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Third Policeman
Third Policeman | Flann O'Brien
7 posts | 16 read | 24 to read
"The Third Policeman" is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe," he grapples with the riddles and contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him.The last of O'Brien's novels to be published, "The Third Policeman" joins O'Brien's other fiction ("At Swim-Two-Birds," "The Poor Mouth," "The Hard Life," "The Best of Myles," and "The Dalkey Archive") to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland's great comic geniuses.
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GoneFishing
Third Policeman | Flann O'Brien

You mean that because I have no name I cannot die and that you cannot be held answerable for death even if you kill me?

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GoneFishing
Third Policeman | Flann O'Brien

Did you ever in your life,' he asked, 'mount a bicycle from the right?'
'I did not.'
'And why?'
'I do not know. I never thought about it.'
He laughed at me indulgently.
'It is nearly an insoluble pancake,' he smiled, 'a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities, a snorter.

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GoneFishing
Third Policeman | Flann O'Brien

Never before had I believed or suspected that I had a soul but just then I knew I had. I knew also that my soul was friendly, was my senior in years and was solely concerned for my own welfare. For convenience I called him Joe. I felt a little reassured to know that I was not altogether alone. Joe was helping me.

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GoneFishing
Third Policeman | Flann O'Brien

The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...

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GoneFishing
Third Policeman | Flann O'Brien

“Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.”

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Macnjen
Third Policeman | Flann O'Brien
Bailedbailed

Bailed. Hated. Confused. Frustrated. Did not get it.

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spacecadetcandito
Third Policeman | Flann O'Brien
post image

"Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable."