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If you try to read it too closely, the structure of this book will drive you crazy. Ask me how I know. On the first level, it seems to emanate from the addled mind of a navel-gazing Irish university student stumbling around thinking about writing a book or a school paper. As I said, you can go nuts trying to follow it. Yet At Swim-Two-Birds is a modernist masterpiece, the best-known fictional work of Irish newspaper writer Flann O'Brien. Published in 1939, the book's great charm is O'Brien's constant reinvention of the English language, fueled and altered by an Irish sensibility and language; the sentences come out in a torrent of musical, drunken ramblings.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
At Swim-Two-Birdsis both a comedy and a fantasy of such staggering originality that itbaffles description and very nearly beggars our sense of delight.
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First Sentence
Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the greats,
By A Customer
This review is from: At Swim-Two-Birds (John F. Byrne Irish Literature Series) (Paperback)
Flann's book is about as close to a perfect novel as you're likely to find. It is a masterpiece of style and composition. It has great characters vividly rendered. And it "breaks the ice" within us, as Kafka insisted all great art do. It's also very, very funny.
5.0 out of 5 stars
O'BRIEN IS YOUR ONLY MAN,
By "doerksen" (chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: At Swim-Two-Birds (John F. Byrne Irish Literature Series) (Paperback)
This book delivers so much pleasure that I find it impossible to remain physically still while reading it. It makes me wriggle.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quare Bit of Bother,
By
This review is from: At Swim-Two-Birds (John F. Byrne Irish Literature Series) (Paperback)
Trying to describe this one long joke of a novel is a bit like retelling someone else's disjointed dream with Chinese sign language. Aach, why bother. Suffice to say, the wee man of many monikers made his reputation with this book, getting lumped in with those other tricksters of narrative form, some of them his countrymen in self-imposed exile. With multiple openings, this madcap book discards quare old conventions like consistent point of view and plot. A Dublin student goes mouldy in his bedroom while characters rebel against their slumbering creator and the barmy Sweeney hops from tree to tree. Horseman, if you're looking for linear progression, pass by. All clever parody of Irish literature and mythology aside, the novel has a reassuring warmth. The student, branded a dozey ne'er-do-well by his blockhead uncle, has a small but delightful triumph near the end that makes his part in O'Brien's tangled web particularly satisfying. A novel to be read when whimsical, when life has lost its vim and bubble.
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