Book Extracts - At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O’Brien

Extract 1, pp. 9-10:

HAVING placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes’ chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter on hundred times as many endings.

Examples of three separate openings – the first: The Pooka MacPhellimey, a member of the devil class, sat in his hut in the middle of a firwood meditating on the nature of the numerals and segregating in his mind the odd ones from the even. He seated at his diptych or ancient two-leaved hinged writing-table with inner sides waxed. His rough long-nailed fingers toyed with a snuff-box of perfect rotundity and through a gap in his teeth he whistled a civil cavatina. He was a courtly man and received honour by reason of the generous treatment he gave his wife, one of the Corrigans of Carlow.

The second opening: There was nothing unusual in the appearance of Mr John Furriskey but actually he had one distinction that is rarely encountered – he was born at the age of twenty-five and entered the world with a memory but without a personal experience to account for it. His teeth were well-formed but stained by tobacco, with two molars filled and a cavity threatened in the left canine. His knowledge of physics was moderate and extended to Boyle’s Law and the Parallelogram of Forces.

The third opening: Finn MacCool was a legendary hero of old Ireland. Though not mentally robust, he was a man of superb physique and development. Each of his thighs was as thick as a horse’s belly, narrowing to a calf as thick as the belly of a foal. Three fifties of fosterlings could engage with handball against the wideness of his backside, which was large enough to halt the march of men through a mountain-pass.

I hurt a tooth in the corner of my jaw with a lump of the crust I was eating. This recalled me to the perception of my surroundings.

It is a great pity, observed my uncle, that you don’t apply yourself more to your studies. The dear knows your father worked hard enough for the money he is laying out on your education. Tell me this, do you ever open a book at all?

I surveyed my uncle in a sullen manner. He speared a portion of cooled rasher against a crust on the prongs of his fork and poised the whole at the opening of his mouth in a token of continued interrogation.

Description of my uncle: Red-faced, bead-eyed, ball-bellied. Fleshy about the shoulders with long swinging arms giving ape-like effect to gait. Large moustache. Holder of Guinness clerkship the third class.

I do, I replied.

He put the point of his fork into the interior of his mouth and withdrew it again, chewing in a coarse manner.

Quality of rasher in use in household: Inferior, one and two the pound.

Well faith, he said, I never see you at it. I never see you at your studies at all.

I work in my bedroom, I answered.

Extract 2, pp. 39-40:

Further extract from my Manuscript wherein Mr Trellis commences the writing of his story: Propped by pillows in his bed in the white light of an incandescent petrol lamp, Dermot Trellis adjusted the pimples in his forehead into a frown of deep creative import. His pencil moved slowly across the ruled paper, leaving words behind it of every size. He was engaged in the creation of John Furriskey, the villain of his tale.
Extract from Press regarding Furriskey’s birth: We are in position to announce that a happy event has taken place at the Red Swan Hotel, where the proprietor, Mr Dermot Trellis, has succeeded in encompassing the birth of a man called Furriskey. Stated to be doing ‘very nicely’, the new arrival is about five feet eight inches in height, well built, dark, and clean-shaven. The eyes are blue and the teeth well formed and good, though stained somewhat by tobacco; there are two fillings in the molars of the left upperside and a cavity threatened in the left canine. The hair, black and of thick quality, is worn plastered back on the head with a straight parting from the left temple. The chest is muscular and well-developed while the legs are straight but rather short. He is very proficient mentally having an unusually firm grasp of the Latin idiom and a knowledge of physics extending from Boyle’s Law to the Leclanche Cell and the Greasepot photometer. He would seem to have a special aptitude for mathematics. In the course of a brief test conducted by our reporter, he solved a ‘cut’ from an advanced chapter of Hall and Knight’s Geometry and failed to be mystified by an intricate operation involving the calculus. His voice is light and pleasant, although from his fingers it is obvious that he is a heavy smoker. He is apparently not a virgin, although it is admittedly difficult to establish this attribute with certainty in the male.

Our Medical Correspondent writes:

The birth of a son in the Red Swan Hotel is a fitting tribute to the zeal and perseverance of Mr Dermot Trellis, who has won international repute in connexion with his researches into the theory of aestho-autogamy. The event may be said to crown the savant’s lifework as he has at least realized his dream of producing a living mammal from an operation involving neither fertilization nor conception.

Extract 3, pp. 70-2:

O hag, said Sweeny, searing are the tribulations I have suffered; many a terrible leap have I leaped from hill to hill, from fort to fort, from land to land, from valley to valley.

For the sake of God, said the hag, leap for us now a leap such as you leaped in the days of your madness.

And thereupon Sweeny gave a bound over the top of the bedrail till he reached the extremity of the bench.

My conscience indeed, said the hag, I could leap the same leap myself.

And the hag gave a like jump.

Sweeny then gathered himself together in the extremity of his jealousy and threw a leap right out through the skylight of the hostel.

I could vault the vault too, said the hag and straightway she vaulted the same vault. And the short of it is this, that Sweeny travelled the length of five cantreds of leaps until he had penetrated to Glenn ne nEachtach in Fiodh Gaibhle with the hag at her hag’s leaps behind him; and when Sweeny rested there in a huddle at the top of a tall ivy-branch, the hag was perched there on another tree beside him. He heard there the voice of a stag and he thereupon made a lay eulogizing aloud the trees and the stags of Erin, and he did not cease or sleep until he had achieved these staves.

Bleating one, little antlers,
O lamenter we like
Delightful the clamouring
From your glen you make.

O leafy-oak, clumpy-leaved,
You are high above trees,
O hazlet, little clumpy-branch –
The nut-smell of hazels.

O alder, O alder-friend,
Delightful your colour,
You don’t prickle me or tear
In the place you are.

O blackthorn, little thorny-one,
O little dark sloe-tree;
O watercress, O green-crowned,
At the well-brink.

O holly, holly-shelter,
O door against the wind,
O ash-tree inimical,
Your spearshift of warrior.

O birch clean and blessed,
O melodious, O proud,
delightful the tangle
of your heard-rods.

What I like least in woodlands
From none I conceal it –
Stirk of a leafy-oak,
As its swaying.

O faun, little long-legs,
I caught you with grips,
I rode you upon your back
From peak to peak.

Glen Bolcain my home ever,
It was my haven,
many a night I have tried
a race against the peak.

Extract 4, pp. 76-7:

Now listen, said Shanahan clearing the way with small coughs. Listen now.

He arose holding out his hand and bending his knee beneath him on the chair.

When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night –
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

By God there’s a lilt in that, said Lamont.

Very good indeed, said Furriskey. Very nice.

I’m telling you it’s the business, said Shanahan. Listen now.

When money’s tight and is hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt –
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

When health is bad and your heart feels stranger,
And your face is pale and wan,
When doctors say that you need a change,
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

There are things in that pome that make for what you call permanence. Do you know what I mean, Mr Furriskey? There’s no doubt about it, it’s a grand thing, said Furriskey. Come on, Mr Shanahan, give us another verse. Don’t tell me that is the end of it.

Cant you listen? Said Shanahan.

When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan,
When hunger grows as your meals are rare –
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

What do you think of that now?

It’s a pome that’ll live, called Lamont, a pome that’ll be heard and clapped when plenty more…

But wait till your hear the last verse, man, the last polish-off, said Shanahan. He frowned and waved his hand.

Oh it’s good, it’s good, said Furriskey.

In time of trouble and lousy strife,
You have still got a darlint plan,
You still can turn to a brighter life –
A PI NT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.