Customer Reviews

The Third Policeman

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I spent most of my time reading this book with my brow furrowed in a sort of "What the...?" expression, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. Those who like to imagine the look of a scene while reading will have a fiendish but delightful time trying to get their heads around some of the descriptions in this story, and the dialogue and premise are first-rate. Still, a difficult one to recommend for any who are not prepared for one of the more bizarre reads they may encounter.

First, a few quibbles. Strictly speaking, this book is not "surrealist," as a few reviewers aver. Nor is it a mystery, nor science fiction, probably. The closest thing to it I have read is Stanislaw Lem, though the feeling is closer to Swift.

O'Brien spins an incredibly imaginative, voluble, funny, inventive yarn. Our nameless protagonist meets policemen, visits eternity, and develops a relationship with a bicycle. His soul, Joe, enjoys proclaiming that he (the protagonist) is "Signor Bari, the eminent one-legged tenor!"

The protagonist is a literally amoral person. In other words, he is not troubled by any dilemmas other than how best to preserve his own hide (and possibly to publish his work on bogus savant de Selby.) His role in this book is not to simulate a real person, in other words. Like Gulliver, he observes O'Brien's world and in reacting to that world, acts as a proxy for the reader. But more on that below.

Having committed a self-serving though impulsive murder, he begins to meet odd people and have odd conversations. He meets a curiously circumlocutory policeman, and after a mind-bending conversation, he begins to talk in similarly loopy style, in a hilarious attempt to fit in: "Those chests... are so like one another that I do not believe they are there at all because that is a simpler thing to believe than the contrary."

O'Brien displays amazing virtuosity with the English language, especially considering it is his second language (his first is Irish.) And yet his characters talk in a (to my untravelled ear) a peculiarly, and hilariously, Irish way: "Only myself has the secret of the thing and the intimate way of it, the confidential knack of circumventing it." But there are also passages of limpid beauty

But what is he making fun of? Self-obsessed scholars and their exegetists, undoubtedly. But there are also themes of punishment and guilt, both felt and adjudicated. After a few hours of consideration, I might hazard that O'Brien is making fun of, and cherishing, greed, selfishness and the desperate desire to avoid justice. When visiting eternity the protagonist discovers he can have literally anything, so he requests and receives bricks of gold, jewels, small but frightful weapons, etc.; he generally displays venality and defensiveness. When it turns out he cannot bring any of it with him, he bursts into tears. When a policeman sympathetically offers him a piece of candy, he cries even harder.

So although the protagonist is amoral, the book is basically a morality play. In fact it turns out that the entire book is a long description of the hapless protagonist's comeuppance. O'Brien's Catholic upbringing shows through, I suppose. Humanity's lot is justly a poor one, yet one cannot blame them for longing for better. Perhaps it is just best to have a sad whiskey.

This is one of the funniest books anybody with a right-minded sense of humour will pick up. For cyclists, it is required reading along with a good cycle repair manual. In other words, until you've read this book you cannot properly understand the bicycle.

This novel is an brillant satire. Unlike other writers, O'Brien does not satirize political or social conditions but reality itself along with philosophy. This novel is strange and often hilarious. Under the humor is, however, is a dark undercurrent. This book will not be like anything you've ever read before. Buy this and Kurt Vonnegutt and R. A. Lafferty.

Wow! I just got done reading Flann O' Brien's "The Third Policeman" and I must say it is one of the best books I have ever read: and for me, that is saying a lot. It has just the right amount of mystery, comedy, and black humor to qualify as Monty Python's grandaddy... but with enough uniqueness to qualify as a classic. A must read.

This is the funniest book I've read in a decade. First of all, it's the sombre yet academical tone of the narrator (the main character has no name for he has forgot his own name) --- who would have expected to find footnotes in a novel? Second, the weird things described in the novel and the way people argued make perfect logical sense although we all know it's all nonsense. Third, the creation of De Selby shows that Flann O'Brien is a story-telling genius, so much so that the first time I read this book I thought that De Selby actually existed!! And only thanks to my university library which boasts a big hoard of books, COPAC, and the British Library, I'm finally convinced that De Selby have never ever lived. Oh how I wish to find a book written by De Selby --- because it'd be great fun to read his books!

BTW, there're even more De Selby in "The Dalkey Archive"!!! And don't read "The Poor Mouth" unless you're ready to read 100-odd pages about the boiled potato diet of an Irish family.

a must-read for anyone who believes that surrealism is an important mode of communication. this is a cornerstone surrealist work. read it, and also read "at swim-two-birds" -- another, slightly more humorous and easier-to-identify-with book.

a must-read for anyone who believes that surrealism is an important mode of communication. this is a cornerstone surrealist work. read it, and also read "at swim-two-birds" -- another, slightly more humorous and easier-to-identify-with book.

A murder mystery, but not a whodunit. Frightening yet hilarious. I won't get into the plot here; that's covered nicely in other reviews. But Flann O'Brien is a master plotster and king of minutia. At one point he describes an object so infinitesimal it could never be seen. He describes its smallness with such vivid clarity that by the time he's done, it vanishes before your eyes. There is quite a bit of paranoia here, and a nightmarish quality that really does have parallels with Kafka, but don't wonder whether O'Brien means to be funny; he does. This book will leave you with this weird hollow feeling in your bones for a long time to come. And if you like O'Brien's brand of humor, take a look at "Out of Focus" by Alf MacLochlainn.

i can scarcely believe that anyone could find this book unfunny, or its ending predictable.

the footnotes regarding de selby had me laughing out loud. as an example, the 'scientist' describes his experiment of standing between two parallel mirrors, thereby creating an infinite number of reflections. at one point, he assures us, he catches a glimpse of himself as a small child. (i assure you obrien tells it better).

do not die without reading this book. it is, in more ways than one, essential.