Category Archives: At Swim-Two-Birds

Discussion of Flann O’Brien’s (pseudonym, nom de plume, of Brian O’Nolan) novel At Swim-Two-Birds.

Moments of Delight in At Swim-Two-Birds

He found it in the third wall he examined and it may be valuable to state–as an indication of the growing acuteness of his reasoning powers–that he neglected investigating one of the walls as a result of a deduction to the effect that the door of a room in the upper storey of a house [...]

Metaleptic Transgressions - Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds

Where to start? One could start with a discussion of the paratextual trappings within which the story is wrapped: Dylan Thomas’ remark on the cover; the manuscript background, upside-down on the cover; the torn paper characters continuing the subtle signs of “inversion” in their surface; and just what is that big, fuzzy, black thing on [...]