Dalkey Archive Contributor(s): O'Brien, Flann (Author) |
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ISBN: 1564781720 ISBN-13: 9781564781727 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press OUR PRICE: $11.66 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: February 1993 Annotation: "The Dalkey Archive" is O'Brien's fifth and final novel -- in the author's words, "a study in derision". Among the targets of that derision are religiosity, intellectual abstractions, J.W. Dunne's and Albert Einstein's views on time and relativity, and the lives of Saint Augustine and James Joyce, both of whom have speaking parts in the novel. Set in the late 1940s in the village of Dalkey (some twelve miles south of Dublin), "The Dalkey Archive" joins O'Brien's renowned comic works At Swim-two-birds, The Third Policeman, et al, as among the great works of Irish fiction of the century. |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Fiction |
Dewey: FIC |
LCCN: 92030923 |
Series: Irish Literature |
Physical Information: 0.7" H x 5.5" W x 8.4" (0.65 lbs) 224 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Hailed as "the best comic fantasy since "Tristram Shandy"" upon its publication in 1964, "The Dalkey Archive" is Flann O'Brien's fifth and final novel; or rather (as O'Brien wrote to his editor), "The book is not meant to be a novel or anything of the kind but a study in derision, various writers with their styles, and sundry modes, attitudes and cults being the rats in the cage." Among the targets of O'Brien's derision are religiosity, intellectual abstractions, J. W. Dunne's and Albert Einstein's views on time and relativity, and the lives and works of Saint Augustine and James Joyce, both of whom have speaking parts in the novel. Bewildering? Yes, but as O'Brien insists, "a measure of bewilderment is part of the job of literature." Set in the late 1940s in the village of Dalkey (some twelve miles south of Dublin), "The Dalkey Archive" also includes in its cast the mad scientist De Selby (featured in O'Brien's novel "The Third Policeman"), the magniloquent Sergeant Fottrell (whose "molly-cule theory" holds that a man can turn into a bicycle), and the local da Vinci, a looderamawn named Teague McGettigan. Doing his damnedest to find order in this metaphysical chaos is Mick Shaughnessy, who-with the aid of strong drink, his friend Hackett, and Mary, the young woman for whom they both compete-undergoes a crisis of faith both sublime and ridiculous. |