Having recently been engaged in writing an article on Flann O'Brien on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, I looked into his novels for choice quotes and, as always--it's happened before--I was drawn in utterly and found myself rereading all five, and rereading The Third Policemantwice. The last time I was struck by the high art of his parody and the fanciful gorgeousness of his physical descriptions, as here, from the latter misterpiece:
"I looked carefully around me. Brown bogs and black bogs were arranged neatly on each side of the road with rectangular boxes carved out of them here and there, each with a filling of yellow-brown brown-yellow water. Far away near the sky tiny people were stooped at their turfwork, cutting out precisely-shaped sods with their patent spades and building them into a tall memorial twice the height of a horse and cart. Sounds came from them to the Sergeant and myself, delivered to our ears without charge by the west wind, sounds of laughing and whistling and bits of verses from the old bog-songs. Nearer, a house stood attended by three trees and surrounded by the happiness of a coterie of fowls, all of them picking and rooting and disputating loudly in the unrelenting manufacture of their eggs. The house was quiet in itself and silent but a canopy of lazy smoke had been erected over the chimney to indicate that people within were engaged on tasks....The whole overhead was occupied by the sky, serene, impenetrable, ineffable and incomparable, with a fine island of clouds anchored in the calm two yards to the right of Mr. Jarvis's outhouse."
And Mr. Jarvis is neither in-house, nor in his outhouse, nor anywhere else--and nor is his bike.
