Generalitat de Catalunya Departament d’Ensenyament Escoles Oficials d’Idiomes

“The Third Policeman” by Flann O’Brien

Introduction

This text can be used as an introduction to Irish literature in general and to make students aware of one of the not so well-known Irish writers.

In the passage chosen, the narrator meets Sergeant Pluck, and gives a very detailed description of this “archetypal Irish village policeman”.

The Third Policeman is the hilarious story of a murderer and his attempts to get his hands on the money for which he killed a neighbour. In this novel, which is told in the first-person, the narrator, though he is just three hours’ walk from his home, finds himself in a very strange and unfamiliar part of the world, dealing with bicycles that turn into people and three policemen of monstrous proportions. It has been described as “a surrealistic vision of eternity and an allegory of the absurd”.

Flann O’Brien (Brian O’Nolan) was born in Strabane, county Tyrone in 1911. After attending University College in Dublin, he became a civil servant. At-Swim-Two-Birds , his first and most famous novel was published in 1939. To the great surprise of his friends, he got married in 1948, at which point he moved out of the family home, but it did not seem to improve his spirits for long (he was probably a depressive, and certainly an alcoholic). A way was found for him to retire early from the civil service on grounds of ill health with a small pension, and O’Brien continued writing newspaper columns in various newspapers under different pen names. He also wrote The Poor Mouth (1941) in Gaelic, The Hard Life (1962) and The Dalkey Archive (1964). He died of cancer on April Fools’ Day, 1966, writing his newspaper column until almost the very end. The Third Policeman , O’Brien’s second novel in English, was not published until after his death. It was rejected by one publisher during his lifetime and O’Brien, a very shy man, never tried to publish it elsewhere, telling friends that he had lost the manuscript.

Materials elaborats pel grup de treball de literatura anglesa – Departament d’Ensenyament /BritishCouncil 1 The Third Policeman. Flann O’Brien Introduction