"That's a real writer, with the true comic spirit. A really funny book."
--James Joyce
"At Swim-Two-Birds has remained in my mind ever since it first appeared as one of the best books of our century.
A book in a thousand . . . in the line of Ulysses and Tristram Shandy."
--Graham Greene
"Flann O'Brien is unquestionably a major author. His work, like that of Joyce, is so layered as to be almost
Dante-esque. . . . Joyce and Flann O'Brien assault your brain with words, style, magic, madness, and unlimited
invention."
--Anthony Burgess
"At Swim-Two-Birds is a marvel of imagination, language, and humor."
--New Republic
" 'Tis the odd joke of modern Irish literature--of the three novelists in its holy trinity, James Joyce, Samuel
Beckett and Flann O'Brien, the easiest and most accessible of the lot is O'Brien. . . . Flann O'Brien was too much
his own man, Ireland's man, to speak in any but his own tongue."
--Washington Post
"At Swim-Two-Birds is both a comedy and a fantasy of such staggering originality that it baffles description
and very nearly beggars our sense of delight."
--Chicago Tribune
Dalkey Archive Press Web Site, April, 2002
Summary
Along with one or two books by James Joyce, Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds is the most famous (and infamous)
of Irish novels published in the twentieth century. Or to put it as Dylan Thomas did: "It establishes Mr.
O'Brien in the forefront of contemporary writing. . . . This is just the book to give your sister if she's a loud,
dirty, boozy girl!"
The story of an Irish college student who--half to amuse himself and half to avoid work--writes an irreverent novel
about the figures of Irish myth and legend in which characters come to life and riot against their author, At Swim
is a wildly comic send-up of Irish literature and culture which had a major influence on writers coming after O'Brien,
including Anthony Burgess, Gilbert Sorrentino, and William H. Gass (who has written an introduction for this edition).
O'Brien opened up a whole new world of possibilities for fiction as subsequent novelists have played with his zany
ideas, chief among them being the idea that characters in fiction have earned the right to be "recycled"--after
all, they've proven their reliability as characters!--not put out to pasture once their stories are finished.
