Comments | nwhyte: December Books 5) At Swim-Two-Birds

nwhyte

December Books 5) At Swim-Two-Birds

Dec 12, 2007 13:27

5) At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O'Brien

Generally thought of as O'Brien's masterwork, though personally I prefer the more structured lunacy of The Third Policeman. It must be the third time at least that I've read it, but only the first time that I've tried to write down what I think it's about ( Read more... )

bookblog 2007, writer: flann o'brien

Comments 5

irishkate December 12 2007, 13:45:15 UTC

I have both and still have to read both - must do that over christmas

barnacle December 12 2007, 13:58:42 UTC

I love the richness of it, the idea of just packing everything in, all the pastiches and the skits, and leaving it all feeling like a pile of manuscripts with pages spilling out of them, picked up off the corner of a madman's office desk. I think also that it goes down more levels than it comes up, so you end up in a different story but back in "reality": it might do that a few times, I can't remember.

I finished A Scanner Darkly yesterday, as a break from writing (and from grimly munching my way through The Flounder). It's one of the best books I've read in years: who'd have thought Dick was so good at writing noir?

communicator December 12 2007, 14:03:49 UTC

I love this book, too long since I read it

inuitmonster December 13 2007, 21:23:26 UTC

I may have to admit that I will never finish ASTB. While any individual bit of it is very entertaining, the overall narrative thrust is too weak to keep me going.

anonymous December 15 2007, 00:20:05 UTC

Can't agree with you there, Nicholas. I thought T3P started strong but finished weak. AS2B OTOH gets better the longer one sticks with it. It's not a major work of the English literature, but it is an extremely strong minor work of same. Not that T3P is unworth reading; far from it. But AS2B is to my mind so much better.

Mind you, I read The Poor Mouth only years after I'd read either of the above, and have to say it is better than either by miles (NPI). Indeed I was so impressed with it that I have made it my goal to make my knowledge of th' oul Erse good enough to read the original An Béal Bocht. I've been warned it's ferociously difficult, but then, what else have I to do with my 13 free minutes per week?

-- Mrs T.