The Third Policeman
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, The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland's great comic geniuses.
Stats for nerds
9recommend
18mentions
16people
2011–2026years
50% recommend44% neutral6% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- My gateway drug was The Third Policeman, as read aloud by Patrick Magee on the wireless in 1986, a feat all the more remarkable for a man that was, quite appropriately, dead at the time.
- A surprise to see Flann O'Brien pop up in the comments. While we're here, I will say that At Swim Two Birds and The Third Policeman are fantastic books, I highly recommend them.
- Hah, that video was ... unexpected to say the least.
I love Brian O'Nolan/Flann O'Brian - particularly the Third Policeman. I should read The Poor Mouth.
Wonder if there are Scottish Gaelic bands like The Rubberbandits. I like Clannadonia, but they are 'just' a piper/drummer band.
- Other books I know of that play with part or all of the text itself being an artifact of the fiction:
- The Third Policeman, Flann O’Brian. Fictional scholar of a fictional esoteric philosopher weaves his commentary on same philosopher into an account of his… journey.
- If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino. You(!) embark on an adventure to find the book you believed you purchased, which was If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino.
- The Princess Bride, William Goldman. This has a very different framing narrative from the film, and is very much worth a read.
(Setting aside epistolary novels like Dracula)
- I enjoyed "The Third Policeman" by Flann O'Brien, an author who died in the 60s but who had been completely unknown to me until this year. It's a short and very surreal novel, with an Irish dark tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.
- Absolute stand-outs from my teens, twenties and thirties, respectively, are The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien, Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
Every visual/graphic/product/web designer should read The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst.
