The Third Policeman
By Flann O'Brien
The policemen in The Third Policeman are obsessed with bicycles. After committing murder and attempting to rob the victim’s house, the book’s anonymous narrator inexplicably finds himself with amnesia in an Alice in Wonderland world of chaos and nonsense. He ends up being wrongfully arrested for bicycle theft, the penalty for which is death (no comment). Spending time at the police station with the officers, he finds himself involved in bizarre circular conversations about completely irrational scientific theories, the definitions of made-up words, and the physical impossibilities of the intricate artefacts belonging to Policeman MacCruiskeen. One memorable conversation with Sergeant Pluck addresses “Atomic Theory” in relation to bicycles:
The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles.
They go on to discuss percentages: apparently the postman, due to the nature of his job which involves much bicycle-riding, is a full 71% bicycle. This also means that his bicycle is 71% human. When it gets to this stage, the bicycle will start sneaking inside to sit by the fire, and food will start disappearing. “If you let it go too far it will be the end of everything,” says the Sergeant. “You would have bicycles wanting votes and they would get seats on the County Council.”
The book even contains a love affair with a bicycle, and I mean this in the most literal way possible:
I knew that I liked this bicycle more than I had ever liked any other bicycle, better even than I had liked some people with two legs. I liked her unassuming competence, her docility, the simple dignity of her quiet way. ... Her saddle seemed to spread invitingly into the most enchanting of all seats while her two handlebars, floating finely with the wild grace of alighting wings, beckoned to me to lend my mastery for free and joyful journeyings... How desirable her seat was, how charming the invitation of her slim encircling handle-arms, how unaccountably competent and reassuring her pump resting warmly against her rear thigh!
It goes on like this, with giddily embellished and impassioned discourse, for pages and pages. Some of you will feel pangs of empathy while reading it.
The Third Policeman is an absurdist masterpiece of a novel. The world in which the narrator finds himself is simultaneously hilarious and nightmarish. Though the book certainly fixates on bicycles, I’m not just recommending it to cyclists. Anyone interested in the imagination and the odd congruity of dream-logic will enjoy it.
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