A short life of the author
Flann O’Brien (1911–1966) was born Brian O’Nolan in Strabane, County Tyrone, and became the third member of Ireland’s holy trinity of comic prose (after Swift and Sterne), a writer of dazzling formal invention and anarchic humour whose reputation has grown steadily since his death. At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) is one of the great experimental novels of the century. The Third Policeman — rejected in his lifetime and published posthumously in 1967 — is a masterpiece of metaphysical comedy. Under the name Myles na gCopaleen, he wrote “Cruiskeen Lawn” for the Irish Times for twenty-five years, producing one of the finest columns in the history of journalism.
Life and Career
O’Nolan grew up in a large, Irish-speaking family and was educated at University College Dublin, where he wrote a master’s thesis on Irish nature poetry. He entered the Irish civil service in 1935 and spent his entire career there, eventually rising to a senior position in the Department of Local Government while writing under multiple pseudonyms.
At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) was published by Longmans to enthusiastic reviews — Joyce said of it, “That’s a real writer, with the true comic spirit” — but sold only 244 copies before the Longmans warehouse was destroyed in the Blitz, taking the remaining stock with it. The novel is a labyrinth of nested narratives: a lazy Dublin student writes a novel about a publican named Trellis, whose characters rebel against their author, while characters from Irish mythology wander through the text alongside cowboys from American pulp fiction. It is simultaneously a parody of the novel form and a celebration of storytelling.
The Third Policeman, written in 1940, was rejected by Longmans. O’Brien told friends the manuscript had been lost, and it was not published until after his death. The novel — about a man who murders for a mysterious black box and finds himself in a surreal, nightmarish rural Ireland policed by two policemen obsessed with bicycles — is now widely regarded as his finest work. Its final revelation — that the narrator has been in hell all along — anticipates by decades the narrative tricks that would later be celebrated in television and film.
An Béal Bocht (The Poor Mouth, 1941), written in Irish, is a savage parody of Gaeltacht autobiography — the genre of miserabilist memoirs from Irish-speaking communities. It was not translated into English until 1973.
His “Cruiskeen Lawn” column in the Irish Times (1940–1966) is one of the treasures of Irish literature: bilingual, polymathic, savagely funny, and increasingly bitter as alcoholism took hold. The “Keats and Chapman” pun stories are legendary.
O’Brien’s later years were marked by heavy drinking and declining health. The Hard Life (1961) and The Dalkey Archive (1964) are minor works compared to the early novels. He died on April 1, 1966 — April Fool’s Day, as he might have appreciated.
Major Works and Themes
O’Brien’s fiction is obsessed with the nature of fiction itself — with stories that contain stories, authors who lose control of characters, narrators who may already be dead. He combines this postmodern self-consciousness with physical comedy, wordplay, and a deep engagement with Irish culture and language.
O’Brien, Beckett, and the Question of Irishness
The triangulation of O’Brien with Joyce and Beckett — the three great Irish experimentalists — is instructive but misleading. Joyce left Ireland and wrote about it obsessively from abroad; Beckett left Ireland and wrote about the void; O’Brien stayed in Ireland and wrote about Ireland while working in the Irish civil service. The staying matters. O’Brien’s comedy is rooted in the texture of daily Irish life in a way that Joyce’s, for all its Dublin specificity, is not. The “Cruiskeen Lawn” columns draw their energy from the petty absurdities of bureaucracy, the pomposities of official Irish, the gap between the Revival’s idealised Gaelic Ireland and the grey, rain-soaked, priest-ridden reality. O’Brien could not have written them from Paris.
His bilingualism was real, not performative. An Béal Bocht is not merely a curiosity for English readers — it is, in Irish, a genuinely devastating satire, and its attack on Gaeltacht autobiography doubles as an attack on the sentimentalisation of poverty that the Free State used to justify cultural policy. The novel’s central joke — that the narrator cannot distinguish between the pigs and the people, because both live in identical misery — has a Swiftian cruelty that makes the English novels look gentle by comparison.
Critical Reception and Legacy
O’Brien was almost forgotten at the time of his death. The posthumous publication of The Third Policeman in 1967 launched a revival that has never subsided. He is now recognized as a major figure of twentieth-century literature, ranked alongside Beckett and Joyce in the Irish tradition. His influence on later writers — including Gilbert Sorrentino, John Barth, and the entire tradition of metafiction — is significant.
The revival has been sustained by each generation discovering him anew. The LOST television series (2004–2010) made The Third Policeman briefly a bestseller when it appeared as a prop — a fitting irony for a book about a man trapped in a repeating hell. More seriously, his combination of formal experimentation with demotic comedy has proved influential for writers who want postmodernism without its austerity: writers like Alasdair Gray, Steve Aylett, and the more playful end of contemporary Irish fiction owe him debts they sometimes acknowledge.
Key Works
- At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)
- The Third Policeman (1967; written 1940)
- An Béal Bocht / The Poor Mouth (1941)
- The Hard Life (1961)
- The Dalkey Archive (1964)
Collecting O’Brien
At Swim-Two-Birds (1939, Longmans Green) is one of the great modern first editions. Only 244 copies were sold before the warehouse fire destroyed the remaining stock. Copies in dust jacket bring $10,000–$40,000 — it is among the rarest twentieth-century literary firsts.
The Third Policeman (1967, MacGibbon & Kee) is the posthumous first edition and more accessible: $200–$600 in jacket.
An Béal Bocht (1941, An Press Náisiúnta) in Irish is scarce: $300–$1,000.
The Hard Life (1961, MacGibbon & Kee): $100–$300. The Dalkey Archive (1964): $100–$250.
Signed O’Brien/O’Nolan material is extremely rare — he rarely signed books, and authenticated inscriptions command large premiums.