The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien.

CONCEPT

The Third Policeman



(No spoilers.)

[While I'm inostensibly discussing The Third Policeman, I'll resolve my rant on Pale Fire here as well.]

The class was surprisingly harsh with this book, mainly in the sense of pains take to recursively and minutely acknowledge every plot inconsistency. I think that inconsistencies are worth pointing out when they are a sign of an indiscretion or lapse on the part of the writer, or if they are part of a broader pattern that untdermines the work as a whole. As little as I know of Irish literature as a whole, it seems expert at admixing the colloquial and the allegorical; I feel that many criticisms were a result of scrutinizing the reality of the text with excessive literality.

I further think that the harsh verdicts result from this book following hard on Pale Fire... both invoked the same box-within-a-box or bike tire lemniscate, but when evaluating a text it's easy to fall back on craft to judge, because craft is discrete and concrete (at least relative to, say, performance, hyperbole, a sense of the moment, and so on). Nobody would argue that The Third Policean was better crafted than Pale Fire.

It was, at least for me, a more enjoyable read.

Even if someone is able to figure out the bomb that is dropped at the end of the text (and I figured it out very, very early on) there is no way to predict the bizarre and fantastical circumstances of the actual adventures. In case anyone's interested in reading, I won't give away details, or at least plot-spoiling details... I can safely say that this is a story that involves travel and explicitly discusses travel. The distance covered can be temporal (as demonstrated in the Eternity pancake), literal (as demonstrated in the two-dimensional police station pancake), or literary (as demonstrated in deSelby's pancake). Even if someone guesses the plot, which can happen either by reading between the lines or simply reading very closely in general, the story retains its suspense and interest because the journeys involved have such a range of possibility, to the point of defying the laws of Physics, that the reader has an insurmountable (but teasing) challenge in the struggle to reconcile what laws do apply within the story.

It may be argued for mysterious reasons (here's I'm getting misty and mysterious myself, all to avoid a spoiler) that there are no laws. In fact, this was brought up in class. I agree that it may be futile, or at least very frustrating and unproductive, to try to fix rules that may or may not apply, and even if they do may be irreleant. At the same time, if bicycles are considered, or omnium, or boxes, or geography... there is, at the very least motific recurrence that is far from arbitrary, and transparently either correlated or nested.

This story isn't a Pale Fire at all. Regardless of whether O'Brien intended it strictly as humor, or (as I suspect) it was multivalent, there is allegorical sympathy. All the cues suggest to me that Nabokov was just as offended by allegory as Tolkien, but it's difficult for me to imagine Irish literature without the device. In fact, I think most of the excuses people have for railing against allegory are discredited in "successful" examples of Irish literature, something I wish I would've thought of in a discussion in Jeff Allen's class last semester. Allegory, like simile or symbolism or anything else, tends to be derided on account of its most simplistic and generalized application. I also think (frankly) that this is a cultural prejudice... we're so encouraged to appreciate writing of subtlety and craft and, above all, character and psychology that we neither have the cultural or rhetorical apparatus to recognize nor appreciate a finely executed allegory.

Somebody commented the other day on hating Animal Farm. I didn't dislike the novel, myself, but I think it's an illustration of it's point... for good or for bad, Animal Farm is a very simplistic, straightforward, self-evident allegory. And The Lord of the Rings is not an allegory at all, nor is Pale Fire, but the The Third Policeman is, and in a very sophisticated digressive way. It's allegorical content expands the characters and the story, both psychologically and thematically, and it is a lack of recognition of this I believe that held back our discussion somewhat.

Holy shit, I'm talking about four novels now.

Returning to earth...

For non New School people who might be reading this (does anybody even read these?), I have a hard time believing that someone would not at least enjoy The Third Policeman. People might deviate on whether it is well-crafted or not. Myself, I would agree that there are flaws in the craft, inconsistencies, and unintentional accidents. But in addition to being great fun, the novel is unapologetically epic and charged with great soul, and personally, I'd rather read something epic and soulful than something well crafted.

Sorry, Vlad.

END OF POST.