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The Third Policeman Paperback – January 1, 2007

by Flann O'Brien (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 1,412 ratings
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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.
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  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harper Perennial
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 2007
  5. Dimensions
    5.12 x 0.57 x 7.76 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0007247176
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0007247172
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial; (Reissue) edition (January 1, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0007247176
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0007247172
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.12 x 0.57 x 7.76 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 1,412 ratings

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  1. Flann O'Brien

    Flann O'Brien

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    Flann O'Brien, whose real name was Brian O'Nolan, also wrote under the pen name of Myles na Gopaleen. He was born in 1911 in County Tyrone. A resident of Dublin, he graduated from University College after a brilliant career as a student (editing a magazine called Blather) and joined the Civil Service, in which he eventually attained a senior position.

    He wrote throughout his life, which ended in Dublin on April 1, 1966. His other novels include The Dalkey Archive, The Third Policeman, The Hard Life, and The Poor Mouth, all available from Dalkey Archive Press. Also available are three volumes of his newspaper columns: The Best of Myles, Further Cuttings from Cruiskeen Lawn, and At War.

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  2. Denis Donoghue

    Denis Donoghue

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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
1,412 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Lawrie Cherniack
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece!
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2020
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I have an M.A. in English, have reread Ulysses multiple times, love Yeats, love Shaw, and yet here is an Irish author I am embarrassed to say I had never heard of before, but who has written a masterpiece of writing and dreams. It is impossible to describe the impossible yet completely believable plot. The writing, the dialogue, the characters, all combine to create one of those relatively small gems like The Great Gatsby or Heart of Darkness or The Death of Ivan Illych which probe deeply into the heart of humanity and leave indelible traces in our own hearts. There's no use describing this book. Every word is perfectly placed within a perfectly placed sentence within a perfectly placed paragraph. There is no dross in this book. It is pure gold!
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Richard Amero
4.0 out of 5 stars An amusing and haunting exploration into space and time
Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2009
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It is extremely difficult to write about The Third Policeman (Dalkey Archive Press, 2005) by Flann O'Brien without giving too much away. This is indeed the problem of the excellent introduction by Denis Donoghue and the excerpt from a letter O'Brien (one of the author's numerous names) wrote to American novelist William Saroyan that is repeated in the introduction and in a last-page afterword.. The book would have been a lot better if the introduction and the afterword had not been included. As far as one can guess, these insertions would not have been author O'Brien's intention. Like any writer, no matter how narcissistic or alcoholic he was, he craved recognition and the money such recognition would bring. In this sense, The Third Policeman is a communication from the author to the reader and in a wider context to society at large. Since every reader is entitled to express his own responses, answers and rebuttals to O'Brien's conjuring, I herewith dispense with the preliminary and postliminary scholarly and incisive analyses. I know now that Donoghue and I share much the same opinion about The Third Policeman. His comes more from the scope of his reading and knowledge, and I from my immediate acquaintance with the novel as an artifact. Fortunately I, like Donoghue, have some ideas about the sources from which O'Brien got the plot, cast, and shape of his novel.

For me the chief sources were Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. I will not mention another more essential source for that would give the plot away. Let me only say that O'Brien received his elementary and primary education in Roman Catholic Schools, but religion, at least in its conventional and easily recognizable forms, is not part of the book. Unless I missed buried references there is not a priest or bishop anywhere. There is a fleeting reference to Parnell as a hero and "Home Rule" is mentioned, as a slip-of-the-tongue, but never comes to the forefront in the minds of people in the novel...

Another feature is the absence of female characters until the very end when, without giving anything away about the plot, a woman, as unattractive as a woman can be, puts in a wifely appearance. Nevertheless there is a feminine aura over the entire novel and this is due to bicycles. Not so along ago bicycles were advertised in the American (and I suppose in the European) media as erotic objects. Boys in saloons and in backrooms were aware of glamorous pictures of nude women straddling or floating gleefully on the top of.obliging and polished bicycles. Later motorcycles became ultimate macho sex objects. But this is a novel about bicycles as they affected a small group of unusual people; unusual in the respect that the main characters are two loquacious policemen, an unsavory business partner of the nameless leading character, a contingent of one-legged men who appear up to no good but their own, a third policeman who is mostly invisible, asocial and so massive that he could be in the Guinness book of records, and the alluring bicycles whom readers are asked to accept as goddesses.

All the characters in the novel are inverted. Most have an overriding mission. On the ubiquitous narrator's part this mission is to get a black box from a man he has murdered which he thinks will make him rich and which metamorphoses into a box that contains occult powers that will compel everyone to do his bidding. It is like a gold box that King Midas might have possessed, though the narrator does not go that far. Actually he does not get very far at all because The Third Policeman is a novel that is partially a dream that seems real in a realm of no time. Author O'Brien does not get into quantum physics where, on a popular level, there appears to be an infinity of lower and lower elements until one reaches quarks and gluons and after that anti-matter (which, according to my rules of logic, would be no matter.) But O'Brien is intrigued with the idea of infinite progression shown at first by the endless receding eyes of Mathers who had been killed by the narrator. As with the stranger in Albert Camus' novel of that name, the narrator had no scruples about the murder. Subjective feelings, except for bicycles, are absent from the novel. It would be impertinent of me to say this detachment from monstrous deeds is an Irish characteristic, though John Synge made a scandal about The Playboy of the Western World's boastfulness about the death of his father.

While O'Brien is certainly entitled to make as much of infinite retrogressions and progressions as he wished, it is fair to say that this is not a new device. Mirrors that reflect mirrors and so on without stop are the stock-in-trade of horror movies and of some of Jean Couteau's surrealistic movies. Receding views of boxes within boxes or of dolls within dolls (Russian style) would seem to reach a point of no return. This would be true in the everyday world. In the topsy-turvy world of Alice in Wonderland and of Gulliver's Travels limits are exceeded and boundaries are crossed. Being more of a metaphysician than a mathematician, like Lewis Carroll, O'Brien claims his lead characters are in the presence of eternity. A marvelous episode in the novel occurs when the narrator and his two meddling policemen, who are intent on hanging him though he has no name and hence does not exist, discover a map of the universe on the ceiling of a police cell and through some magic of metempsychosis or of levitation find themselves within it. Their discovery of eternity is not a big deal as they can leave it by means of a lift. The catch is they can not take the riches or the knowledge they found there back to earth.

There is a strong element of satire in The Third Policemen which occurs at the bottoms of pages in footnotes when they do not take over entire pages. These are about the narrator's absorption with the works and life of De Selby and of his critics and defenders. This is an obvious takeoff on the Academy of Lagado in Swift's Gulliver's Travels, though, I would not be surprised if some of the medieval schoolmen, say Thomas Aquinas or Duns Scotus, were also being mocked. To me the satire was like going though a series of gags, put-downs and turn-abouts in the manner of vaudeville shows. It was hard to take it seriously as everybody concerned is a fake.

Now for the conundrum: what American's would call the "whole enchilada" or what O'Brien would call the "pancake." This is: Is the novel worth reading without knowing the denouement? Definitely, for all the meanderings and lucubrations lead up to a grand surprise which one thinks shamefacedly they should that thought of all along. Second, is the novel worth reading after knowing the metaphysical and moral reasons for its existence? My answer is Yes, not only because Henry James said the plot is the least important part of a novel which in this case is not altogether appropriate as other features such as characters are one-dimensional and the setting is minimal but exact.

The novel is worth reading for it peculiarities and for its differences from traditional realistic novels in which scenes and people are described in customary and trite language. Like Gulliver's Travels and Alice in Wonderland each and every character is a grotesque and, as such, a projection from inside the narrator. They are fantastics. Sleep itself occupies a prominent place in the novel and the inference is that sleep is better than awakening because living has lost its tang. This conclusion is difficult to swallow but these are eerie people who embody ideas that it is hard to imagine most people would embrace, even those who frequent Irish pubs where the reader is given to understand O'Brien was a regular customer. Once more, without giving the plot away, The Third Policemen reads like an attenuated version of De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium Eater."

Lastly, what I most enjoyed about the book, and why I would recommend it for reading, if not for the writing of college theses, is O'Brien's enlivening and, to me, altogether new use of the English Language. The poet Ezra Pound said, "make it new." And this O'Brien did with virtuoso twists, inversion and sleights-of-tongue. Sometimes in Shakespeare readers get a similar impression of a master practitioner in the jugglery of words, especially in the incorrigible Hotspur in Henry IV, Part I, who could not close his mouth,.and the irresistible Falstaff of Henry IV, Part II. I recommend enjoying the book to the point where all the bon mots, malapropisms, speech rhythms, non sequiturs, jokes, and paradoxes have been committed to memory. Let this be the final verdict: The Third Policeman is a novel that excels in paradoxes.
17 people found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars They Apparently Can't All be Winners
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2021
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Having read and enjoyed a number of Flann O'Brien's incredibly clever,funny and insightful short stories, I decided to reread his famous absurdist crime novel. It turns out that sometimes the absurd is clever,insightful and incredibly funny,and sometimes it is just absurd . Fortunately,an addendum to the book includes a letter written by O'Brien to William Saroyan which explains the 'clever twist' in the plot and simultaneously confirms my deceased dad's strong admonition that "if ya gotta explain 'em, don't tell 'em." In this case,stick to the volume of "The Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien" and you won't go wrong .
9 people found this helpful
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David Fortnight
5.0 out of 5 stars Fall Off Your Chair Hilarious Satire
Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2012
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Oh come on--don't tell me you've never read Flann O'Brien? Inimitable pen name of Brian O'Nolan (go figure), the inimitable humorist for the Dublin newspaper and novelist who wrote both in Gaelic and English? You've never heard of Dalkey Archive Press in Illinois--which is named for another one of O'Brien's unique novels (The Dalkey Archive, that is)? And then again, have you read Ulysses, where before or after the library scene (representing the passage by Charybdis and Scylla, I believe)Stephen Daedalus is crossing the square in downtown Dublin and notes that he sees the newspaperman in seedy suit or some such, who is in fact Brian O'Nolan, a contemporary of Joyce's? Well...I highly recommend that you start with THE THIRD POLICEMAN, which in spite of being a translation from the original in Gaelic has to be one of the funniest books ever written in any language. I can't begin to describe it because it is in a genre of its own, something like Gothic-Fantasy-Satirical-Irish Black Humor-Twainian-Humbuggerist-Social Commentary. Some years ago when I was working on some short book reviews for a bookstore newsletter (and that is another long story better left out here), I discovered that my colleague at the time, Doug, had never read THE THIRD POLICEMAN. I immediately secured a copy and vowed that we needed to review the Dalkey Archives Press reprint of the novel IMMEDIATELY! And so the intrepid Doug picked it up and started reading the first chapter while I was typing some other rubbish on a computer. In (approximately) 10 minutes time, he started laughing, and he continued laughing until he was laughing so hard that he fell off the wooden chair he was sitting on and literally rolled on the floor. Now, you may consider this story apocryphal or even inconsequential. But I just wish to declare here, publicly, that that is the only time I have ever seen anyone fulfill that crusty cliche--that I laughed so hard I fell off my chair. Doug could have injured himself, and in fact, he ended up gasping for air and nearly asphyxiating himself over Flann O'Brien. So that's all I'm going to say about this here, except to add that every reader aged 12 years or older (and the occasional brilliant toddler, too) must read Flann O'Brien to expand his or her mental boundaries and contribute to their elasticity. But caveat emptor--don't sit on a bar stool or any seat that is too slippery when you read him. And above all, don't read him near any steep drop offs like a ravine or riverbank, much less while climbing the Matterhorn or Mt. Whitney with spikes and pulleys and all that gear, or visiting the Grand Canyon.
12 people found this helpful
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David E. Mann, MD
5.0 out of 5 stars A nightmare well-footnoted
Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2022
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This is certainly one of the most bizarre books I have read, but it actually made some sense in the end. For large stretches of the book I wondered what I was reading. Some of the imagery is terrifying. The author manages to combine this bizarre narrative with a subtext mocking academic writing. I would love to learn more about the theories of de Selby!
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Top reviews from other countries

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Alberto V.
5.0 out of 5 stars Todo correcto
Reviewed in Spain on March 6, 2022
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Era el libro que necesitaba para la escuela de idiomas
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john courtney
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliance, genius and intellect in abundance.
Reviewed in Canada on August 30, 2020
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First, I must confess that although I am Irish, this has very little influence on the tenor of my ultra-enthusiastic review of this novel.

I will admit, however, that the acronym “OTT” may be a tad relevant.

I consider TTP to be one of the top 25 novels of all time; and it — along with his other opus “At Swim-Two-Birds” ... Joyce’s “Ulysses” ... Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” ... and 21 more that I will not list, in the interests of brevity, are proof positive that mankind is capable of great achievements.

Anthony Burgess’ laudatory opinion of the writings of Flann O’Brien (ne Brian O’Nolan ... a.k.a. “Myles na gCopaleen” ... the nom-de-plume he used in his DAILY columns for Ireland’s premier newspaper) doesn’t come close to describing the genius of the man and the force of intellect evident in his incredible novels — esp. the two mentioned above, which are already in my backpack in case I find myself banished to, or stranded on, a desert island.

The never ending circular structure of TTP masterpiece, the spectacular array of quixotic characters such as the wonderfully insane, footnote-referenced, savant, de Selby; the bicycle-obsessed policemen; the one-legged men; and, of course, the mind-blowing abilities of the actual third policeman are combined seamlessly in a tale so ludicrous — yet breathtakingly brilliant — that I defy any sentient being to be, somehow, un-enthralled to such a bewildering extent as to be incapable of appreciating the once-in-a-millennium-encountered talent on display after the first sentence.

Beg, borrow or steal this book!
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Nina
5.0 out of 5 stars Marvellous
Reviewed in Brazil on November 11, 2019
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Loved it. Watch out for spoilers: it's best not to read the preface or anything about the book before finishing it, othewise the whole experience could be ruined.
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Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars An amusing tale about a thieving murderer and a trio of coppers
Reviewed in Australia on January 18, 2018
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The main character is obsessed with the writings of a madman while the cops are obsessed with bicycles that they themselves have stolen. Very funny and twisted.
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Lucia
5.0 out of 5 stars Un genio, c'è poco da dire.
Reviewed in Italy on September 14, 2016
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Esilarante, assurdo, intelligentissimo! Per chi ama la letteratura che spiazza, un romanzo che guarda il mondo con occhio severo ed ironico al tempo stesso, un libro che interpreta le realtà umane da punti di vista insospettabili. Godibilissimo!
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