- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Harper Perennial; (Reissue) edition (16 April 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007247192
- ISBN-13: 978-0007855193
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.4 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 161,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘Flann O'Brien is inventive, his storytelling is swift and sure, making the eccentric seem natural and the commonplace hilarious.’ The Times
‘“The Dalkey Archive” is worth every penny for the hilarious fourth chapter alone in which De Selby and his two drinking companions in aqualungs converse with St Augustine in an underwater cave off Dalkey seafront. A wicked yet affectionate satire on Irishry.’ City Limits
‘O'Brien's dialogue is keen and inspired, the prose lucid and sharp with a blend of lunatic improbable and seamless quotidian.’ Irish Times
Product Description
From the author of the classic novel ‘At-Swim-Two-Birds’ comes this ingenious tale which follows the mad and absurd ambitions of a scientist determined to destroy the world.
Flann O'Brien's third novel, 'The Dalkey Archive' is a riotous depiction of the extraordinary events surrounding theologian and mad scientist De Selby's attempt to destroy the world by removing all the oxygen from the atmosphere. Only Michael Shaughnessy, 'a lowly civil servant', and James Joyce, alive and well and working as a barman in the nearby seaside resort of Skerries, can stop the inimitable De Selby in his tracks.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Dalkey Archive is a risky read - you risk never reaching for anything that O'Brien wrote again. He did not write that much but still it would be a pity to miss out At Swim-Two-Birds or The Third Policeman. Archive is a spin-off of the latter novel. Coherent, funny at places but it is more of sustained effort than tour-de-force which you have all the rights to expect from O'Brien.
There is little of plot here - two young Irish gentlemen meet by chance a mad scientist and having learned about his plan to annihilate humanity try to stop him from doing so. Characters as different as St Augustine and James Joyce make cameo appearances but they add little to the slim plot. The sad facts of the case are that O'Brien failed to make the expected splash with his first novel, his second wasn't even published and he went on making a brilliant career as a satirical columnist. When twenty years later At Swim-Two-Birds was resurrected and hailed as the first post-modern novel, he tried to go back to writing fiction but with little artistic success. And yet this is a classic so why not give it a chance?
There is little of plot here - two young Irish gentlemen meet by chance a mad scientist and having learned about his plan to annihilate humanity try to stop him from doing so. Characters as different as St Augustine and James Joyce make cameo appearances but they add little to the slim plot. The sad facts of the case are that O'Brien failed to make the expected splash with his first novel, his second wasn't even published and he went on making a brilliant career as a satirical columnist. When twenty years later At Swim-Two-Birds was resurrected and hailed as the first post-modern novel, he tried to go back to writing fiction but with little artistic success. And yet this is a classic so why not give it a chance?
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Dalkey Archives is essentially a portrait of the insane philosopher/mad professor De Selby, so often referred to in the extended footnotes of O' Brien's opus The Third Policeman.
The book's more satirical elements never impinge on the laughs to be had from the farcical expolits of De Selby in his twisted plot to deprive the work of oxygen.
Read The Third Policeman and then this. You will be extremely pleased.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you have read "The Third Policeman" then you do not need to read this. If you have not read "The Third Policeman" then do so because it is much much better then this. My understanding is that the 3rd PC was never published during the author's life and so he plundered some gold from it to inject some fizz into what is a pretty lacklustre affair.
Two stars simply for the gold stuff about the bicycles.
Two stars simply for the gold stuff about the bicycles.
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