The Dalkey Archive: Flann O'Brien says things funny

I like writers who don't just write funny things, but write things funny.  I'll save the narrative high points of Flann O'Brien's last novel for a later blog post, the deadly substance that can end all life, the underwater meeting with Saint Augustine, and the discovery of James Joyce alive, well, and tending bar in a seaside resort years after his supposed death.

For now, what I like best about The Dalkey Archive is that O'Brien seemed incapable of writing a non-funny sentence.  Even purely expository passages and the most routine actions are funny:

"It was near six when they stopped a tree."

*

"My goodness, the Bishop of Hippo!"

*

"I implore you not to be facetious, the unsmiling Crabbe replied. The funny thing is that I like the name Nemo. Try thinking of it backwards. 

"Well, you have something there, Hackett granted, 

"Poetic, what? 

"There was a short silence which Dr. Crewett broke. 

"That makes you think, he said thoughtfully. Wouldn't it be awful to have the Arab surname Esra?"

Who else is like that? Who else is funny no matter what he or she is writing?

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Hugo Hamilton's Headbanger

I called Hugo Hamilton's 1997 Dublin novel Headbanger "a bit literary in its opening pages," by which I meant it was at times a bit too conscious of its own cleverness, trying too hard to make a plot point.

But those moments are few, and the novel does what crime novels rarely do: It confronts the reality that most crime writers and readers are not killers or victims. Headbanger's Pat Coyne, a Dublin cop, wages small fights and dreams of glory for an imaginary audience, but does what he has to do when the situation demands, "driven by a new mood of optimism and complete fearlessness."

Throughout, Hamilton maintains a nice balance between gravity and comedy, or, to put it another way, he sees the humor in Coyne's fight without, however, belittling it. After hoods kidnap and threaten Hamilton's wife, we get:

"Coyne hesitated. They just abducted her and took her to the Phoenix Park. Subjected her to inhuman and degrading treatment.

"Like what? Molly demanded ...

"They made her perform Riverdance. She needs protection, Frank."

 It might not surprise readers to learn that Headbanger pays explicit tribute to Flann O'Brien and that, like O'Brien, Coyne had a father who waged a brave, futile fight to educate him solely in Irish. I suspect that, having visited Ireland just twice and Dublin once, and being no expert in the country's literature, I may have missed much in this book. But what I got is touching and funny, and you should get it, too.

***

Who Needs Copy Editors? Sentence of the Day:

    "Krzyzewski is already urging ACC officials to start contemplating what they need to do to avoid other leagues from poaching ACC schools."

— Aaron Beard, Associated Press Basketball Writer

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

At Swim-Two-Birds, or Anything you can do, I can do meta

(First edition of At Swim-Two-Birds,
London, Longman's Green & Co., 1939)

The only thing that makes me blush about reading meta-fiction is that phrases like "modes of fictional discourse" spring unbidden to my lips.

The first third or so of Flann O'Brien's 1939 novel At Swim-Two-Birds (that's how far into the book I am) reads at time like solemn myth; at times like boastful, parodic epic; at times like naturalistic narrative; and at times like just plain fun. One of my favorite examples of the latter:

"`I'm thirsty,' he said. `I have sevenpence. Therefore I buy a pint.'

"I immediately recognized this as an intimation that I should pay for my own porter.

"`The conclusion of your syllogism,' I said lightly, `is fallacious, being based on licensed premises.'"

But what I really like are the bits that call amusing attention to their own modes of fic— to their own amusing ways of saying stuff:

"My talk had been forced, couched in the accent of the lower or working classes."

This can wake the reader up and make him notice, with a smile, even the most routine acts:

"In a moment he was gone, this time without return. Brinsley, a shadow by the window, performed perfunctorily the movements of a mime, making at the same time a pious ejaculation.

"Nature of mime and ejaculation: Removal of sweat from brow; holy God."

If you don't think self-reference can be funny and lovely at the same time, try the following:

"Purpose of walk: Discovery and embracing of virgins.

"We attained nothing on our walk that was relevant to the purpose thereof but we filled up the loneliness of our souls with the music of our two voices, dog-racing, betting and offences against chastity being the several subjects of our discourse. We walked many miles together on other nights on similar missions-following matrons, accosting strangers, representing to married ladies that we were their friends, and gratuitously molesting members of the public. One night we were followed in our turn by a member of the police force attired in civilian clothing. On the advice of Kelly we hid ourselves in the interior of a church until he had gone. I found that the walking was beneficial to my health."

Now, I'll go resume my reading. You should do the same.

***

Declan Burke offers more recent evidence that meta-fiction can be fun. His novel Absolute Zero Cool was a deserving winner of the Goldsboro Last Laugh Award for comic crime fiction at Crimefest 2012 in Bristol last month. "Author and character together and individually ponder and confront the very biggest moral and ethical questions in ways occasionally touching and always hugely entertaining," I wrote about the book.

That still seems about right,

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

All come to look for America

"He has no personal name at all. His dadda is in far Amurikey."

"Which of the two Amurikeys?" asked MacCruiskeen.

"The United 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."

— Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

====================================

A strip mall. 7-Eleven. Liquor store. Smoke shop.

Bits of tire. Fenders. License plates.

A gender reassignment clinic.

What is this place?

"America."

America.

"I don't feel good."

— Adrian McKinty, Fifty Grand

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Myles ahead, or cliché refuses to succumb despite long battle

In the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that man of many aliases, Flann O'Brien, wrote satirical newspaper columns for the Irish Times. These included a recurring feature called "The Myles na gCopaleen Catechism of Cliché," which was just what it sounds like. Here's a sample:

"Is man ever hurt in a motor smash?"

"No. He sustains an injury."

"Does such a man ever die from his injuries?"

"No. He succumbs to them."

Now, I work for a newspaper, and trust me: People today are still sustaining injuries and succumbing instead of just getting hurt and dying. Why, I don't know. And, as O'Brien might have asked: "To what does a person succumb after a long battle with?"

========================

Here's another excerpt from the Catechism of Cliché. Here's a short biography of Flann O'Brien. And here's your question: Which clichés do you find maddening or at least curious?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Belfast and America

Here's one of the funnier and more telling takes on the United States, as telling about its author as about its subject. It's from The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien:

"`He has no personal name at all. His dadda is in far Amurikey.'

"`Which of the two Amurikeys?' asked MacCruiskeen.

"`The United 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.'"

O'Brien left out a few details, but other than that, he's got America down, I'd say.

So much for an Irishman on America. Now for a North American on Ireland, and that North American is me.

The world has heard much of Belfast from the 1970s on, but one rarely heard what a stunning setting the city has. From my guesthouse, I can see Cave Hill and its companions of the Lagan Valley.

It was a pleasant shock to be able to see such natural beauty looking down my own street. It was a jarring and an emotional experience to see those same verdant hills up the Shankill Road and the Falls Road, and to think of the violence and rage that divided those streets during the Troubles. I wonder if residents of those passionate and benighted streets ever paused to contemplate those green hills during the years of violence and perhaps to take a moment of solace from them, perhaps even to be shamed out of committing a violent act.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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