THE THIRD POLICEMAN, FLANN O’BRIEN (1967)

Harper Perennial, 978-0007775774 , 19cm x 13 cm, 207pp, £9.99

A cycle through inter-war Ireland is a laugh-out-loud tale incorporating shape-shifting experiments in narrative form

‘Atomic theory’ provides the framing conceit of The Third Policeman, as Sargent Pluck, of the Garda Síochána explains to the novel’s nameless central character. “If a hammer repeatedly beats a bar of iron ‘some of the atoms of the bar will go into the hammer and the other half into the table or the stone or the particular article that is underneath the bar.”

Pluck warns that this very process is at large in their own neighbourhood. It follows that: “people who spent most of they natural lives riding iron bicycles over rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycles”.

Upon this is built a surreal, narrative of local government, scientific invention and murder. Our hero loses his leg, is displaced from his home, is sentenced to death, and then saved by an army of one-legged men. And while not a book about cycling, bicycles feature on nearly every page.

Much is absurdist humour – fierce arguments about the moral challenges of three-speed gears or the soul-sapping potential of ‘rat-traps’ (old-style toe clips for the pedals). But there are also flashes of weird poetry surely born of actual miles pedalled? “The road was narrow, white, old, hard and scarred with the shadow. It ran away westwards in the midst of the early morning, running cunningly through the little hills and going to some trouble to visit tiny towns which were not, strictly speaking, on it way. It was possibly one of the oldest roads in the world”.

The plot’s action is leavened with our hero’s scholarly consideration of the the work of ‘scientist and philosopher’ ‘de Silby’. Extravagant footnotes purport to reference the many commentators who have considered his work.

Fall-off-you-bike funny, the book provides an amazing collage of mores, Irish in particular. Deeper and darker interpretations are certainly possible. O’Brien is considered a giant of Irish literature, and his work attracts significant scholarship. Third Policeman stretches the concept of what a novel can be and is rightly considered a landmark in the modernist canon. Enjoyed for entertainment alone, it is an easy-to-read unabashed pleasure.

Thought to have been written during the 1930s, it initially failed to find a publisher. O’Brien claimed that the manuscript had been destroyed. It was published by his widow shortly after his death, 

The tale’s denouement is dark indeed; but so much fun is the journey there, that perhaps O’Brien viewed the devil as the keeper of the best tunes?

TD June 25

The author, real name Brian O’Nolan, was an extraordinary talent. By day, he was among Ireland’s most senior civil servants, advising government Ministers. Using multiple pseudonyms, he was also a weekly newspaper columnist, dramatist, novelist and satirist. Sixty years after his death, his full list of works is unknown yet, as so many appears below noms do plume.

The audiobook version narrated by Jim Norton is also outstanding. It is available on Audible and Spotify.