The Third Policeman (0 of 3) & The Brothers Karamazov (6 of 16)
Donegal, dialogues and Drabble
Dear classics reader,
In this week’s black metal cash-box you will find:
The launch of our June read-along of The Third Policeman;
Our discussion of The Brothers Karamazov Book Five, Chapters 5-9 – with Bakhtin on Dostoyevsky’s dialogue;
A report from our conversation about The Master and Margarita – at the Hatchards Classics Book Club last night;
Birthday wishes to Margaret Drabble;
A preview of coming attractions and other notices;
And for paid subscribers:
The week’s new classics – including the paperback publication of Sylvia Plath’s Collected Prose.
This newsletter may be too long for your email inbox. If so, please click ‘View entire message’ at the bottom – or visit Substack.
The Third Policeman (0 of 3)
‘Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade’
That is the first line of The Third Policeman. Today we start reading Flann O’Brien’s absurd, hilarious, nightmarish novel.
All the details of our read-along can be found here.
Before we begin, here is a brief note on its publication history.
The Third Policeman was Brian O’Nolan’s second novel. He finished writing in February 1940, while still enjoying the success of his first novel, At Swim-Two-Birds, which had been published by Longman, under the pen name Flann O’Brien, in March 1939.
To O’Nolan’s dismay, however, Longman rejected The Third Policeman, with the following note:
We realize the author’s ability but think that he should become less fantastic and in this new novel he is more so.
He tried submitting the book to an American agent, under the alternative title Hell Goes Round and Round, but the agent mislaid the manuscript.
In despair, O’Nolan abandoned future attempts to publish the novel and began telling friends he had mislaid the manuscript himself, inventing various fates for it. A note in the Harper Perennial edition says
these ranged from the simple mistake of leaving it on a tramcar or showing it to someone at the Dolphin Hotel and then leaving without it, to the inspired notion that he had taken it on a trip to Donegal by car only for the pages to have somehow been blown out of the boot.
Twenty years later, he recycled some of the material from The Third Policeman in his 1964 novel The Dalkey Archive, (which, incidentally, inspired the name of the Dalkey Archive Press, founded in Chicago in 1984 by John O’Brien – no relation).
O’Nolan died on April Fool’s Day 1966 and the original text of The Third Policeman was published by MacGibbon & Kee the following year.
Howard Moss, in a contemporary New Yorker review, described The Third Policeman as:
a comic but sinister invention: on the one hand a regional farce in which a criminal struggles with a regional bureaucracy, and, on the other, a mysterious allegory with universal pitfalls.
Today it is considered one of the greatest Irish novels of the twentieth century.
I look forward to discussing Chapters 1-5 next Friday 12th June.
Here are links to our previous The Third Policeman posts:
The Schedule (8 May)
Flann O’Brien (29 May)
As ever, these weekly read-along discussions of The Third Policeman will be available to paid subscribers only. More details here.
But if you – or anyone you know – would like to join this or future read-alongs, but can’t afford a paid subscription, just let me know and I’ll send a gift subscription.
The Brothers Karamazov (6 of 16)
In May we read Book Five of The Brothers Karamazov – ‘Pros and Cons’. Here are my thoughts on Chapters 5-7, including the Grand Inquisitor section (with accidental echo effect – apologies – I sound like I’m speaking from inside Seville Cathedral):
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
In the video above I compare Ivan and Smerdyakov’s conversation at the end of Book 5 with the exchange in The Master and Margarita between Pontius Pilate and Aphranius. In both cases, there is tacit communication that is at odds with the explicit meaning of the words.
The difference is that in The Master and Margarita both men understand the same subtext, whereas, in The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan and Smerdyakov are communicating in different ways and on different levels of consciousness.
Bakhtin, in Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics (1929, rev. 1963, translated by Caryl Emerson 1984), considers this conversation to be ‘the summit of Dostoyevsky’s mastery in handling dialogue’:
The interorienting relationships between Ivan and Smerdyakov are very complex. We have already said that the desire for his father’s death, invisible and half hidden from Ivan himself, determines some of Ivan’s speech in the beginning of the novel. This hidden voice is co-opted, however, by Smerdyakov, and co-opted with absolutely precsion and self-assurance. . . .
Smerdyakov’s dialogues with Ivan before the latter’s departure to Chermashnya are in fact embodiments, astonishing in their artistic effect, of a conversation between Smerdyakov’s open and conscious will (encoded in hints) and Ivan’s hidden will (hidden even from himself), taking place, as it were, without the participation of Ivan’s open and conscious will.
I look forward to discussing Book Six – ‘A Russian Monk’ – next month, on Friday 3rd July. Book Six was first published in the August 1879 issue of The Russian Messenger.
Here are links to our previous Brothers Karamazov posts:
Different translations (14 November)
The Reading Schedule (28 November)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (12 December)
0. The Family Tree (2 January)
1. Book One: The Story of a Family – and Father Zosima (23 January)
2. Book Two: An Unseemly Encounter – and Mikhail Rakitin (20 February)
3. Book Three: Sensualists – and Pavel Smerdyakov (27 March)
5. Book Five: Pros and Cons, Chapters 1-4 – and non-Euclidean geometry (15 May)
All the Brothers Karamazov posts are accessible to all subscribers for free, but if you would like to view or contribute to the discussion in the comments section, you will need a paid subscription.
As ever, if you – or anyone you know – can’t afford a paid subscription, just let me know and I’ll send a gift subscription.
The Master and Margarita Book Club
Last month we also read The Master and Margarita – and last night we had an excellent discussion about the novel at the Hatchards Classics Book Club. My report is in two halves this month, because my phone ran out of battery while I was recording . . . Here is part one:
And part two:
And here are links to all of our The Master and Margarita posts:
The Schedule (3 April)
Mikhail Bulgakov (17 April)
0. Bezdomny, Bedny & Bezymensky (24 April)
1. Chapters 1-6 – ponds, proofs, Pilate and pastiche (1 May)
2. Chapters 7-13 – apartments, theatres and basements (8 May)
4. Chapters 19-25 – Dramlit House, Walpurgisnacht and living chessmen (22 May)
5. Chapters 26-32 and the Epilogue – Pashkov House, Devichy Convent and the Gates of Hell (29 May)
If you would like to come to our next Hatchards Classics Book Club discussion, you’d be very welcome! We will be discussing Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman on Thursday 2nd July.
Happy Birthday Margaret Drabble
In other news, Margaret Drabble is 87 today.
Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield, the younger sister of the late novelist A. S. Byatt. She was briefly a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, before dedicating herself to writing. She has written 19 novels and many works of non-fiction, and she edited the fifth and sixth editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature in 1985 and 2000. She is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd and was made a dame in 2008.
The Millstone by Margaret Drabble (1965)
Winner of John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, The Millstone is a radical celebration of the mother-child relationship. It is the Swinging Sixties, and Rosamund Stacey is young and inexperienced at a time when sexual liberation is well on its way. She conceals her ignorance beneath a show of independence, and becomes pregnant as a result of a one-night stand. Although single parenthood is still not socially acceptable, she chooses to have the baby rather than to seek an illegal abortion, and finds her life transformed by motherhood.
[UK] Canongate Canons | 208 pages
[US] Harper Perennial | 192 pages
Coming Attractions and Other Notices
Future monthly read-alongs
For a sneak preview of our upcoming monthly read-alongs, take a peak here.
The Evesham Festival of Words
If you’re near Worcestershire on Friday 26 June, come to the Evesham Festival of Words! I will be speaking at 3.30pm about the history of the Penguin Classics series, which marks its 80th anniversary this year. Here are all the details.
The Idler Festival
And then if you’re in London on Sunday 12 July, it would be lovely to see you at the glorious Idler Festival at Fenton House in Hampstead. I will be leading a guided walk of literary Hampstead at 12 noon on the Sunday. Here are the details.
The Idler No. 110
And speaking of the Idler magazine, I’m delighted to say I have an article in the current issue about the different translations of Homer’s Odyssey. I’ve even got a spot on the front cover, alongside John and Paul!
I’m in excellent company in this issue, alongside Mark Vernon, Alex Johnson, David Bramwell, ella berthoud, Rachel Kelly and many others.
You can get your copy from all good newsagents – or directly from the Idler here.
Annual book subscription
And if you’re enjoying our read-alongs, why not treat yourself to the Hatchards Classic Book Club annual book subscription?
You (or a friend) can receive all the books we read each month here on Read the Classics, beautifully gift-wrapped and delivered to your door, anywhere in the world, as well as a year’s complimentary subscription to Read the Classics, so you can choose to read along with us, if you wish.
To find out more, follow this link or email Hatchards directly: subscriptions@hatchards.co.uk
