― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 02:43 (seventeen years ago) link
― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 03:13 (seventeen years ago) link
― Josh (Josh), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 04:12 (seventeen years ago) link
― I Supersize Disaster (noodle vague), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 05:18 (seventeen years ago) link
― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 15:11 (seventeen years ago) link
― Josh (Josh), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 15:55 (seventeen years ago) link
Not that plot is the first, second or even third thing you'd read Flann O'Brien for. His journalism as Myles na Gopaleen might even be the best writing he did.
― I Supersize Disaster (noodle vague), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 17:02 (seventeen years ago) link
― Øystein (Øystein), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 18:01 (seventeen years ago) link
As I have said in another thread, I am personally very partial to The Hard Life: An Exegesis of Squalor, a work which I recently saw dismissed as hack work by some critic (Wm. Gass, if I recall correctly), but who also was predictably enthusiastic about ASTB and 3rdP.
I must demur from his opinion, however positively stated it may have been. While The Hard Life is not mined from precisely the same vein as his better-praised books, I find it deeply humorous, and the keel of it just as deep and well-laid as his best. I would describe it as a hard, strong grasp upon the nose of his native land, followed by a steady anti-clockwise twist. Perhaps Gass has none of the Irish in him and couldn't see the full quality of the humor or how well aimed it was.
Joyce wrote Dubliners and Portrait before Ulysses and the Wake, setting this up as the normative sequence or progression in the eyes of critics. O'Brien started right out with ASTB and only later wrote Hard Life, which sequence then gives critics a wrong impression of regression because it doesn't match Joyce's way of doing things. The only O'Brien book that merits (in my opinion) that rap is The Dalkey Archive, his last and sadly, also his weakest work.
― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 19:40 (seventeen years ago) link
― I Supersize Disaster (noodle vague), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 20:24 (seventeen years ago) link
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Best-Myles-Gopaleen-Paladin-Books/dp/0586089500/sr=8-1/qid=1157491681/ref=sr_1_1/202-3526781-5273426?ie=UTF8&s=gateway
― I Supersize Disaster (noodle vague), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 20:25 (seventeen years ago) link
― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 20:50 (seventeen years ago) link
― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 5 September 2006 20:56 (seventeen years ago) link
― My Little Ruud Book (Ken L), Thursday, 7 September 2006 01:42 (seventeen years ago) link
― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 7 September 2006 12:47 (seventeen years ago) link
― Why does my IQ changes? (noodle vague), Thursday, 7 September 2006 14:17 (seventeen years ago) link
― Paul Eater (eater), Friday, 8 September 2006 14:04 (seventeen years ago) link
I'm very curious to know if my co-workers were feeling it (book club discussion on Wed., I think we're going to go to an Irish pub for propriety's sake).
― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 25 September 2006 13:29 (seventeen years ago) link
― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 14:08 (seventeen years ago) link
Updike on Flann:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/02/11/080211crbo_books_updike
― scott seward, Sunday, 10 February 2008 02:54 (sixteen years ago) link
hmm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1401097/
― the parking garage has more facebook followers than my band (Jordan), Tuesday, 7 September 2010 16:51 (thirteen years ago) link
I heart Brendan Gleeson but really??? Am not at all sure.
― Hongro Horace (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 7 September 2010 16:58 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah likewise. vanity disaster project.
well, prob not disaster but certainly can't see it shining
― k¸ (darraghmac), Tuesday, 7 September 2010 16:59 (thirteen years ago) link
worse case scenario it's a crap film you won't have to see. gleeson is a great actor anyway.
― no time for the prussian death cult (nakhchivan), Tuesday, 7 September 2010 17:17 (thirteen years ago) link
I haven't watched the show, but wasn't there renewed interest in Flann when the TV show Lost mentioned The Third Policeman?
― Poldark City (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 7 September 2010 17:19 (thirteen years ago) link
Only saw In Bruges the other week and was strongly reminded of The Third Policeman. It's still mostly brilliant tho.
― Hongro Horace (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 7 September 2010 17:20 (thirteen years ago) link
I've seen the 60s movie of Ulysses btw and it's not dreadful, just pointless.
I'm excited, actually - like In Bruges.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 7 September 2010 17:53 (thirteen years ago) link
This is quite exciting in a way!
Trying to work out what can be BAD about such a thing, I think it is that it (the bad film, when it's bad) somehow supplants and displaces the great book, in the distracted public memory or something, even though you don't want to let this affect you and may affect to ignore it entirely. And esp this is bad if the film is very different in plot etc.
But then such bad things are not that bad, compared to life's really bad things.
And the film might not even be bad.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 7 September 2010 17:57 (thirteen years ago) link
I will say that the project doesn't seem utterly impossible, but the chances of success seem fairly remote. A lot of things happen in ASTB; it often bursts with life and incident. And ASTB has a certain coherence, achieved through its consistent tone and playfulness. But a coherent plot is nowhere to be found and was never contemplated by the author as a necessity.
In order to "work" as a feature film, ASTB would almost certainly require the imposition upon it of a more coherent plot, including both a first and a final act. Once you have imposed a coherent plot, you have probably driven a stake into the heart of the book.
I wish them well.
― Aimless, Tuesday, 7 September 2010 18:20 (thirteen years ago) link
He could go the Naked Lunch or Tristram Shandy route and make it a film about the book, since it's often a book about books itself.
― Hongro Horace (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 7 September 2010 18:37 (thirteen years ago) link
i am reading the third policeman, which i have not done before.
― at-zing-two-boards (darraghmac), Monday, 10 October 2011 00:33 (twelve years ago) link
gj
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 10 October 2011 00:36 (twelve years ago) link
incredible book imo
yeah it is a good one
― call all destroyer, Monday, 10 October 2011 00:37 (twelve years ago) link
I was at a bookseller's convention once and the dalkey rep there (the book's publisher) said that this was the publisher's highest selling book by far because it was featured for 3 secs in the show Lost
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 10 October 2011 00:40 (twelve years ago) link
i've read lots of compendium myles na gcopaleen stuff but never his longer works, and am going in blind tbh.
enjoying it v much so far
― at-zing-two-boards (darraghmac), Monday, 10 October 2011 00:41 (twelve years ago) link
i would like to point out that i've not been prompted by lost, tbf. there's been a lot made of o'brien the past few weeks in the irish times due to the centenary of his birth and it seemed time
― at-zing-two-boards (darraghmac), Monday, 10 October 2011 00:44 (twelve years ago) link
at swim two big bottomed birds all over the newsie wewsies
― nakhchivan, Monday, 10 October 2011 00:46 (twelve years ago) link
i'm unpacking queen, o'brien, obviously my own post and, bizarrely, whiney g
Did i miss or misappropriate anything
― at-zing-two-boards (darraghmac), Monday, 10 October 2011 00:50 (twelve years ago) link
i like how i was v confident in predicting gleeson's failure to produce a satisfactory filmic version of a book i haven't read upthread, vmic that
― at-zing-two-boards (darraghmac), Monday, 10 October 2011 00:51 (twelve years ago) link
lol
― nakhchivan, Monday, 10 October 2011 00:52 (twelve years ago) link
mathers-like refusal of everything
― at-zing-two-boards (darraghmac), Monday, 10 October 2011 00:54 (twelve years ago) link
Third Policeman = awesomePoor Mouth = much less awesome
― nostormo, Monday, 10 October 2011 01:13 (twelve years ago) link
Thought this revive would be about the 100th anniversary: http://www.irishtimes.com/indepth/100-myles/
ATSB is my favourite book of all time but for my shame I have never read anything else by FO'B. I do have an unread copy of An Béal Bocht lying around somewhere...
― psychedelicatessen (seandalai), Monday, 10 October 2011 01:27 (twelve years ago) link
well the centenary was involved alright
Read 'miles of myles' maybe 15 years ago and always meant to look further but tbf robert jordan happened and y'know yourself.
― at-zing-two-boards (darraghmac), Monday, 10 October 2011 01:32 (twelve years ago) link
I think An Béal Bocht would be a lot funnier to someone who spent many, many years mastering the Oirish Tongue via the solemn study of several dozen memoirs written by simple villagers from the Gaeltacht, whose like we shall never see again, I might add, nor, belike, their little curraghs and wee piggies.
― Aimless, Monday, 10 October 2011 01:56 (twelve years ago) link
i think i could dig it, istr a couple of scenes he wrote lampooning eg synge, o'casey and poss. yeats's depictions of prataí munching ochóners that were on-the-mark
― at-zing-two-boards (darraghmac), Monday, 10 October 2011 01:59 (twelve years ago) link
I have not encountered a MILES OF MYLES.
― the pinefox, Monday, 10 October 2011 08:17 (twelve years ago) link
i think that was it, at least
― at-zing-two-boards (darraghmac), Monday, 10 October 2011 09:51 (twelve years ago) link
By that I meant that pages 58 through 91 of ASTB make for a truly astonishing passage. I was speculating as to whether the book will have greater in store for me during the remaining course of its pages, of which I have now read 104.
― imago, Wednesday, 17 April 2019 10:24 (four years ago) link
Are you deliberately taking years to read this novel?
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 17 April 2019 10:28 (four years ago) link
Savouring every syllable.
― Do you like 70s hard rock with a guitar hero? (Tom D.), Wednesday, 17 April 2019 10:28 (four years ago) link
third policeman might be the most terrifying book i've ever read
― devvvine, Wednesday, 17 April 2019 10:32 (four years ago) link
obvs a masterpiece, as is astb
― devvvine, Wednesday, 17 April 2019 10:33 (four years ago) link
Page 104 has heralded the beginning of a section concerning a Pooka and a Good Fairy that is threatening to drown all that precedes or follows it in mirthful frenzies
― imago, Wednesday, 17 April 2019 10:36 (four years ago) link
love the running articles towards the start of 'the best of myles' collection, which begin with him proposing a business where he roughs up rich peoples books, so that people think they've been read, and gets more absurd each week until dublin society is being terrroized by social blackmailers
― devvvine, Wednesday, 17 April 2019 10:42 (four years ago) link
Ordered this just now cuz of this thread (Penguin Classics ed.)
― Uptown VONC (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, 17 April 2019 11:01 (four years ago) link
The Myles stuff is incredible! I started re-reading his stuff last week, he was my favourite author for a period
― flamboyant goon tie included, Wednesday, 17 April 2019 14:30 (four years ago) link
If you chance to read The Dalkey Archive you will see large parts of 3rd Policeman, slightly mutated and used slightly differently.
I love the novels but never quite got into the Myles material, especially the bits not written in English.
One time I was reading At Swim-Two-Birds on the subway and an old man next to me asked me what I was reading. I mutely showed him, and he said "ah, that's a foine book. I also recommend the Dalkey Archive."
I looked over at what he was reading. It was Hamlet.
Only later did I realize that I should have said "That's a good one too. I also recommend Romeo and Juliet." What's Irish for l'esprit de l'escalier?
― moist owlette (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 17 April 2019 14:49 (four years ago) link
'a pint of plain is your only man' iirc
― imago, Wednesday, 17 April 2019 14:53 (four years ago) link
Ha, exactly
― Theory of Every Zing (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 17 April 2019 15:01 (four years ago) link
wow lol
― flamboyant goon tie included, Wednesday, 17 April 2019 15:18 (four years ago) link
Can’t believe I didn’t mention An Béal Bocht - so so good and always accurate, esp in these Brexity times when we are really all Jams O’Donnell.
Obvs his greatest achievement was writing these masterpieces while employed in the civil service though.
― gyac, Wednesday, 17 April 2019 15:39 (four years ago) link
And mostly pissed iirc
― The Gapes of Wrath (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 17 April 2019 17:10 (four years ago) link
The Brother is one of the greatest comic creations of all time.
― Do you like 70s hard rock with a guitar hero? (Tom D.), Wednesday, 17 April 2019 17:20 (four years ago) link
I want to compile every proverb in this book and maybe poll them. A leg that is in halves is a slow pilgrim
― imago, Thursday, 18 April 2019 14:54 (four years ago) link
Orlick's bathroom break is probably the funniest two pages in print
― imago, Thursday, 18 April 2019 15:16 (four years ago) link
The brother was givin out about the seals. ‘Tumblers’ he called them. The brother says all them lads should be destroyed.
― JoeStork, Thursday, 18 April 2019 15:39 (four years ago) link
The Plain People of Ireland: Another day gone and no jokes. Myself: Yes, curse you.
― And according to some websites, there were “sexcapades.” (James Morrison), Tuesday, 23 April 2019 00:17 (four years ago) link
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based upon licensed premises.
― fetter, Tuesday, 23 April 2019 15:34 (four years ago) link
ive zero requirement for this rather natty hodges-figgis special hardback of astb but for 6.50 it's hard to justify leaving it here in the sale rack
― BSC Joan Baez (darraghmac), Saturday, 1 February 2020 13:55 (four years ago) link
Which one? It’s not on their site.
― hyds (gyac), Saturday, 1 February 2020 13:56 (four years ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/51ykimp.jpg
― BSC Joan Baez (darraghmac), Saturday, 1 February 2020 14:02 (four years ago) link
and now you even know where im sitting
― BSC Joan Baez (darraghmac), Saturday, 1 February 2020 14:03 (four years ago) link
Oh it is on there - it’s £10. Gorgeous edition.
― hyds (gyac), Saturday, 1 February 2020 14:04 (four years ago) link
If you mean in H&F, I haven’t been there since Bertie was Taoiseach.
― hyds (gyac), Saturday, 1 February 2020 14:05 (four years ago) link
hopefully youll be back before hes president wha
― BSC Joan Baez (darraghmac), Saturday, 1 February 2020 14:07 (four years ago) link
I see they have a vintage tractors calendar 75% off - is that what you went in for?
― hyds (gyac), Saturday, 1 February 2020 14:07 (four years ago) link
saturdays is H/F ----> celtic whiskey store days on dawson st, if anything catches my eye in either so be it
― BSC Joan Baez (darraghmac), Saturday, 1 February 2020 14:09 (four years ago) link
I've my two copies of ATSB already and that's enough to keep a man well-supplied and ready at the drop of a hat.
― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, 1 February 2020 17:35 (four years ago) link
Both obtained upon licensed premises no doubt
― TS: Kirk/Spock vs. Marat/Sade (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 February 2020 17:39 (four years ago) link
Oddly I only have one.
I believe that hardback is the 2019 80th anniversary edition.
I didn't think that Darraghmac lived in Dublin.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 2 February 2020 20:05 (four years ago) link
Next to Joyce and Paul Bowles I'm pretty sure this is the author of whose work I've read the most completely.
― Montegays and Capulez (flamboyant goon tie included), Sunday, 2 February 2020 23:31 (four years ago) link
― the pinefox, Sunday, 2 February 2020 20:05 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
Next to Joyce and Paul Bowles
― BSC Joan Baez (darraghmac), Sunday, 2 February 2020 23:40 (four years ago) link
god the stink must be bad by now
― GK Chessington's World of Adventure (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 2 February 2020 23:51 (four years ago) link
well joyce is in bronze tbf
― BSC Joan Baez (darraghmac), Sunday, 2 February 2020 23:56 (four years ago) link
If you only have one copy and you reread it frequently, there is a serious risk of you becoming quantumly entangled with the book, due to mollycules. You will find yourself increasingly wishing to rest on shelves. Or check yourself back into libraries. Beware.
― Okay, you're an ambulance (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 3 February 2020 01:40 (four years ago) link
Ports plan for Brexit Irish Sea checks
"We are still in this territory of not getting clarity from the government just yet as to how they actually see trade agreements being, because if we get good trade agreements, we won't need to have certain checks."
Never forget that tenure by sochemaunce seisined by feodo copyholds in gross and reseisined through covenants of foeffseignory in frankalpuissaunce is alienable only by droit of bonfeasaunce subsisting in free-bench coigny or in re-vested copywrites of seisina facit stipidem, a fair copy bearing a 2d. stamp to be entered at the Court of Star Chamber.
Furthermore, a rent seck indentured with such frankalseignory or chartamoign charges as may be, and re-empted in Market Overt, subsists thereafter in graund serjaunty du roi, eighteen fishing smacks being deemed sufficient to transport the stuff from Lisbon.
― alimosina, Monday, 3 February 2020 15:42 (four years ago) link
too real
i eat my lunch under a sketch by the great man's brother
― BSC Joan Baez (darraghmac), Monday, 3 February 2020 16:01 (four years ago) link
One dilly dallying civil servant recognised another
― hyds (gyac), Monday, 3 February 2020 16:02 (four years ago) link
voting 'coigny'
― TOO LOW, the Curator (imago), Monday, 3 February 2020 16:03 (four years ago) link
I have just the one copy, but it's had Premier Handling*.
*Each volume to be thoroughly handled, eight leaves in each to be dog-eared, a suitable passage in not less than 25 volumes to be underlined in red pencil, and a leaflet in French on the works of Victor Hugo to be inserted as a forgotten book-mark in each. Say, £2 17s 6d. Five per cent discount for literary university students, civil servants and lady social workers
― fetter, Tuesday, 4 February 2020 12:44 (four years ago) link
http://www.eerpublishing.com/gallacher-bohemian-belfast-and-dublin.html
Obscure stuff, from an obscure press, but this book could be quite interesting on the postwar Flann and his Dublin.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 16 September 2021 13:53 (two years ago) link
just finished 'the hard life' - brisk and well-observed but patently weighted with what must have been the writer's own mounting woes, very little allowed to transcend except the irrepressible brother
― imago, Thursday, 23 June 2022 12:49 (one year ago) link
One of the oddest things about that book is how much is taken up with the brother (Manus?) 's letters. They fill page after page. I don't think FO'B entirely knew what he was doing in that regard.
Kind of interesting about Mr Collopy's campaign and his audience with the Pope, though.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 23 June 2022 13:16 (one year ago) link
Well, the letters don't start really happening until the final third, but then oh boy. It's almost like the narrator is being written out of his own book, which I presume intentionally-done
― imago, Thursday, 23 June 2022 13:18 (one year ago) link
The narrator does otoh have the pleasure of being able to dismiss the brother's reams of advice with disillusioned curtness, so there's right of reply
― imago, Thursday, 23 June 2022 13:19 (one year ago) link
I do wonder if FOB harboured an as-it-happens impossible desire to move to London at this time
― imago, Thursday, 23 June 2022 13:21 (one year ago) link
Myles would reminisce about Germany.
Curse it, my mind races back to my Heidelberg days. Sonya and Lili. And Magda. And Ernst Schmutz, Georg Geier, Theodor Winklemann, Efrem Zimbalist, Otto Grun. And the accordion player Kurt Schachmann. ... Beer and music and midnight swims in the Neckar. Chats in erse with Kun O'Meyer and John Marquess... Alas, those chimes. Und als wir nahmen/ Abscheid vor den Toren/ beim letzten Kuss, da hab' Ich Klar erkannt/ dass Ich mein Herz/ in Heidelberg verloren/ MEIN HERZ/ es schlagt am Neck-ar-strand! Tumpty tumpty tum.
He couldn't go anywhere, he had to support the family. The only escape was alcohol.
― alimosina, Thursday, 23 June 2022 18:23 (one year ago) link