📚 Today's AI Literary Zeitgeist #21 Book: The Third Policeman – Flann O'Brien Today feels like reality has become slightly surreal: the absurd and the serious sitting side by side, while nobody quite agrees on which is which. What’s does it tell us?

This book is bonkers but I'm loving it. "Why would anybody steal a watch when they can steal a bicycle?" [The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien]

I read At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O'Brien. Lord, but they don't write them like this anymore, they don't. More's the pity, he agreed, no they don't. The sentiment was rejoined with spirit, ratified to the convivial satisfaction of all present, and resolved. Conclusion of the foregoing.

My review after reading "The Third Policeman" by Flann O'Brien is: go get the book now and read it. Wonderfully absurd novel, you'll find enormous policemen obsessed with bicycles, learned discussions of the bizarre theories of the fictional scholar De Selby, and much more.

Sir Almaviva@ilcontealmaviva.bsky.social · last mo.

I got some books from the library and the librarian described one of them as "Franz Kafka meets Alice in Wonderland" so now I'm very much looking forward to reading it.

Check out Brian Ó Conchubhair's award-winning biography of Flann O'Brien/Brian O'Nolan. In all good bookshops!

Fintan Mallory@fintanmallory.com · 4w ago

New biography of Flann O’Brien! By Brian Ó Conchubhair! It’s 700 pages!! And in Irish!!!

I've just finished the fantastic "The Third Policeman" by Flann O'Brien (highly recommended) and I'm just starting "The Time of the Angels" by Iris Murdoch.

Steve Mullis@stevemullis.net · 4w ago

It is National Book Lovers Day. I'm sure there is some corporate or capitalist origin, but who cares? Take some time to read today. Start a new book, finish that one you've been working on. Visit your local indie store or library. What are you reading? What did you just finish? 📚💙 #booksky

Out now! The Journal of Flann O'Brien Studies is packed with great work on the connections between O'Brien and Huxley, including a valuable introduction by guest editors @tobias-w-harris.bsky.social, Emily Reed and Claudia Olk. Thanks to the @openlibhums.org it is wholly free & open access.

Tobias W. Harris@tobias-w-harris.bsky.social · 3w ago

Pleased to announce a new issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Flann O'Brien Studies dedicated to interlocking threads in the work of Flann O'Brien and Aldous Huxley. This is the editorial introduction by Claudia Olk, Emily Louise and I: parishreview.openlibhums.org/article/id/3...

James Bacon, who has done great work on Flann and trains, is giving a talk on the history of the censorship of comics in Ireland at the National Library on 6 August at 6pm. Flann will get a mention! More details via the link below:

Banned Comics at the NLI

A history of censorship of comics in Ireland

nli.ie

Though 'The Third Policeman' is my favourite, 'At Swim-Two-Birds' and 'Country Girls' had bigger impacts on my life, I think. Does one even need to read beyond the O'Briens?! 😄

Irish Literary Times@irishlittimes.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Lots of Odyssey memes on social media today but we'll never top Flann O'Brien's At-Swim-Two-Birds and his introduction of two minor characters, Timothy Danaos and Dona Ferentes.

At Swim-Two-Birds is so bizarre and delightful. Nothing can prepare a person for it (perhaps among the highest praise I can give a book).

Next in the playlist of music to read Flann O'Brien by is Trá Pháidín's new album ‘Cloch ‘s Claí’. Its launch track, called 'An Béal Bocht' after Myles na gCopaleen's 1941 novel, casts a satirical eye on Ireland's relationship with Irish and the Gaeltacht. Check it out!

Trá Pháidín Announce New Album ‘Cloch ‘s Claí’ & Share ‘An Béal Bocht’ Video

Trá Pháidín announce “Cloch ‘s Claí”, their first for World of Echo, and share a video for launch track “An Béal Bocht”.

klofmag.com

Coming soon from UCD press! New Zealand's Irish Revolution draws on new primary sources and archival material to examine New Zealand responses to the events in Ireland 1912-1923. I was delighted to write on the way the poets of the Easter Rising, Joyce and Yeats were linked in NZ newspapers.

New Zealand’s Irish Revolution

Offering original New Zealand perspectives on the Irish Revolution from the third Home Rule crisis to the establishment of the Irish Free State, this collection explores the political, social, and cul...

ucdpress.ie

“Is it about a bicycle?” ― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien #booksky #currentlyreading #nowreading

What are the books you yammer on about to anyone who'll listen? MASON&DIXON, Thomas Pynchon AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS, Flann O’Brien THE WAVES, Virginia Woolf MISS MACINTOSH, MY DARLING, Marguerite Young AMERICAN TABLOID, James Ellroy ALICE IN SUNDERLAND, Bryan Talbot

JacquiWine@jacquiwine.bsky.social · 2mo ago

What are the books you yammer on about to anyone who'll listen? CASSANDRA AT THE WEDDING, Dorothy Baker MRS PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT, Elizabeth Taylor THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, Edith Wharton THE BEGINNING OF SPRING, Penelope Fitzgerald IN A LONELY PLACE, Dorothy B. Hughes BALKAN TRILOGY, Manning 💙📚

The Best of Myles. I found this in the stacks of the Suzzallo Library in 1977. It was out of print and no one (in America, at least) was paying attention to the work of Flann O'Brien. It was the first or second book to lead me to distrust the canon and start looking for other neglected books.

Irish Literary Times@irishlittimes.bsky.social · 2mo ago

At Swim-Two-Birds: the best possible option for the Leaving Cert, or as likely as honours maths to have students crying in the toilets?

David Ferguson-Honsbein 🏳️‍🌈@davidpbferguson.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I feel like Flann O'Brien gets badly done by. He should be on the Leaving Cert sylabus with books like At Swim Two Birds.

Finally! Myles na gCopaleen's book handling service is now available in Berlin. (I mean, are we surprised? East German avant-garde cool always recognises a good idea)..

‘Coffee must be dropped at different height than wine’: The Berlin team making books look well-read

An idea to make books look a bit more used, once jokingly proposed by one Myles na gCopaleen, has been made real in German capital

irishtimes.com

modernistreviewcouk.wordpress.com/2026/05/29/b...

Book Review: Flann O’Brien and the European Avant-Garde, 1934–45: Dublin’s Dadaist

29 May 2026 Gina Case, Boston College Tobias W. Harris’s first monograph, Flann O’Brien and the European Avant-Garde, 1934-45: Dublin’s Dadaist (2025) begins with a perfectly absurd excerpt from a …

modernistreviewcouk.wordpress.com

Unable to reconcile my need to read with the insatiable demands of chess, I've retired from the latter. Currently in Ireland with the rather wonderful Flann O'Brien (my first).

‘The revolutionary role of the Irish-made ‘Lucania’ bicycle - a particular boon to Irish-Irelanders trying to boycott British imports - has not yet been fully appreciated.’ I think Flann O’Brien recognised this… #BookSky💙📚

"A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings." -- Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds #writinglife #writerslife #quotestoliveby

It’s Bloomsday, the day on which the events of Joyce's Ulysses take place I recommend Anthony Cronin’s Arena documentary “Three Irish Writers” about the work of Flann O’Brien,Patrick Cavanagh & Brendan Behan. It also has film of the 1st Bloomsday celebration. It’s a gem. youtu.be/PfNozMdMr3Q?...

Anthony Cronin documentary on Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Behan & Flann O'Brien. Part 1 of 4

YouTube video by Ben McGuire

youtu.be

Given the stories from 1954 about Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh, et al being recorded pissing on Sandymount Strand while absolutely rat-arsed, it sounds like the ukuleles are the only new addition.

Two of Anto Cronin’s books cover this auspicious event, which from what I remember basically boiled down to Cronin, Kavanagh, Flann O’Brien and a couple of others leaving the pub long enough to stand outside the Martello tower in Sandymount for a couple of photos before heading back to the pub.

@timoconnorbl.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Bloomsday has no other origin than a bunch of Dublin drunks trying to get wrecked in pubs where they might have the misfortune to meet Patrick Kavanagh and trying to invent a way to lose him en route to being barred from the next one in turn.

Feeling a quiet swell of national pride that, forget Joyce; Bloomsday is just 100% pure weapons-grade Flann O'Brien. via @josefoshea.bsky.social

Check the chapter out if you're into Flann O'Brien & modernist apocalypses, and read the full book online if you're interested in thoughtful, engaging, urgent chapters on modernist ethics! www.jstor.org/content/oa_b...

Five favourite books that didn’t make the Guardian 100 in no particular order: The Third Policeman - Flann O’Brien Pavane - Keith Roberts A Canticle for Liebowitz - Walter M Miller Master and Commander - Patrick O’Brian Solaris - Stanislaw Lem

Kym Deyn@kymdeyn.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Five favourite books of all time in no particular order: Nox by Anne Carson Kingdoms of Elfin by Sylvia Townsend Warner 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Mother Naked by Glen James Brown Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge ...I think.

Flann O'Brien - The Third Policeman (Published 1967 by MacGibbon & Kee)

Brendel@brendelbored.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Lego should release a set that’s of your house and you build it and see a tinier version of you inside of it, and what are you doing? You are building a Lego version of your house, but smaller. And who is inside that house? A third, even smaller, you