The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycles as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycle
Sergeant Pluck, expounding on The Atomic Theory, in 'The Third Policeman' by Flann O'Brien

Brian Ó Nuallain, or Brian O'Nolan, is better known by two of his more famous aliases, Flann O'Brien or Myles Na gCopaleen¹. For the purposes of this entry I shall refer to him as Flann O'Brien as that is the name today that he is most well known for.

He was born on October 5, 1911 in Strabane, Co. Tyrone into a Catholic family. His first language was Gaelic as this was the only language spoken at home. He only started speaking English at the age of 7 when his father had finally given up hope of finding him an all Irish school. He came from a good enough family, his father was in a high ranking position in the civil service, indeed it looked as if Flann would follow him down that path.

University

I paid no attention whatsoever to books or study and regarded lectures as a joke which, in fact, they were if you discern anything funny in mawkish, obtuse mumblings on subjects any intelligent person could master single handed in a few months. The exams I found childish and in fact the whole University concept I found to be a sham. The only result my father got for his money was the certainty that his son had laid faultlessly the foundation of a system of heavy drinking and could always be relied upon to make a break of at least 25 with a bad cue. I sincerely believe that if University education were universally available and availed of, the country would collapse in one generation.
Flann O'Brien

Flann didn't care much for university.

Yet he still managed to get very good results despite doing as little work as possible. Spending most of his days drinking with his friends, drinking would become a dark cloud over the rest of his life. He received his BA from University College Dublin in 1932 and then got an MA with a thesis on "Nature in Irish Poetry" in 1934.

Scenes from a Novel

University also saw him further his literary style. He founded his own short lived Magazine Blather and he wrote for the student magazine Comhthron Féinn under various guises, one in particular Brother Barbabas. He also composed a novel during this time title "Scenes in a Novel (Probably Posthumous)" and wrote it as Brother Barnabas. It deals with many of the ideas and themes later dealt with in his master piece "At Swim-Two-Birds", namely rebellious characters. In "Scenes" the author finds himself in a terrible conflict with the characters he is supposed to be creating, these characters refuse to follow the script and go off on their own tangents. The villain of the piece Carruthers McDaid intended to be the lowest form of scum on the bottom of the cesspit of "dawgobs", instead leads a modest life as a second hand cats salesman and becomes a covert churchgoer without the author's consent. Meanwhile the proletarian hero Shaun Svoolsih refuses romance and adventure and instead settles down to a middle class lifestyle.

'I may be a prig,' he replied,'But I know what I like. Why cant I marry Bridie and have a shot at the civil service?'

'Railway accidents are fortunately rare,' I said finally,' but when they happen they are horrible. think it over'

Life after School

After leaving school Flann secured a highly coveted job in the civil service, he and two others were the only people taken on out of hundred applications. Official reports show that O'Brien did well in his first few months and in July of 1937 he was told he had successfully passed his probationary period and became an established civil servant, that night his father suffered a fatal stroke.

At Swim-Two-Birds

Evil is even, truth is an odd number, and death is a full stop.
'At Swim-Two-Birds'

With his fathers death, Flann was the main bread winner for the family of his mother and ten siblings. Ironically his one older brother, Ciaran, was unemployed and spent his days working on a novel in Gaelic. The literary genius had to support a brother whose novel was... not very good to say the least. Still though, despite all his troubles he still managed to write.

"At Swim-Two-Birds" is probably the creative high water mark for Flann O'Brien. It deals with many of the same themes and ideas as in "Scenes From a Nove(Probably Posthumous)".It was written in the early months of his tenure with the Civil Service in Ireland. Technically it has four beginings. On one level it is about a lazy but brilliant Dublin student, Dermott Trellis, writing the greatest piece of literature since... ever. His masterpice is based on a cruel and evil author who horribly mistreats his literary creations, inspiring them to in turn write about their evil author.

It has, on the streets of Dublin, Cowboys, fighting bandits, fighting indians, fighting fairies, mythic figures and all of the above being pursued by the Dublin Police Force. Early in the novel we are introduced to the character of Finn MacCool, a mythic celtic figure of the Fianna, he is a bragging lout of a man, who we find out later is only included in the book because Trellis likes the look of him. The 20th century characters try their best to ignore him and to get on with it.

It was published in 1939 by Longman's and one of its greatest admirerers was an ageing James Joyce². He tried hard to promote it in Europe before he died and actually gave a blurb that is still often printed on a copy.

That's a real writer with a true comic spirit. A really funny book
James Joyce

Although later in life, Flann started to get slightly annoyed with the constant comparisons to Joyce.

I swear to God if I hear that name Joyce one more time I'll froth at the Gob
Flann O'Brien

"At Swim Two Birds" was generally very well recieved and Flann was tipped as a writer for the future. He launched into his next book while still steadily rising through the ranks of the Irish Civil Service

The Third Policeman

'Now take a sheep', the Sergeant said.
'What is a sheep [but] millions of little bits of sheepness whirling around and doing intricate convolutions inside the sheep? What else is it but that?'

'The Third Policeman

So it was that one year after the publication of "At Swim-Two-Birds", Flann finished a new novel.