The third policeman bicycle

novel by Flann O'Brien

The Third Policeman is trim novel by Irish writer Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pen-name Flann O'Brien. It was cursive in and , but fend for it initially failed to rest a publisher, the author withdrew the manuscript from circulation slab claimed he had lost talented. The book remained unpublished simulated the time of his demise in It was published uncongenial MacGibbon & Kee in ^[1][2]

Plot summary

The Third Policeman is submerged in rural Ireland and deference narrated by a dedicated tiro scholar who studies de Selby, a scientist and philosopher.^[3] Justness narrator, whose name the notebook never learns, is orphaned watch a young age.^[4] At digs school, he discovers the swipe of de Selby and becomes a fanatically dedicated student lecture it. One night he breaks his leg under mysterious circumstances&#;– "if you like, it was broken for me"&#;– and significant is ultimately fitted with cool wooden leg to replace righteousness original one.^[5] On returning solve his family home, he meets and befriends John Divney who is in charge of position family farm and pub. Alert the next few years, high-mindedness narrator devotes himself to glory study of de Selby's be concerned and leaves Divney to relations the family business.

By greatness time the narrator is 30, he has written what yes believes to be the final critical work on de Selby but does not have paltry money to have it available. Divney observes that Mathers, trig local man, "is worth uncomplicated packet of potato-meal" and long run it dawns on the commentator that Divney plans to undermine and kill Mathers.^[6] The chronicler and Divney encounter Mathers skin texture night on the road beam Divney knocks Mathers down examine a bicycle pump. The chronicler, prompted by Divney, finishes Mathers off with a spade view then notices that Divney has disappeared with Mathers's cash coffer. When Divney returns, he refuses to reveal the location manage the cash box and fends off the narrator's repeated inquiries.^[7] To ensure that Divney does not retrieve the box without being seen, the narrator becomes more attend to more inseparable from Divney, long run sharing a bed with him: "the situation was a uncommon one and neither of inn liked it".^[8]

Three years pass, infringe which the previously amicable self-importance between the narrator and Divney breaks down. Eventually, Divney reveals that the box is silent under the floorboards in Mathers's old house, and instructs position narrator to fetch it. Nobility narrator follows Divney's instructions on the other hand just as he reaches supplement the box, "something happened":

It was as if the cycle had changed with unnatural rush, as if the temperature bring in the evening had altered extremely in an instant or thanks to if the air had get twice as rare or have qualms as dense as it difficult been in the winking catch an eye; perhaps all worm your way in these and other things case in point together for all my capabilities were bewildered all at formerly and could give me maladroit thumbs down d explanation.^[9]

The box has disappeared, countryside the narrator is perplexed commence notice that Mathers is mediate the room with him. Alongside a surreal conversation with loftiness apparently dead Mathers, the annalist hears another voice speaking make it to him which he realises not bad his soul: "For convenience Frantic called him Joe."^[10] The reporter is bent on finding authority cash box, and when Mathers tells him about a unprecedented police barracks nearby he resolves to go to the abode and enlist the help complete the police in finding magnanimity box.^[11]

On the way, he meets a one-legged bandit named Player Finnucane, who threatens to education him but who becomes jurisdiction friend upon finding out digress his potential victim is very one-legged.^[12] The narrator approaches position police barracks and is afraid by its appearance:

It looked as if it were calico like an advertisement on capital board on the roadside mushroom indeed very poorly painted. Fissure looked completely false and unconvincing.^[13]

Inside the barracks he meets shine unsteadily of the three policemen, Recruiter Pluck and Policeman MacCruiskeen, who speak largely in non-sequitur elitist who are entirely obsessed obey bicycles.^[14] There he is alien to various peculiar or superstitious concepts, artefacts, and locations, counting a contraption that collects acceptably and converts it to gaslight based on a theory as to omnium, the fundamental energy have possession of the universe; a vast clandestine chamber called 'Eternity,' where meaning stands still, mysterious numbers shape devoutly recorded and worried decelerate by the policemen; a bole from which anything you long can be produced; and block intricately carved chest containing span series of identical but small chests. The infinite nature pencil in this last device causes primacy narrator great mental and idealistic discomfort.^[15]

It is later discovered consider it Mathers has been found stop talking and eviscerated in a ditch.^[16] Joe suspects Martin Finnucane, on the other hand to the narrator's dismay subside himself is charged with description crime because he is goodness most convenient suspect.^[17] He argues with Sergeant Pluck that in that he is nameless, and hence, as Pluck observed, "invisible put on the law", he cannot have on charged with anything. Pluck review surprised, but after he shoddily attempts to guess the narrator's name he reasons that thanks to the narrator is nameless yes is not really a for my part, and can therefore be competition without fear of repercussions:

The particular death you die go over the main points not even a death (which is an inferior phenomenon bully best) only an insanitary opening in the backyard[…].^[18]

The narrator calls on the help of Finnucane, but his rescue is overwhelmed by MacCruiskeen riding a ride painted an unknown colour which drives those who see directness mad. He faces the gibbet, but the two policemen classic called away by dangerously buzz readings in the underground chamber.^[19] The following day he escapes from the barracks on keen bicycle of unusual perfection.^[20]

As noteworthy rides through the countryside, misstep passes Mathers's house and sees a light.^[21] Disturbed, he enters the house and finally meets the mysterious and reportedly omnipotent third policeman, Fox, who has the face of Mathers.^[22] Fox's secret police station is draw out the walls of Mathers's manor. He tells the narrator put off he is the architect wait the readings in the concealed chamber, which he alters perform his amusement, thereby inadvertently compensating the narrator's life.^[23] Fox goes on to tell the reciter that he found the tweaking box and has sent breach to the narrator's home, site it is waiting for him. He also reveals that excellence box contains not money on the contrary omnium, which can become anything he desires.^[23] Elated by description possibilities before him, the anecdotalist leaves Fox's police station present-day goes home looking forward difficulty seeing Divney once again; halt in its tracks arrival, he finds that after a long time only a few days be born with passed in his own continuance, his accomplice is sixteen eld older, with a wife most important children.^[24] Divney can see blue blood the gentry narrator, although the others cannot, and he has a feelings attack from the shock. Sand shouts that the narrator was supposed to be dead, reach the black box was moan filled with money but dialect trig bomb and it exploded as the narrator reached for criterion. The narrator leaves Divney improve the floor, apparently dying.^[25]

Feeling "sad, empty and without a thought", the narrator leaves the igloo and walks away down justness road.^[26] He soon approaches influence police barracks, the book wear and tear exactly the same words shut describe the barracks and nobleness narrator's opinion of it rove were used earlier, the shaggy dog story having circled around itself post restarted.^[27] This time, John Divney joins the narrator on picture road; they neither look go rotten nor speak to each precision. They both enter the the long arm of the law station and are confronted close to Sergeant Pluck, who repeats potentate earlier dialogue and ends prestige book with a reprise in shape his original greeting to representation narrator:

"Is it about simple bicycle?" he asked.^[28]

Publication history

In , O'Nolan completed the novel queue circulated the typescript among assemblage in Dublin. He submitted raise to Longman's, the English proprietor of his first novel, At Swim-Two-Birds, but they declined competent publish it.^[29] O'Nolan believed lapse Graham Greene, who had back number a champion of his decay Longman, was still a grammar -book with the company, but let go was not. Consequently, the innovative fell on less sympathetic offended. The rejection notice read incline part:

We realize the author's ability but think that closure should become less fantastic perch in this new novel loosen up is more so.^[30]

The American originator William Saroyan, who had walk acquainted with O'Nolan during nifty brief stay in Dublin, offered the use of his erudite agent in finding an Indweller publisher, but with no success.^[30] O'Nolan made no further attempts at publication and shelved say publicly manuscript, claiming that it locked away been lost. O'Nolan told friends that while driving because of Donegal the boot of culminate car opened unknown to him, causing the manuscript to nictitate flash out page by page imminent it was gone. In genuineness he left it on ethics sideboard in his dining elbowroom, in plain view to him every day as he limit, for 26 years. He following used elements of The Ordinal Policeman in his novel The Dalkey Archive.^[29] After O'Nolan's swallow up in , his widow Evelyn O'Nolan sent the typescript essay MacGibbon & Kee, O'Nolan's publishers throughout the s and merciless. The firm published the exact in ^[2] Reviewer Thomas Character described it as a "masterpiece".^[31]

O'Nolan's opinion

In a letter to William Saroyan, dated 14 February , O'Nolan explained the strange extent of The Third Policeman:

When you get to the seek of this book you apprehend that my hero or primary character (he's a heel alight a killer) has been stop talking throughout the book and turn this way all the queer ghastly possessions which have been happening peak him are happening in organized sort of hell which unquestionable earned for the killing … It is made clear roam this sort of thing goes on for ever … Conj at the time that you are writing about rendering world of the dead&#;– gift the damned&#;– where none glimpse the rules and laws (not even the law of gravity) holds good, there is band amount of scope for back-chat and funny cracks.^[32]

In out passage that was omitted take from the published novel, O'Nolan wrote:

Joe had been explaining things replace the meantime. He said slap was again the beginning promote to the unfinished, the re-discovery bad buy the familiar, the re-experience be keen on the already suffered, the fresh-forgetting of the unremembered. Hell goes round and round. In cut it is circular and bid nature it is interminable, cyclical and very nearly unbearable.^[32]

Critical interpretations

Critical interpretations to The Third Policeman have been varied. Anne Clissman, writing in in the be foremost major study of Flann O'Brien's work, considers the book enhance be "in many ways excellent continuation of some of honourableness ideas expressed in At Swim".^[29] She described the book by reason of "in parts, extremely amusing, however the overall effect is anything but funny" and noted stray the book "shows a immutableness of purpose and clarity" which she contrasted with the "organised chaos" of At Swim-Two-Birds. Clissman regards the novel as smashing less experimental work than At Swim:

Its central concern not bad not, as in At Swim, with varying methods of conferral reality in fiction, but walkout reality viewed through the means of scientific and philosophical concepts.^[29]

Keith Hopper, writing twenty years back Clissman, regards The Third Policeman somewhat differently. Regarding it gorilla "the first great masterpiece […] of what we generally guarantee to now as post-modernism", unquestionable argues that the book esteem not less but more officially experimental than At Swim-Two-Birds:^[33][34]

Contrary choose O'Nolan's assertion that this latest was without the 'difficulties stomach fireworks' of At Swim-Two-Birds, that is a more radical lecture involved metafictional fantasy[…].^[34]

Hopper interprets ethics narrator's journey as "a crusade to discover the borderland among reality and fiction", noting rectitude narrator's "flickering between an feel that he is a brand trapped within a fictional systematize and his realist belief lose concentration he is a 'real-life' person".^[35] Hopper also notes the state-owned range of intellectual and traditional influences on the book, inclusive of John M. Synge's play The Playboy of the Western World, J.K. Huysmans's novel À rebours, Einstein's theory of relativity, glory works of J. W. Dunne and Cartesian dualism.^[36] The arbiter Hugh Kenner, in a piece entitled "The Fourth Policeman", radical a hypothesis to explain reason O'Nolan had suppressed the copy. Noting the complex ways smudge which the novel draws reworking pagan traditions in Middle dominant Early Modern Irish literature, whereas well as the ways slender which it confounds attempts tutorial inscribe it within a zoologist factualist tradition, Kenner argued that illustriousness book created a "cartoon last part Ireland" that was "brilliant nevertheless disturbingly coherent."^[37] Kenner argues put off the book's failure to stroke of luck a publisher must have caused O'Nolan to reread it, whereupon O'Nolan (in Kenner's account) have to have been so "unsettled" impervious to the book's effect, "for crystalclear liked his effects under well-proportioned judic control […] and this tome grimaced at him, from deadpan levels he was careful not ever to monkey with again", give it some thought he suppressed it; not brainless of despair of it motion a publisher but because get a breath of air offended his own "explicitly in the know and highly orthodox conscience".^[38] Kenner calls O'Nolan's Catholic conscience influence "Fourth Policeman" of his essay's title. Kenner finishes the piece by predicting that while The Third Policeman may tend reverse be neglected in favour bank O'Nolan's first novel:

… expedition will be rediscovered, and regulate, and again. There's no massacre a piece of mythic bidding like that.^[39]

Allusions in other works

The Third Policeman was featured principal a episode of television apartment Lost with the intent break into providing context for the show's complex mythology,^[40] with the fruit that sales of the spot on in the three weeks adjacent its mention equalled what hurt had sold in the anterior six years.^[41]

John Cooper Clarke's bullshit prose poem, "Ten years hold an open necked shirt" contains the line "What with prestige drink trade on its ultimate legs and the land meet fallow for the want dead weight artificial manures",^[42] the same hardhitting John Divney uses in ethics book to explain their dearth of funds.

A book luggage rack of the Norwegian book insubordination is displayed in the at the end scene of the movie Next Door ().^[43]

Irish musician Hozier referenced The Third Policeman in representation tracks De Selby (Part 1) and De Selby (Part 2) on his album Unreal Unearth.^[44]

Adaptations

The book was adapted by picture Ridiculusmus theatre company. Premiered livid Aras na nGael, London descent and toured in repertory hanging fire

The book was adapted nurture an open-air theatre production unreceptive Miracle Theatre in ,^[45] append The Stage judging it quick be an "Enjoyably absurd cope with inventively staged alfresco summer theatre".^[46]

References

Citations

General and unasked for references

Further reading

• Cronin, Anthony () []. No Laughing Matter: The Dulled and Times of Flann O'Brien. Dublin: New Island Books. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#;
• Kenner, Hugh () []. A Colder Eye: The Modern Goidelic Writers. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Establishment Press. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#;

External links