In praise of what’s-his-name

Some prefer “At Swim-Two-Birds,” and brilliant it is, with the young Flann O’Brien perhaps under the Joycean spell, perhaps lightly mocking the master. “The Poor Mouth: A Bad Story About the Hard Life” is an acquired taste, but, even without fully understanding the Irish folk tradition is satirizes, a romp of hilarity. Then of course you’ll want to get your hands on the collected columns of Myles nagCopaleen (“Miles of the Little Horses”), the pithy, playful, amusingly arrogant Irish Times writer. Myles/Flann were both alter egos of Brian Nolan, an Irish civil servant who was never able to make it as a writer, in his lifetime.

This fan of Brian/Myles/Flann reserves a sentimental spot for a comic masterpiece about a greedy fellow’s journey into a surreal, bicycle-obsessed land.

‘Policeman MacCruiskeen put the lamp on the table, shook hands with me and gave me the time of day with great gravity. His voice was high, almost feminine, and he spoke with delicate careful intonation. Then he put the lamp on the counter and surveyed the two of us. ‘Is it about a bicycle?’ he asked.

‘Not that’ said the Sergeant. ‘This is a private visitor who says he did not arrive in the townland upon a bicycle. He has no personal name at all. His dadda is in far Amurikey.’

‘Which of the two Amurikeys?’ asked MacCruiskeen.

‘The Unified Stations,’ said the Sergeant.

‘Likely he is rich by now if he is in that quarter,’ said MacCruiskeen, ‘because there’s dollars there, dollars and bucks and nuggets in the ground and any amount of rackets and golf games and musical instruments. It is a free country too by all accounts.’

‘Free for all,’ said the Sergeant.

Excerpt from The Third Policeman, by Flann O’Brien (Dalkey Archive)