At Swim-two-birds (Penguin Modern Classics)
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At Swim-Two-Birdsis both a comedy and a fantasy of such staggering originality that itbaffles description and very nearly beggars our sense of delight.
Product Description
Flann O'Brien's first novel is a brilliant impressionistic jumble of ideas, mythology and nonsense. Operating on many levels it incorporates plots within plots, giving full rein to O'Brien's dancing intellect and Celtic wit. The undergraduate narrator lives with his uncle in Dublin, drinks too much with his friends and invents stories peopled with hilarious and unlikely characters, one of whom, in a typical O'Brien conundrum, creates a means by which women can give birth to full-grown people. Flann O'Brien's blend of farce, satire and fantasy result in a remarkable, astonishingly innovative book.
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First Sentence
Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
35 of 41 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Published in 1939, the same year that James Joyce published Finnegan's Wake, this novel was lauded in its day by Joyce himself, Samuel Beckett, and Graham Greene. A wild concoction involving a completely disjointed narrative, multiple points of view, farce, satire, and parody, this "novel" offers any student of Irish literature unlimited subject matter--and equally unlimited laughs. In this unique experiment with point of view, author Brian O'Nolan has used a pseudonym, Flann O'Brien, to tell the story of the novelist/student N, who tells his own story at the same time that he is writing a book about an invented novelist (Trellis), who is himself developing another story, while Tracy, still another author, tells a cowboy story and appears in the previous narratives.
Believing that characters should be born fully adult, one of the writers tries to keep them all together--in this case, at the Red Swan Hotel--so that he can keep track of them and keep them sober while he plans the narrative and writes and rewrites the beginning and ending of the novel. But even when the primary writer stops writing to go out with his friends, the characters of the other (invented) fictional writers continue to live on in the narrative and comment on writing. Before long, the reader is treated to essays on the nature of books vs. plays, polemics about the evils of drink, parodies of folk tales and ballads, a breathless wild west tale starring an Irish cowboy, the legends of Ireland, catalogues of sins, tales of magic and the supernatural, almanacs of folk wisdom and the cures for physical ills, and even the account of a trial--and that's just for starters.
Totally unique, O'Brien's creation defies the conventions, both of its day and of the present, and even the most jaded reader will be astonished at the unexpected twists the narrative takes. Steeped in the traditions of the Irish story-teller, O'Brien keeps those traditions alive by creating multiple narrators to tell multiple stories simultaneously, while also skewering the very traditions of which he--and they--are a part.
14 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
O'Brien was heavily influenced by James Joyce, and it shows in this book. If you enjoy Joyce you will undoubtedly enjoy this, as it is more of the same stream of consciousness, intellectual in jokes and Irishness that has made Joyce so popular. One thing to be said in O'Brien's favour is that his work is more comprehensible than say Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake.
I think this kind of literature is a very marmite experience. You either love it or hate it. Me, I hate it. I see how clever it is, but that doesn't make it something I would want to read in my leisure time. It's too much like hard work. Yes it is funny at times, but there's only so many jokes about puke and cowboys I can take in one short novella, and the intertextuality, the reliance on knowledge of Irish mythology and geography all make it exhausting and frustrating. You read the book only to think that if you had only read another ten before you started this one, it would all make more sense and be way more funny. As it is, it's too late. I'm never going back.
I think this kind of literature is a very marmite experience. You either love it or hate it. Me, I hate it. I see how clever it is, but that doesn't make it something I would want to read in my leisure time. It's too much like hard work. Yes it is funny at times, but there's only so many jokes about puke and cowboys I can take in one short novella, and the intertextuality, the reliance on knowledge of Irish mythology and geography all make it exhausting and frustrating. You read the book only to think that if you had only read another ten before you started this one, it would all make more sense and be way more funny. As it is, it's too late. I'm never going back.
14 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Quite simply, the funniest and cleverest book ever written. After the first glimpse, it takes at least three years to stop trying to write and talk O'Brienese.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
It is genuinely hilarious in many parts, and thoroughly enjoyable
This is a book of metafiction; it is a story within a story, within story, within another story. The original author writes a story about a character, who writes a story about... Read more
Published 2 months ago by JP
Reviewing the Kindle version rather than the book
The book itself is great. It's funny, witty, fast paced and I'm learning a lot about Irish culture. Read more
Published 3 months ago by O
definitely a marmite experience
This was my first try at reading a Flann O'Brien book and even though i was ready too persevere if needed i found it just too hard work. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Mr. P. Hughes
At Swim-two-birds
You guys are much too quick off the mark pressing me for a review. I haven't begun to read it yet!
Published 8 months ago by Chiquita
The first comedy of postmodernism?
'At Swim-Two-Birds' was Flann O'Brien's first novel, and by many accounts his best. It was published in 1939 but sold poorly; republished in 1950, it still failed to sell. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Paul Bowes
So mad we can get drunk on it
This novel is a crossroads between Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and a few others who deal with absurdity or the madness of the stream of consciousness of any sane... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Jacques COULARDEAU
This book is a lot of things. A masterpiece being one of them
For the first time I finished a book and felt compelled to read it again immediately. I knew that I hadn't taken in all that this amazing, frustrating, annoying book had to offer. Read more
Published 16 months ago by haunted
Perhaps the greatest comic novel ever
At Swim-Two-Birds is one of the great comic novels. O'Brien's language is flawless, his imagination strange and vivid and his dialogue both convincing and hilarious. Read more
Published on 16 Jun 2009 by Guardian of the Scales
A Smug Comic Spirit
Brian O'Nolan, born in Strabane in 1911, wrote under a number of pen-names - although Flann O'Brien is probably the best known. Read more
Published on 11 April 2008 by Craobh Rua
The true Great Irish Novel
O'Brien's fusion of celtic wit, mythology and nonsense makes this a true postmodern masterpiece but truly stands up as a parody of Irish society. Read more
Published on 10 Jan 2008 by Boz
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