The things that please me

I just recovered one of my favourite books, Flann O'Brien's 'The Third Policeman', from my drinking pal The Choirboy (also a fan, re-reading), after a couple of weeks bereft.

I understand it has recently acquired a new - and much larger - cult following as a result of being referenced in the American TV series 'Lost'. Oh dear - 'my' secret no more.

Although I haven't yet read all O'Brien's books, I have read a fair few, and this one for me stands out head-and-shoulders above the rest. All of them, even his extravagantly praised (by Graham Greene, anyway, in an early review) first novel, 'At Swim-Two-Birds', are fairly random mish-mashes of material left over from his Irish Times funny column, 'The Cruiskeen Lawn'. Only 'The Third Policeman', for me, actually hangs together as a novel (and that only just).

But the writing is just exquisite. Flipping through it just now, mildly pissed and nostalgic for the time of my last reading of it a decade or more ago, I found something striking, marvellous on almost every page. Every page. Every paragraph, almost every line. This is extraordinary writing, and extraordinarily funny - if you get how he is at the same time both pastiching and celebrating traditional Irish phraseology.

I particularly loved this bit, about a momentous, windswept nighttime bicycle ride:



"Other winds were moving about in the stillness of the evening, loitering in the trees and moving leaves and grasses to show that the green world was still present in the dark. Water by the roadside, always overshouted in the roistering day, now performed audibly in its hidings."

Honestly, I almost weep for joy. The observation, the phrasing is so magical. I have to read this book again.