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A Preface: On Qualifications

To preface, there is nothing objective I can tell you about The Third Policeman that you can’t find on its Wikipedia page, or its Lostpedia page, or its page on whatever other ‘pedias are out there. This blog doesn’t exist to discuss the history of the novel by Brian O’Nolan (a/k/a Flann O’Brien) or trivia surrounding its writing, publication, critical reception, or plot details. Rather, its aim is even lower: to provide the reader with my subjective opinions and other thoughts, had while reading the novel and shared in a series of posts relating to the novel’s various bits, arranged in sequential order from its beginning to its end.

About the novel generally, I will discuss the plot in my posts to come on the book. Other than that, suffice it to be said it was written in 1939-40, but was not published until 1967, a year after its author’s death. Whether Mr. O’Brien had to sign a deal with Satan to publish the novel in exchange for his life is uncertain, and I don’t intend to teach the controversy here. But for all those aspiring writers out there, note the lesson in this: You may have to literally die for your work to be published, so work hard, drink heavily, smoke, and don’t exercise because the sooner you die, the sooner you will be published.

Of course, by the time of his death, Mr. O’Nolan/Brien was a well-known author who had had several other of his widely varying works published and critically praised. So perhaps the lesson is actually: If you die as a successful author, they will publish all your leftover, unpublished shit and sing its praises lest they be accused of spitting on your grave. In that case, you should probably work hard, drink in moderation, don’t smoke, and try to get away from the keyboard an exercise because they won’t publish your really cool stuff unless you get successful while you’re alive and that takes time.

You’ll have to decide which lesson to choose. You should probably choose the latter lesson though, because if you choose the former and are wrong, then you are dead and have a very limited opus from which your posthumous publishers will get to choose. And really, why would they publish anything of yours? Moreover, you will have had very little if any chance to enjoy success during your life. On the plus side, you will get to party balls.

If you choose the latter option you will get to live a long, somewhat fulfilling life, and will produce a lot of writing. And even if the only people who read it are your wife, children, and three lonely guys on Tumblr, you will have achieved something. The bad part there is—and you should have seen this coming a mile away—it is boring and hard.

I can’t offer any guidance on which lesson to take from the posthumous publication of Mr. Nolan/O’Brien’s masterwork. I only explain the lessons.

But back to the book. The Third Policeman received some favorable reviews at the time of its publication, and various critics have revisited it since then, with the consensus seeming to be that is one of the finest and earliest examples of postmodern meta-fiction. However, outside of certain marijuana-favoring literary circles the book has largely done its labor of existing in obscurity, with the exception being a brief period around 2005.

It was then that a copy of the book appeared a couple of times in the background of the hit ABC television show, Lost. You see, by 2005, many people had DVRs, then widely known as “TiVOs.” Also, many people were obsessed by Lost and would pause the show during repeated watchings to look for clues in the sets to further understand the show’s multifaceted, stoner-bait plot and backstory.

When The Third Policeman was spotted in the show, rumors of its relevancy to Lost circulated on the show’s numerous internet forums. (I know its fora. And if you’re reading this, you’re probably the kind of person who is saying that to yourself right now.) In interviews, the show’s creators and writers confirmed that the book influenced the show in some important way. How it influenced the show was never made clear, however. What’s more, several writers admitted they hadn’t even read the book. Thus, it seems that The Third Policeman’s influence on Lost was just some random bullshit inserted in the show to drive audience mania for all things Lost and to “keep ‘em guessing.” This lame, cynical trick largely worked because it was said that The Third Policeman sold more copies in three weeks of 2005 than it had in the preceding six years.

I will freely admit that my interest in the book arose during its brief popular heyday during Lost mania. I never saw then and have never seen to this day a single episode of Lost. However, I had read about Lost and the mentions of The Third Policeman stoked my curiosity.

Sometime around 2009, I finally got around to reading it. I liked it mainly because it seemed like something cool to be able to tell people I had read, especially people into Lost. Also, it was short and I was working a lot at that time, so I could not get into a long book. Finally, it actually was good. It was weird and interesting and funny, and seemed to me like the kind of book I would write if I got around to writing a book, by which I mean it was discursive, meta, plainly written, clever, and totally absurd.

It was so absurd that I wondered about a man who could dedicate so many hours to writing a book so disconnected from anything obviously connected to reality, including any concepts or emotions that people would actually feel in their lives. But I liked that he had, and it gave me hope that I could too, though I haven’t yet.

Of course, a lot of critics seem to say the book does have a lot to say about religion, philosophy, the nature of good and evil, et cetera. And that may be true. But it takes too much knowledge to understand those references and they are probably just reflections of the critics’ own beliefs anyway. To O’Nolan/Brien, based on the limited quotes from him I have read, it seems more likely The Third Policeman was just a funny book with what he thought was an original plot mechanism and “any amount of scope for back-chat and funny cracks.”

With Lost off the air and twelve years having passed since the show gave The Third Policeman a brief entree into the mainstream, I think now is a good time to give to it what every piece of pop culture needs: a blog solely dedicated to it, written by someone with no particular qualifications. After all, how will the book be remembered in the paperless, Singularity-y future if one of the five hundred million Tumblr pages in the world doesn’t spend a few paragraphs offering my thoughts (a/k/a bullshitting) about each chapter?

Why would you would be interested in my thoughts? Am I even qualified to write this blog? I cannot say. I don’t pretend that my thoughts are insightful, informative, or interesting in any way. Perhaps if you are a high-schooler or undergraduate, you can use them in a book report or similar coursework and call them your own. After all, I am sure this blog will remain utterly unknown so that your plagiarism would go unnoticed. (Note - I do not endorse plagiarism or cheating in any way, but it’s your life, ed.) Whether doing so would raise or lower your grade is your call. I make no guarantees.

Somewhat earnestly, however, I can humbly say that I am qualified to write the blog. I have read The Third Policeman three (!) times. It is one of only a handful of books I have read more than once. Now, to put my expertise in perspective, The Third Policeman (2002 paperback edition from Dalkey Archive Press) is ranked 65,297 in book sales on Amazon.com. I don’t know what that translates to in raw numbers, but Novelrank.com provides some guidance. According to them, The Third Policeman sold 760 copies in 2016 on Amazon.com and less than ten each on the various country-specific Amazon sites listed. Let’s assume that’s typical for the past few years. Let’s further assume that in 2005-06, during the Lost craze, it sold 15,000 copies. Let’s add another 50% of the total each year for book sales from Barnes & Noble online, to be very generous. Then throw in a few dozen more for brick and mortar sales, that number increasing the further one goes back in time, especially before Amazon’s dominance, Borders going out of business, etc. Finally, let’s go back all the way to 1967 when it was published, including an initial burst of sales then. All together, pulling the roughest guess out of my ass, The Third Policeman has sold 75,000 copies in the 47 years since it’s been published.

Those copies have probably been passed around and some reside in libraries, but many others have been thrown away or otherwise lost or destroyed. So, perhaps 350,000 people have actually read The Third Policeman. But many of them have died since 1967. Let’s assume that 300,000 living persons have read The Third Policeman. Of them, perhaps 30,000 read a foreign translation and are not fluent in English. Of the remaining 270,000, I would rest assured that no more than 40,000 have read the book more than once. There are about 7,408,000,000 people in the world today. I am sure more than 1.5 billion of those are children under 18, but let’s assume 1.5 billion kids. That means I am one of 40,000 living English speakers among 5.908 billion adults to have read The Third Policeman more than once. Accordingly, I am more qualified than 99.99932295193% of the population of Earth to write about The Third Policeman.

Further, I have taken notes in the margins. I have written notes out elsewhere by chapter. I have a bachelor of arts degree and a law degree. I am a published author of several dozen humorous essays on three websites (that no longer exist) and have even been paid for my work on one occasion. I feel that adds to my qualifications.

On the other hand, many other English speakers who have read The Third Policeman are undoubtedly English majors, or Literature majors, or have more advanced degrees in those subjects, or are already professional critics or academics in the field of postmodern literature and criticism. I admit this may diminish my relative qualifications somewhat.

But finally, how many of those more qualified than me are or are planning to write criticisms of The Third Policeman? We simply don’t know. But if it comes to that, you are welcome to read the many fine critiques and examinations of The Third Policeman out there if you find this blog insufficiently academic for your uses.

In sum, I think I have the qualifications to write this blog. Nonetheless, if you have doubts about whether this blog will satisfy your longing for meta commentary about The Third Policeman, but are willing to keep an open mind, I urge you to read on. Comment if you wish. Join, if you will, the dwindling fraternal vocation of those that care enough about a largely obscure Irish postmodern novel to spend time out of their finite lives to write about it!

I cannot make any promises about how often I will update the blog, but I promise I will complete it before I die, provided I die of natural causes after the age of sixty-five.

Oh, I should mention that it did just occur to me that if you are reading this, you are almost certainly one of the 200,000 living readers of The Third Policeman. If we’re assuming that is the population we’re drawing from, then I am only in the 20% percentile of qualified bloggers on this subject. That is, admittedly, less impressive than me being in the top 99.99932295193%. So I will give you that if you were doubting my qualifications.

But assuming you have only read it once, then I am still more qualified than you to write this blog! Barely. (Assuming multiple readings equates to greater qualification, which is, admittedly, not certain.) If you have read more than once, though, it is impossible for me to know whether I am more qualified than you to write the blog. I don’t know your educational background or anything else about your qualifications.

And of course, this all assumes there is such a thing as “qualification.” Who decides such a matter? The white patriarchy? Perhaps so. But not many of them are reading this, and fuck us anyway! I mean them! Fuck them! Let’s disperse power. When that is done, the reader should decide whether I am qualified. In that case, if you, the reader, get something out of this and find it to deepen your understanding of The Third Policeman or to cause you to think about it in a new way, then consider me qualified. If not, then I am not qualified.

Maybe. That is, a qualified person could certainly write an unhelpful or unenlightening critique or examination of a book. Less likely, an unqualified person could still come out of nowhere and write a universally acclaimed treatise on something or other. In that case, then doesn’t the whole concept of qualification become worthless? And if so, then shouldn’t every Tumblr blog on a subject be judged on its own merits rather than on the societally-imposed “merits” of its author? Yes. It should. And if not, remember the most important qualification is that I am writing it. As Tenacious D said:

Kyle Gass: Anybody could have wrote it. Anybody could have done it.

Jack Black: Yeah, but guess who did write it. Me!

Returning to the subject, with my qualifications established, it is one of my favorite books, but not for its main subject and plot, though I think that is wryly funny in a self-aware way. In the main, The Third Policeman explores many fascinating physical, metaphysical, and even paranormal subjects that now seem, along with its style, to have been ahead of its time considering it was written before World War II. Despite its esotericism, the book also has some timeless insights on human nature.

Rather, my favorite aspect of the book is when it leaves its plot and discusses a totally different, even stranger world than that inhabited by the protagonist. I thoroughly enjoy that O’Brien/Nolan is not afraid of going off on truly absurd and irrelevant tangents, focused on the narrator’s in-novel fascination with the unconventional scientist/philosopher/madman known as De Selby.

In these asides about De Selby, The Third Policeman dives into a meta-universe that is so absurd that it is almost admitted to be fictional even to the book’s narrator, who seems to doubt the reality of half of what he’s conveying about De Selby and his works. And on top of that, there are lengthy discussions of the political machinations among De Selby’s critics and in-depth references to their works. All of this seems to take place in a hazy alternate European timeline that seems to exist in some indeterminate time between 1890 and 1930. (While all this does seem ahead of its time, none of it would seem strange to Laurence Sterne, whose The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, © 1759-67, seems to serve as an inspiration for O’B.’s meta-meanderings.)

At times the narrator seems to go so far as to concede to the audience that these staggeringly irrelevant digressions (usually contained in lengthy footnotes), while comically abstruse, are a complete waste of his and the reader’s time, despite appearing throughout the book. (And if they are a waste of the narrator’s and the reader’s time, think what a waste of time it was for the author.) These wandering pathways off the novel’s story (which are connected to the main plot by only the thinnest, most arbitrary of threads early on) then seem to be nothing but a showcase for the author to engage in whimsical thoughts and worlds that may be amusing only to him, and that alone made it worth his time to write. This, really, is my attraction to the book. Because when I write, I too enjoy absurdism, and hopefully-comic digressions into only tangentially related subjects or meta-subjects, as my mind may dictate.

I always thought this type of writing bordered on insulting the reader, an egotistical exercise in look-at-how-clever I am. But reading The Third Policeman allowed me to see how O’Brien handles his digressions into De Selbyiana, and how, despite being totally irrelevant to the main book, the digressions are immersive and entertaining. This gave me inspiration and some assurance that I, as a writer, don’t need to be constrained by linear storytelling and rules of prose, especially when writing for humor, which is all I really want to do. I can create world’s within world’s in a story or essay. I can follow absurd thoughts to absurd conclusions. I can take asides and write in a conversational way, and pause and go backwards, and pick up where I left off. And I can let my inner absurdist out to play. And if the reader doesn’t like it, then that’s all well.

So for that, I can thank Brian O’Nolan, Flann O’Brien, the protagonist of The Third Policeman, and his soul, Joe, De Selby, Henderson, Hatchjaw, Bassett, Du Garbandier, Kraus, et al. They all gave me the inspiration not only to tackle this blog, but to keep writing how and when I want, whatever my qualifications. I hope anyone who stumbles across this enjoys it and maybe learns something about The Third Policeman and reads it again. And if no one does, I enjoyed writing it. I think that might be how O’Nolan felt when he saw The Third Policeman manuscript for the last time in a drawer in his study before he died, even if he knew that because of his deal with Satan, it would be published two years later.

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