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 enlarge | Author: Flann O'brien
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $8.19
You Save: $5.76 (41%)
New (41) Used (21) from $6.69
Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 42454
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Dalkey Archive ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.5 x 1
ISBN: 156478181X
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9781564781819
ASIN: 156478181X
Publication Date: August 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
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| Customer Reviews:
 A good cure for insomnia September 12, 2007
6 out of 13 found this review helpful
My friends thought it would be a great idea to start a book club. Our first assignment: At Swim-Two-Birds. Not knowing what to expect, we all found it quite odd that the book was so hard to come by. It was not readily available in any library or book store. After having ordered this book of the 100 All-Time Best Novels, we each set out to read the book with some difficulty.
I enjoy reading as a hobby, however, unless forced or tricked as the case may be, I would never have read this book after the first 20 or so pages. There is something to a manner of textbooks and technical manuals that causes me to suddenly fall into a deep slumber when attempting to read them with intent. This book falls into this category. I cannot read more than a few pages without suddenly feeling drugged to the point where my brain ceases all function and I collapse in a drooling heap.
I would not be so pretentious as to wax on about the literary genious of this book, as it seems so many others have done. While there have been some interesting points and even some chuckles to be had, for the most part this text is loathsome to read. I also have to point out that being Irish by birth, this review saddens me to write, but it is all true. I feel that I must warn others who may be deceived by the great reviews regarding this book.
 Modernist Fantasy Psychedelia Novel April 15, 2007
Out of all the novels I read in my modernist college course, I found this one among the two most enjoyable. Though I'm of Irish decent myself, I'm far enough removed from the mother country that many of Joyce's themes, motiffs, and dialogues were completely lost on me. Plus, Joyce is extremely difficult to read in my opinion, and sometimes pages took hours. I barely survived the sermon and kicked and screamed the whole way through.
Not so with Flann O'Brien. Though the style shifting was somewhat hard to follow, I found "At Swim-Two-Birds" much more accessible than the other great modernists, even easier to digest than Faulkner (I believe I grasped Faulkner easily because being a southerner myself, I understand his accent). I also enjoyed the book because I entered a career in literature through a love of mythology and the fantasy books that I grew up with, and Finn McCool and the Pooka were welcome characters. Also, I was in college and the psychedelic dreams-to-reality theme sparked my interest as well. Plus, O'brien's sentences are riotously funny and his rebellious parody is a blast. I think this might be better as a first book in an English 301, rather than a last, because if I had read it first I might have been more able to digest Joyce, and wouldn't be so afraid of him now.
 Well timed, perfectly ridiculous. July 8, 2006
ASTB is a story in a story in a story, starring a host of unlikeables and woven together by a surly, drunken master narrator.
If comedy is timing, then perhaps the meter of Mr. Nolan's prose is the key to his particular genius. A native speaker of Irish, he constructs sentences in ways that have the poetry of that language, and asserts such abrupt,hilarious, and logical sub-clauses that you sometimes find yourself laughing wildly and unexpectedly.
O'Brien's chief narrator, a drunk, lazy student, is the easiest character to understand and keep track of (his "biographical references" are the book's highlights). He has a rigorous jesuit brain, and a lazy, teenage body. He also has a fondness for consuming a great many "Pints of Plain", and observing the effects of these in himself and his acquantices with scientific curiosity.
I may be missing something, but in the final analysis I suspect that this book is not the masterpiece it could have been. That it was slashed by 1/3 by the author and one of his friends before publication may have rendered some of it more confusing than necessary. It's a pity he didn't take time to craft it tighter instead of just chopping out swathes of story. Maybe then I'd get what was going on a little better. Then again, maybe I wouldn't.
Should you buy it? Yes. It is an extremely clever postmodern piece of literature, and it will make you laugh. But don't try and read the whole thing in one sitting, or you'll find yourself irately meandering through some of the more surreal and apparently pointless dialogue. This stuff is best read slowly, as the point is not the plot, it's the scene and the poetry. If not for that, read it slowly for the simple reason that a story in a story in a story is just as confusing as it sounds.
Just read it aloud July 3, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you are lucky enough to ever go to Dublin and have time to linger over a few pints you'll hear the same cadences , superbly illogical statements, bizarre juxtapositions and general love of life that O'Brien listened to and included in ASTB. Buy it and read it out loud with as much of an Irish brogue as you can manage.This book will have you laughing out loud at the sparkling wit and playful inventiveness of one of Ireland's greatest writers.
t'a gr'a agam dhuit! Irish Storyteller April 6, 2006
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
Mary Whipple has a knack for recommending experimental and unusual stories and At Swim-Two-Birds is of them.
Czech this one out. I implore you. Mary has a tribal mind and so do I ;-) Do you?
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