Customer Reviews

The Dalkey archive

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I love Flann O'Brien in both his languages and all his names. No book has ever made me laugh as loud or as long as his An Beal Bocht/The Poor Mouth, but along with the laughter, O'Brien was nudging me to reconsider a few old pieties and truisms.

So too with The Dalkey Archive. Big events overtake a little place and little (though not in their own views!) people must take action. Religion and science collide head-on and the very future of the world-as-we-know-it-in-Dalkey is threatened.

Perhaps a younger person can't appreciate the edge on O'Brien's themes: religion, science, world-threatening geniuses. Perhaps the end of the cold war, the burgeoning of technology and the seeming irrelevance of the Church make the questions raised in Dalkey outdated. What remains, however, is brilliant comedy of the verbal sort, the sort which no one since Perelman and the Marx Brothers has done as well in the USA.

O'Brien is at his best when exploring the ligatures between the brain and the tongue. His dialogues capture perfectly the kind of conversation the Irish are famed for, but O'Brien never fails to make us notice just how many of the words are gratuitous, redundant, fatuous, for all their charm. Moreover, lurking in the verbal pyrotechnics are all manner of fallacy and foolishness: the very thing that is bound to happen when ordinary people are put upon to construct reality out of our few scraps of real information, on our feet, and with a few drinks taken. The "Truth" about religion, science, literature, Ireland, people---as the denizens of Dalkey construct it for themselves--gives us cause for healing laughter as it gently dismantles a few false gods and just as gently exposes the foibles of men and Irishmen.

I first read "The Dalkey Archive" twenty-six years ago, while a graduate student at Trinity College in Dublin. It struck me then, as it strikes me now upon re-reading it (for the second time), as one of the most peculiarly funny books I've ever read. It combines elements of original lunacy and weird science with the resonating touchstones of a uniquely Irish comic sensibility. The story is driven by the madcap schemes of a character named De Selby, who describes himself as "a theologist and a physicist, sciences which embrace many others such as eschatology and astrognosy." De Selby invents a substance which removes all oxygen from the atmosphere (a substance he calls "DMP", the acronym for the Dublin Metropolitan Police) and then discovers that a deoxygenated atmosphere cancels the serial nature of time. The plot moves on from there, with Mick Shaughnessy, a "lowly civil servant", engaging the local constable to help him save the world from De Selby's scheme to deoxygentate the world's atmosphere. In the course of things, "The Dalkey Archive" contains two of the funniest chapters ever written (Chapters 4 and 9): one in which De Selby, Mick Shaughnessy and a drinking companion named Hackett, clad in aqualungs, talk to Saint Augustine (his "Dublin accent was unmistakable") about arcane theological doctrines and the Church Fathers in an underwater cave; the other in which Sergeant Fottrell, the constable, explains to Mick his "Mollycule Theory", the theory that people's personalities become mixed up with those of bicycles through the pounding of man and machine while pedaling down bumpy Irish country roads ("a process of prolonged carnal intercussion"). Along the way, Mick discovers that James Joyce is alive, well and bartending in the small coastal town of Skerries. Need I say more? "The Dalkey Archive" is a work of startling wit and originality, one of my comic favorites!

I don't recall reading an odder book than "The Dalkey Archive", with the possible exception of Wilson and Shea's "Illuminatus! Trilogy". The plot revolves around an subdued madman who is attempting to destroy the Earth, and an even more subdued protagonist, who is attempting to thwart this plan. There are, of course, inconsequential, yet infinitely hilarious subplots, for example the police inspector who slits his deputy's bicycle's tires because he's convinced that, as people ride on bicycles down bumpy country lanes, molecules are exchanged between the vehicle and the rider, thereby bestowing a sort of fiendish intelligence and humanity to the instrument and a placid nonsentience to the user, with various side effects. Also, the book forces us to ask if James Joyce really died in exile, as well as if Christian saints can be resurrected through science. As I said, quite eclectic, quite odd. Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable read.

I first read "The Dalkey Archive" twenty years ago, while a graduate student at Trinity College in Dublin. It struck me then, as it strikes me now upon re-reading it, as one of the most peculiarly funny books I've ever read. It combines elements of original lunacy and weird science with the resonating touchstones of a uniquely Irish comic sensibility. The story is driven by the madcap schemes of a character named De Selby, who describes himself as "a theologist and a physicist, sciences which embrace many others such as eschatology and astrognosy." De Selby invents a substance which removes all oxygen from the atmosphere (a substance he calls "DMP", the acronym for the Dublin Metropolitan Police) and then discovers that a deoxygenated atmosphere cancels the serial nature of time. The plot moves on from there, with Mick Shaughnessy, a "lowly civil servant", engaging the local constable to help him save the world from De Selby's scheme to deoxygentate the world's atmosphere. In the course of things, "The Dalkey Archive" contains two of the funniest chapters ever written (Chapters 4 and 9): one in which De Selby, Mick Shaughnessy and a drinking companion named Hackett, clad in aqualungs, talk to Saint Augustine (his "Dublin accent was unmistakable") about arcane theological doctrines and the Church Fathers in an underwater cave; the other in which Sergeant Fottrell, the constable, explains to Mick his "Mollycule Theory", the theory that people's personalities become mixed up with those of bicycles through the pounding of man and machine while pedaling down bumpy Irish country roads ("a process of prolonged carnal intercussion"). Along the way, Mick discovers that James Joyce is alive, well and bartending in the small coastal town of Skerries. Need I say more? "The Dalkey Archive" is a work of startling wit and originality, one of my comic favorites!

O'Brien is not a household name but he is a wag of the calibre of Oscar Wilde or even Joyce when Joyce wasn't taking himself too seriously. This is a classic but nearly unknown work. It does require some interest in traditional literary issues such as the history of church metaphysics, but only to give the basis of a good joke. Track this work down and read it, for the betterment of your wit and understanding.

I first read "The Dalkey Archive" twenty years ago, while a graduate student at Trinity College in Dublin. It struck me then, as it strikes me now upon re-reading it, as one of the most peculiarly funny books I've ever read. It combines elements of original lunacy and weird science with the resonating touchstones of a uniquely Irish comic sensibility. The story is driven by the madcap schemes of a character named De Selby, who describes himself as "a theologist and a physicist, sciences which embrace many others such as eschatology and astrognosy." De Selby invents a substance which removes all oxygen from the atmosphere (a substance he calls "DMP", the acronym for the Dublin Metropolitan Police) and then discovers that a deoxygenated atmosphere cancels the serial nature of time. The plot moves on from there, with Mick Shaughnessy, a "lowly civil servant", engaging the local constable to help him save the world from De Selby's scheme to deoxygentate the world's atmosphere. In the course of things, "The Dalkey Archive" contains two of the funniest chapters ever written (Chapters 4 and 9): one in which De Selby, Mick Shaughnessy and a drinking companion named Hackett, clad in aqualungs, talk to Saint Augustine (his "Dublin accent was unmistakable") about arcane theological doctrines and the Church Fathers in an underwater cave; the other in which Sergeant Fottrell, the constable, explains to Mick his "Mollycule Theory", the theory that people's personalities become mixed up with those of bicycles through the pounding of man and machine while pedaling down bumpy Irish country roads ("a process of prolonged carnal intercussion"). Along the way, Mick discovers that James Joyce is alive, well and bartending in the small coastal town of Skerries. Need I say more? "The Dalkey Archive" is a work of startling wit and originality, one of my comic favorites!

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?

This is an excellent book by my favourite Irish author. It has several plots all of which are very funny, although I think my personal favourite is the love triangle between Mary, Mick, and Hackett. It was also written after James Joyce had died so it is very interesting (and amusing) how he is miscast in this book. He is alive and in hiding for one thing. Joyce was actually an early champion of Flann's work so they might have been friends.

I'm biased. Love this book. Love this author. Cannot get enough.

What really got me about this book? Believe it or not, it was the ending. The pages between the covers were hysterical as well, but the... well, I better not ruin it. Just read the %^*$ book.

This was the final 'novel' published by this always interesting author, who admits to his publisher it is not a novel, but an inebriate attitude towards writing in itself: 'The book is not meant to be a novel or anything of the kind but a study in derision, various writers with their styles, and sundry modes, attitudes and cults being the rats in the cage.'

We have a rather long section near the end of Mick's interior monologue which ultimately signifies nothing, and is tough going, in itself.

This work is rather like warming up last week's leftovers of a good Irish stew, a but of everything, now all mashed together indistinguishably.

Read, rather the original. Read deeply and well, and repeatedly The Third Policeman, and having read that great and hilarious and instructive and brilliant parody, hear it read wonderfully by Jim Norton at Third Policeman.

The Third Policeman is perfect throughout, yet could find no publisher. Therefore we find in this present work characters resurrected from that wonderful work, but here to lesser effect. The magisterial police sergeant is here paraded out like a circus elephant to waddle his linguistic bit, marvelously of course, and De Selby returns, here in the flesh and not merely in his texts as admired by the Third Policeman's narrator. The resurrection is unfortunate, and abandoned oddly halfway through, despite De Selby once more being the prime motivator of the tale.

Somewhere in an Irish bank vault lies a canister of the most powerful and destructive force in the world, abandoned and forgotten, even by this author, unknown to the Bank, or to De Selby. What we ultimately find here is a resolution of a three way romance among drunks we really do not care about after all, ultimately merely a shaggy dog story, a bit of Irish bull, and not a good bit.

See The Third Policeman, and regret this later work.

In a reflection upon writing which appears in this text, we find a listing of major faults, including artificial tensions. This narrative runs upon the ethanol of artificial tensions, resolved within half a page, as if the author had no structure, and only limited interest spanning half page periods.

Even a cameo from the late great Mr. James Joyce cannot save this work, and falls ultimately flat, with Joyce denying all writing ascribed to him, and claiming to be merely the for-free author of religious tracts, tuppence each. Nevertheless, this early interchange between Mick and Joyce are revelatory of what might have been written in all seriousness:

'-It is widely accepted, Mick reminded him, that this country has for centuries been subjected to vicious over-taxation and exploitation, both by the British government and a cabal of corrupt and pitiless ruffians called absentee landlords. The Famine was one result of that regime.

'-Ah (responds Joyce) there were bad times in the past.

'-And I don't offend your reverence, I hope, by bringing to mind the horror of the tithes, when a beggared peasantry were compelled to support a Church in which they had no belief and for which they had no use.

'-Quite, quite. And at a time when their own priests were hunted and persecuted.'

Such historical recollection from the communal memory may smack of the episode 12 in Barney Kiernan's of Ulysses, but is a thin soup indeed. We might turn for such instead to reading the compelling historical accounts such as Feed the Children First: Irish Memories of the Great Hunger.

For Joyce we best read the work. Brian O'Nolan (Flann O'Brien's real name) fails to portray a convincing Joyce in these pages, but a befuddled old fellow leaking cliches. Nevertheless, O'Nolan has his main character here, Mick, state in a long passage on Joycean criticism: 'But I have an admiration for all his other work, for his dexterity and resource in handling language, for his precision, for his subtlety in conveying the image of Dublin and her people, for his accuracy in setting down speech authentically, and for his enormous humour.' .

Joyce, for his part, the real Joyce, is oft quoted as having said of this author of three known names: 'A real writer, with the true comic spirit.'

The brilliance of the brief newspaper bits and the economy of Third Policeman I found missing in this mish-mosh, which includes some rather sloppy writing. Often throughout it grows difficult to ascertain the antecedent intended by the oft-used pronoun 'he' and at times we encounter question which a decent proofreader or copy editor might have cleared up. For instance about a third of the way into the book we read 'he had never found himself much in rapport in the human scene with any priest' where sense might have been intended for scene, and swiftly thereafter we read ' . . .to show charity to those who in weakness had stayed' where strayed by sense and by cliche is the obvious word. What is most shameless are the numerous cliches placed into the ever original mouth of Mr. James Joyce.

But above all may we turn for this author from this embarrassing last work to his wonderful Third Policeman, and to the various collections of his brief newspaper pieces, anthologized in such places as At War (Lannan Selection).

This is nevertheless a marvel of Irish Catholic literature, as the old men in their old ages seek solace in dreaming of retiring from the public life into the arms of the Church's religious orders, Mick imagining the Trappists. The elder Joyce here is offered a position darning disintegrating Jesuit underwear.