: I got to page 127, and I GIVE UP.
There were parts at the beginning of this book which I quite enjoyed. Unfortunately, after slogging through the last 80 or so pages of random witterings, I can't remember what they were or why I enjoyed them. A few casual impressions that I was left with:
1. "What do you read, my lord?
Words, words, words."
-HAMLET, Act II, scene 2
2. I am reasonably certain that, had I read this book in high school, I would ha...more
There were parts at the beginning of this book which I quite enjoyed. Unfortunately, after slogging through the last 80 or so pages of random witterings, I can't remember what they were or why I enjoyed them. A few casual impressions that I was left with:
1. "What do you read, my lord?
Words, words, words."
-HAMLET, Act II, scene 2
2. I am reasonably certain that, had I read this book in high school, I would ha...more
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Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
overlooked Irish Lit. lovers
This is a very fun book. Do you know that MC Escher picture "Drawing Hands"? Stop - Escher time. Anyway, this book makes me think of that picture. It's written by a guy who tells the story of a student writing a story about a tavern owner writing a story about all kinds of people. This last writer, the tavern owner, falls in love with one of his female characters and they literarily beget another writer. It's a good read, though I remember liking it a lot more when I read it in college...more
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Read in April, 2008
a book about a student who is writing a book about an author who writes a book whose characters rebel against their author and hatch a plot to kill him. one of these is himself an author and is enlisted by the other characters to write a book in which he will liberate them by killing the author who created them (preferably with razor).
it sounds like a horrible, confusing, pretentious, self-referential plot, but it's not (and keep in mind that it was written in 1939, long before italo calvin...more
it sounds like a horrible, confusing, pretentious, self-referential plot, but it's not (and keep in mind that it was written in 1939, long before italo calvin...more
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Read in September, 2008
I've spent more than three weeks reading this short novel. It's all over the place!
Whenever I could summon the mental acuity to focus on it, I enjoyed it immensely. It's written from the first-person perspective of a lazy Trinity arts-student who is writing a novel about a man named Trellis, who is writing a novel about other characters, Furriskey, Shanahan and Lamont, a Pooka, the Good Fairy. These characters are aware of Trellis's control over them and begin to conspire against him.
I'...more
Whenever I could summon the mental acuity to focus on it, I enjoyed it immensely. It's written from the first-person perspective of a lazy Trinity arts-student who is writing a novel about a man named Trellis, who is writing a novel about other characters, Furriskey, Shanahan and Lamont, a Pooka, the Good Fairy. These characters are aware of Trellis's control over them and begin to conspire against him.
I'...more
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Read in January, 2008
A confusing novel about a novelist writing a novel about a novelist writing a novel where the characters eventually rebel against the author and attempt to write their own lives.
Very, very, hard to follow at first, but for some reason, half way through it all seemed to click for me and I enjoyed this book a whole lot afterwards.
I know other people have put this book down, and I don't blame them. I almost did too, but was very glad I didn't.
Like 'The Third Policeman', it's hard to say...more
Very, very, hard to follow at first, but for some reason, half way through it all seemed to click for me and I enjoyed this book a whole lot afterwards.
I know other people have put this book down, and I don't blame them. I almost did too, but was very glad I didn't.
Like 'The Third Policeman', it's hard to say...more
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This is my favorite book not by Faulkner. Flann O’Brien satirized the creative process in At-Swim Two Birds creating a fictional world that depicts a student writer in a first person autobiographical frame story who creates multiple fictional worlds which merge allowing the characters to in turn revolt against a third author (created by the student-writer) who uses these characters violently and try and convict him for his crimes against them. The multiplicity of authors and implied authors ...more
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recommends it for:
fans of Joyce, that other worshipped man
Having been told that no one writes like the Irish, and, being half myself, I have made it a point only recently to begin exploring those writers that are considered to be important, and in my search this book came up and I found a brand new copy at my library. I gave it two stars instead of one because I was able to finish it in the hopes that something might, I don't know, happen? In the beginning, the language and the style felt compelling, until I realized, much like another "im...more
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Read in July, 2008
Even though I read it (over a long, grueling six weeks), I feel ill-equipped to review this book (but will do so anyway). While reading, I often got the impression, "Wow, this must have been a really funny book at one point in time." The problem was that as a modern reader with little knowledge of Irish mythology, most of the humor was lost on me. O'Brien tended to parody famous Irish people of his time (with whom I'm not familiar) and insert bits of Irish legend (with a reportedly...more
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Read in January, 2008
I was really unsure what to rate this book. It was innovative with a form that I love in contemporary fiction and it was written in 1911 or something like that. There are all of these different elements in the story: characters in a novel trying to drug the author that created or is using them, combined stylistic elements telling the story (poems and songs imbedded in the narrative and multipe different narratives going on at once), etc. But the story itself, well the story within the story,...more
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Read in September, 2007
I knew that I would love this book. I've read enough of O'Brien to know that he is one of my favorite writers. At Swim-Two-Birds is a satyric masterpiece. A story in which a young man in college is writing a story about a fat man who won't leave his bed, who is writing a story about a depraved man and his friends, who begin to hate the author and start to write his story in retaliation. The story is punctuated with appearances by a pooka, a good fairy, Finn McCool, and the mad Irish king Sweeny,...more
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Okay, I was supposed to read this mother in grad school, but I was too busy: drinking or playing basketball or eating lunch with Chad or working out or trying to sleep with one of my classmates/students/neighbors or the vaguely French-looking chick at Al's that played rad songs on the jukebox. In any case I didn't read much of it then because, well, it is a difficult book for all-time fuckups to read. Here's the deal, I read it today. All of it. In one day. Why? Because it is fucking hilarious a...more
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Read in May, 2008
This is a pretty short book and parts of it are absolutely hilarious and brilliant, but it was a struggle and ended up taking me over three weeks to finish. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from it. It's another one of those reads where I feel like I'm glad I pushed through to the end, but then I question why. Actually, the last few lines of the book, the ending, were pretty phenomenal, but overall, for me, this book wavered anywhere between a 2 to a 4 star rating throughout... hen...more
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Read in March, 2008
When I started to read this book, I thought it was the most brilliant thing I had ever read. The first dozen pages or so, its style, its narrator, the tone were all so compelling and so excellently executed that I thought Donald Barthelme (from whose list I chose to read this book) had led me on to another masterpiece. The charmingness of it dwindles, however, and O'Brien begins to tread and then drown as he restricts his narrator and his narrator's characters more and more. The whole trial of t...more
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O'Brien's The Hard Life was what one might describe as a "rollicking good read"--punchy and pithy and very, very funny.
This, on the other hand, was something of a job. I once read of a mountain-climbing team that, only a few hundred feet from the summit of the world's fifth-highest mountain peak, turned around due to lack of strength. Similarly, I gave up on this book about a hundred pages from the end.
It suffers from a sort of "My First Novel!" syndrome, wher...more
This, on the other hand, was something of a job. I once read of a mountain-climbing team that, only a few hundred feet from the summit of the world's fifth-highest mountain peak, turned around due to lack of strength. Similarly, I gave up on this book about a hundred pages from the end.
It suffers from a sort of "My First Novel!" syndrome, wher...more
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Read in October, 2007
I didn't finish this book--which is very rare for me--because I just didn't like it that much. I got about halfway through, which I felt like a real achievement considering how slow-going it is. I've read some slow books in my day but usually there's a substitute for a practically plotless novel: humor, stylistic beauty, philosophic depth, etc. Although some think this is a hilarious book, I didn't find even a tenth as entertaining as "The Third Policeman." And even though O'Brien is a...more
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Read in July, 2008
After I read it, I know that I read a great book but as I read it, it was very tough going. It must be read twice and it must be read in one or two sittings. I will read it again and try to read it in one or two sittings. The humour is dry and wonderful and the satire is good. He is an author who plays with words, plot and literary convention.
I re-read it and it was worth the effort. It is a delightful confection, O'Brien is playing with us and we love being played with. He pokes fun at...more
I re-read it and it was worth the effort. It is a delightful confection, O'Brien is playing with us and we love being played with. He pokes fun at...more
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I knew this one was special from the plot summary...which I won't try to duplicate here. At first I had some difficulty with the Irish humor and when I was finished I was uncertain whether I'd recommend it. But I've found myself laughing since putting it down at the scenes, especially towards the end. A helpful hint: before you start, read a little background on Finn MacCool and Mad King Sweeney (wikipedia will do to get the gist); also, "timeo danaos et dona ferentes" (no idea abo...more
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