I read the other four Flann O'Brien novels (see my posting on At Swim-two-birds). The Third Policeman is his other well-known surreal novel (well-known now, at any rate -- it was unplublished during the author's lifetime). The novel is a reworking of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." For whatever reason, I twigged to that about halfway through the story, and it seemed to lose a lot of steam at that point.
The problem is that it feels like the author didn't really have a larger structure in mind -- the thing is just a mass of silly surreal events, one after another, without any sort of direction, making it hard to care about the jokes. Swim-two-birds has all the "autobiographical" sections to anchor you, which is why I think it works better. On the other hand, I'm still not sure what all the de Selby footnotes in Policeman were for -- it could be that they have a deeper purpose, and I may end up revising my opinion of Policeman as I think on it.
The Hungry Mouth is a very short parody of Gaelic literature during the Gaelic revival. Very funny, and I'm glad I read it, but there's not much more to say than that. I think it helps to have some familiarity with the tropes he's parodying, but I think some of it is just familiar ground for any oppressed people (some of it rang true to me from Jewish literature)
There's not much to say about the last two novels. The Hard Life is pretty naturalistic, and show's O'Brien's short-comings more than the others -- he's definitely more of a concept writer. This novel has too much bantering about religious topics that have no interest to the general reader (I imagine -- certainly very little to me). The Dalkey Archive revisits some ground from The Third Policeman, but without the heights of lunacy attained by the earlier work. Some bits are lifted verbatim from Policeman, and it's not an uninteresting novel, but it's definitely a step down from that novel.
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