Sunday, June 04, 2006

The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, written in 1939 or 1940 but not published until after the author's death in the 1960s, is now better known as that book that showed up for one second in an episode of Lost, and was touted in interviews by folks associated with the show as being a book that would help the reader figure out what was happening on the show; I think the word that was used was it would give the viewer more "ammunition" for the task.

As a fan of the show of sorts--I think it's a great premise that takes too long to accomplish anything, but that when it's on, it's really fuckin' on--I heard of the book, and it's semi-obscure nature, the fact that it sold more copies since it's prime-time appearance than it did in the previous forty years combined. I didn't plan on reading it though, because I don't get into the viral marketing aspect of shows or games. (Not that I have anything against it--I think the alternate reality game type stuff Maureen's been involved with is fascinating. And given a few more hours in the day, I'd probably be on the message boards myself.)

But when the book's sitting on the shelf at the used book store for five bucks? Well, yeah, I'm game. Curiosity and affordability got me into the book. The fact that it's a crazy piece of writing kept me in it.

This book is totally worth reading, even if you're not a fan of Lost. (If you are a fan of the series, it does give you another lens through which to see the book. It is, after all, fun looking for clues as to just why this book is so important to the events on that island.) The book is somehow simultaneously hilarious and terrifying; it's straight-forward but absolutely surreal. At times it feels like Kafka and at times it feels like Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves and at other times it feels like something else entirely I can't even quite identify. Maybe something Nabokov-ish.

Mostly when reading it I possessed the strange feeling that I was reading a book that really had no right to exist in the context that it did. Like somehow there's natural laws against it. Or at least that there ought to be. But that it's to our benefit, of sorts, that there aren't.

Anyway I'm obviously still all of a jumble mentally over it so I'll shut up. At least for a little while. I feel like I'll be coming back to this one soon.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I believe one of the standard quips is "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as told by James Joyce."