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kurtwombat 's review for:
The Third Policeman
by Flann O'Brien
The Third Policeman
About twenty pages into this slim exercise of insanity, I considered tossing the book in the corner and allowing it to decay naturally beneath the hot breath of many afternoon suns. Those pages were an utter vacuum—its world and its characters were inert, lifeless and sucking the air out of room I was sitting in. Then something happened and in the words of Nat King Cole: the ceiling fell in and the bottom fell out, I went into a spin and I started to shout. Almost literally, and for reasons that become more obvious later in the book, the novel comes to a stop and seems to start again but this time ironically with a pulse and a direction. So be patient. The main character, who has forgotten his own name, is suddenly forced to look at the world as if for the first time and struggle to identify what he is seeing. Much of the novel is about how we see the world. How what we create in art and science are merely steps in a staircase to gain a better look at the world around us--but we must be careful what stairs we climb. Virtually everything we consider real is really an artificial concept. Just as words are not the thing itself, I cannot eat the word “apple”, so science is not really the world we live in nor is philosophy really the reason we are here. (Did I really even read this book?) THE THIRD POLICEMAN plays with these ideas by creating a world where virtually everything is redefined for the main character—including his own identity. Is he defined by his suddenly chatty soul or by how the police see him (which seems to change every page) or by his relationship with a bicycle—more complicated than you can imagine? As ALICE IN WONDERLAND created a fantastic world alternating between menace and amusement from the twisted wreckage of childhood, so THE THIRD POLICEMAN created an equally crazy and amazing world from the wreckage of science and perception. The language is playful and some passages so drop dead perfect they beg rereading. The characters are all madly bent as if viewed through a prism and you never know where the story will take you from one moment to the next. Reading this I was amazed that it was written when it was. It felt a minimum 25 years ahead of its time and it seems impossible that Douglass Adams did not read this before creating his marvelous HITCHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY series. Not lightly do I add this to my list of favorite books, I was both surprised and amazed.
About twenty pages into this slim exercise of insanity, I considered tossing the book in the corner and allowing it to decay naturally beneath the hot breath of many afternoon suns. Those pages were an utter vacuum—its world and its characters were inert, lifeless and sucking the air out of room I was sitting in. Then something happened and in the words of Nat King Cole: the ceiling fell in and the bottom fell out, I went into a spin and I started to shout. Almost literally, and for reasons that become more obvious later in the book, the novel comes to a stop and seems to start again but this time ironically with a pulse and a direction. So be patient. The main character, who has forgotten his own name, is suddenly forced to look at the world as if for the first time and struggle to identify what he is seeing. Much of the novel is about how we see the world. How what we create in art and science are merely steps in a staircase to gain a better look at the world around us--but we must be careful what stairs we climb. Virtually everything we consider real is really an artificial concept. Just as words are not the thing itself, I cannot eat the word “apple”, so science is not really the world we live in nor is philosophy really the reason we are here. (Did I really even read this book?) THE THIRD POLICEMAN plays with these ideas by creating a world where virtually everything is redefined for the main character—including his own identity. Is he defined by his suddenly chatty soul or by how the police see him (which seems to change every page) or by his relationship with a bicycle—more complicated than you can imagine? As ALICE IN WONDERLAND created a fantastic world alternating between menace and amusement from the twisted wreckage of childhood, so THE THIRD POLICEMAN created an equally crazy and amazing world from the wreckage of science and perception. The language is playful and some passages so drop dead perfect they beg rereading. The characters are all madly bent as if viewed through a prism and you never know where the story will take you from one moment to the next. Reading this I was amazed that it was written when it was. It felt a minimum 25 years ahead of its time and it seems impossible that Douglass Adams did not read this before creating his marvelous HITCHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY series. Not lightly do I add this to my list of favorite books, I was both surprised and amazed.