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Tag Archives: Flann O’Brien
“[At Swim-Two-Birds is] just the book to give to your sister, if she is a dirty, boozey girl.” – Dylan Thomas on Flann O’Brien’s masterpiece
When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce, On This Day, writers
Tagged Dylan Thomas, Flann O'Brien, Ireland, poetry
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The Books: “At Swim-Two-Birds” (Flann O’Brien)
Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction: At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O’Brien. It’s kinda hard, as an O’Malley, to talk about this book in a normal book-report kind of way. I think I even sort of believed, as a child, that Flann … Continue reading
Updike on Flann O’Brien: “His novels begin with a swoop and a song but end in an uncomfortable murk and with an air of impatience.”
When I first started blogging, on blog-spot, atswimtwobirds was the URL I chose, in honor of the great and the weird Flann O’Brien (aka Myles na gCopleen, aka Brian O’Nolan). Flann O’Brien’s most well-known novel is probably At Swim-Two-Birds – … Continue reading
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Jessa Crispin has an interesting interview with Peter Boxall, editor of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I loved what Boxall said at the end: Having benefited from an extraordinary number of emails and letters as well as … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged 1984, A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Tale of Two Cities, A.S. Byatt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alice in Wonderland, Amongst Women, Animal Farm, Annie Proulx, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, At Swim-Two-Birds, Atonement, Cat's Eye, Catch-22, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, D.H. Lawrence, Don DeLillo, E.M. Forster, Edgar Allan Poe, Edna O'Brien, Emily Bronte, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Finnegans Wake, Flann O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Frankenstein, Franny and Zooey, George Eliot, George Orwell, Great Expectations, Gulliver's Travels, Handmaid's Tale, Herman Melville, House of Leaves, Hunter S. Thompson, Ian McEwan, In Cold Blood, J.D. Salinger, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Ellroy, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Jeanette Winterson, John Irving, John McGahern, John Steinbeck, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Heller, Kazuo Ishiguro, Leo Tolstoy, Lewis Carroll, Lord of the Rings, Margaret Atwood, Mark Danielewski, Mary Shelley, Master and Margarita, Middlemarch, Mikhail Bulgakov, Moby Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Notes From the Underground, Possession, Pride and Prejudice, Primo Levi, Sexing the Cherry, Stephen King, The Catcher In the Rye, The Country Girls, The Great Gatsby, The Hobbit, The Passion, The Shipping News, The Things They Carried, Thomas Mann, Tim O'Brien, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Ulysses, Underworld, Vladimir Nabokov, Wuthering Heights
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For St. Patrick’s Day: A Compilation of Irish Posts
Anne has a fascinating excerpt from Conor Cruise O’Brien’s memoir. It has to do with Maud Gonne. Fascinating. And speaking of Maud Gonne … Emily has posted one of my favorite Yeats poems. Limerick contest (and truly terrifying St. Patrick’s … Continue reading