Culture as Colloquy: Flann O'Brien's Postmodern Dialogue with Irish Tradition Author(s): Kim McMullen Reviewed work(s): Source:

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as Culture Colloquy: FlannO'Brien'sPostmodern Dialogue with IrishTradition

KIM McMULLEN At In 1939,theyearFlannO'Brien'sexuberantly experimental Swim-Two-Birds in was published, Yeats closed his cold eye,Work Progress appeared in finally its entirety, thebeginning WorldWar II provideda covenient of and closing a date fortheModernist a revolution, closureconfirmed thedeathofJoyce by FlannO'Brienpenned"one of Alter scanttwoyearslater. as Robert If, suggests, he the earliestpostmodern novels" (223)-and I think has-it is perhapsbecenthe his before restof thetwentieth cause he suffered anxiety influence of of the by tury.This is certainly explanation preferred the majority O'Brien's commentators who attribute percussiveformal the energyof At Swim-TwoBirdsto O'Brien's combatwiththe greatModernist O'Brien,argues father.' Lorna Sage, shares withpostmodernists Nabokov and Borgesa "scepticism he of for aboutJoyce all that and standsfor(except them, course, is more Joyce distant-the greatmodernist, a treacherous not (202). Thomas compatriot)" is At O'Grady is moreemphatic: Swim-Two-Birds"a willful'un-understandof a 'misreading' James causedby the'highanxiety' the'belated' [of ing,' Joyce] to writer view oflifeand letters standunwho refuses allow his precursor's to (205). challenged" to However, to reduce At Swim-Two-Bird's intertextuality a flamboyant thosequalitiesthat witha singleliterary father to miss precisely is struggle as makeit a pioneering text. Looselystructured a sepostmodern postcolonial student in of frametales whichan unnamedUniversity College-Dublin quence a writes DermotTrellis, a novel in whicha third novelist, is, himself, writing novel whichplagiarizescharacters ancientIrishtale cyclesand contemfrom Trellis's Westerns who,in turn, written and is aboutbya fourth novelist, porary violatesconventional son, At Swim-Two-Birds persistently "quasi-illusionary" frametale and draws intointertextual by colloquytextsframed the ontology and of discourses variousranks and professions, ideologies, shapedbymultiple None of thesediscoursesis and colonial Irishhistory. spanningpre-,post-, none has thelast word.EarlyIrishepics are juxtaposedwithclipprivileged; with from nature medieval laysare sungin chorus pings provincial newspapers;
At In addition to Sage and O'Grady, see the following discussions of O'Brien and Joyce,particularly Swim's intertextual 3.3 as dialogue with A Portrait theArtist a YoungMan. Bernard Benstock,"The Three Faces of Brian Nolan," Eire-Ireland of The Novelist as Critic," Eire-Ireland4.4 (1969): 64-72; David Powell, "An (1968): 51-65; Del Ivan Janik,"Flann (YO'Brien: Annotated Bibliographyof Myles Na Gopaleen's (Flann OYBrien's)'Cruiskeen Lawn' Commentarieson JamesJoyce,"James 11 9 Joyce Quarterly (1974): Joyce Quarterly (1971): 50-62; J.C.C. Mays, "Brian O(Nolan and Joyceon Art and on Life," James to (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1975), 238-255; Anne Clissman, Flann O'Brien: A CriticalIntroduction his Writings, and the Anarchyof Imagination:Flann O'Brien's Theoryof Fiction especially 106-120;Ninian Mellamphy, "Aestho-autogamy in At Swim-Two-Birds" Canadian Journal Irish Studies4.1 (1978): 8-25; Joseph Browne, "Flann O'Brien: Post Joyceor The of ed. Propter Joyce" in JamesJoyceand his Contemporaries by Diana A. Ben-Merre and Maureen Murphy, (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 113-20.

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DIALOGISM KIM MCMULLEN POSTCOLONIAL

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thepub jinglesof "The Workingman's Poet"; tout'stipsheets engageChristian Brothers in tracts dialogue;advice from temperance pious eighteenth-century vies withtwentieth-century while an anonyEnglishgentlemen pragmatism, mousrhetorician in lectures thetaxonomy tropes thetext on of before us. At Swim-Two-Birds intodialoguenotwith enters alone,butwith James Joyce a thousandyearsof Irishtradition a critical of at moment nationalself-articulation.Tracingtheconstruction Irelandas a colonizedculture of inscribed by David Cairnsand ShaunRichards borrowthewordsofHenry Britain, imperial V's resident a conunto MacMorris, frame central stageIrishman, postcolonial drum:"Whatish mynation?" thateven in FlannO'Brien'snovelsuggests (10). an Ireland thathad weathered revolution and civil war to seal its independencefrom Britain witha 1937constitution, question the had yettobe satisfacanswered.At Swim-Two-Birds to deconstructs various efforts inscribe torily "Ireland" withinthe literary of the Celtic Revival,realism,and languages as the discourseof post-indepenModernism, well as within state-subsidized dence cultural even as it voices the heteroglossia mid-twentiof nationalism, eth century Ireland.Its postmodern narrative intertextustrategies-dizzying frametales, interanimated discourses,and reflexivality,interpenetrating to ity-expose the limitsof receiveddefinitions assertan Ireland that"ish" and self-conscious, plural,historically-reticulated, in constant dialogue with its past. I that is By demonstrating thelanguageof a givenculture really"a set of lan"eachbearing imprint a collection valuesand a distillation the of of of guages," experience" and all "compet[ing]for ascendancy" (Morson, 5), Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of culhelp us to hearthecomplexity At Swim-Two-Birds's turalarticulations. Bothon a literallevel,as the Free Statelegislatedthe rea of coveryof Irishas thenationallanguagethrough "Gaelicization" theeducationsystem a (Brown, and on a figurative 39), level,through state-subsidized cultural Ireland a discourse whichtocall ethos, independent sought unifying by itselfinto being. But, as Bakhtinmightnote,"each culturally predominant group strivesto legislateits dialectas thelanguage,whereasit is, in reality, turns other dialects into onlyone dialectamongmany... [and] that [hegemony] implicitformsof culturalopposition"(Morson,5). Officiallanguage, cento influand hierarchical tripetal, unitary, attempting exerta homogenizing ence-in a word,monologic-isin constant tension withdecentralizing, heterothatis, necessarily, geneous centrifugal languages in a struggle ideological (Bakhtin, "Discourse,"271-73).

In his excellenthistoryof Ireland since 1922,Terence Brown describes a society which, to use Bakhtin's terms,grows more insistently unitary,centripetal, and monologic in the three decades following the treaty.While "much of the cultural flowering earlieryears [1890-1920]had been the product of an invigof of oratingclash between representatives Anglo-Ireland... and an emergentna-

tionalist Irelandat a timewhen it had seemed to sensitiveand imaginative

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of that individuals an independent wouldrequire accomodations future complex no vicounties longer demandedsuchimaginatively twenty-six comprehensive sions" (Brown,17).Initially, nationalist the of an "IrishIreland"seemed myth to offer centrifugal a by challengeto the monologicrule of imperialBritain for essential thestruggle independence. to Figured shapinga collective identity inin mostpotently theimageof a ruralIrish-speaking culturally "peasantry" violateafter centuries colonization defended Cuchulain-like of and patriots, by as thediscourseof "IrishIreland"narrowed intomonologism its oppositional function For, disappearedwithindependence. as Seamus Deane has observed of force colonial often nationalisms generally, insurgent defytheuniversalizing for in domination "attempt[ing] createa versionof history themselves to by whichtheir intrinsic essencehas always manifested itself, producing thereby to as readingsof the past thatare as monolothic thatwhichtheyare trying at 9). ("Introduction," After 1922,the Free Statefaltered the chalsupplant" insteadan official a culture, lengeof constructing heterogeneous articulating and "highly sense of Irishidentity" 51) (Brown, based upon "the prescriptive values of the farmers--familism Catholicism" and 115) (Cairnsand Richards, in and figured the rapidlypetrifying of "IrishIreland,"Gaelic-speakimage ing,rural,agricultural, pious, chasteand Catholic.Eamon DeValera displays theofficial of St. poster-children Eire in a much-quoted Patrick's Day speech of1943: ThatIreland which dreamed wouldbe thehome a people whovalued we of of material wealth a people whoweresatisfied as a basisofright living, only of with a their to and leisure thethings thespirit; land frugal comfort devoted of whosecountryside whose wouldbe bright withcosyhomesteads, fieldsand chilwouldbejoyouswith the sounds industry, romping sturdy villages of of the whose thelaughter comely dren, contests athletic maidens; of youths, of wouldbe theforums thewisdom serene age. (DeValera old firesides of of citedin Carlson, see also Brown and Cairn& Roberts, 133) 9; ,113 As Cairnsand Richards a observe,"whatwas essentially literary tropebecamea cornerstone cultural economic of and as theimageof"Irish policy"(133), Ireland"was essentialized, offered as an alternative not to construction colonial but ratheras a transcendent of being,natural,eternal, inscription category without sourceor historical To the referant Brown,139-42). demurfrom (see official there to weremanyto demur-was not,therefore, engage image-and in ideological discussion,but to defy nature and defile the sacred. Such rulesuppressed historically-positioned ideologically-bound and the monologic
Irish diversity ... ," after independence "[t]he social homogeneity of the

quality of its formulationseven as it muted alternativevoices-a suppression that continued into the 1960s according to Fintan O'Toole: "'Ireland' was a single, imaginable entity[whose] ... dominant culturaland political orthodoxy [was] Gaelic, Catholic and nationalist ... Those who were not a part of iturban workers, Northern Protestants,the stream of emigrants that flowed

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unabatedto Englandand America, women ... could therefore ignoredor be or dismissed deferred" (11). The mostnotorious cultural agentofpost-independence prescription--assertboth literally and symbolically monologicrule-was, of course,the the ing of of of Act Censorship Publications of 1929(a corollary theCensorship Film Act of 1923 and the 1925 law banningdivorce).Framedto "protect" athletic and comely "in maidensfrom indecent or youths publications general tendency obscene" (citedin Carlson,3) and thuspresumably to irrelevant questionsof becamea mechanism guarding borders thenafor of the "Irishness," censorship tion-and theboundaries national of and bothinternal external identity-from became themarker nationalpurity-itself of defined challenge.Moral purity as "racialpurity"-inan equationthatnotonly"closedIrelandoff from much ofthemodern world"(Carlson, butalso foreclosed of discussion that 9), pressing of postcolonial question"Whatish my nation?"by sealinga confederacy the CatholicChurch, proponents a "pure"IrishIreland, the of and theState,as an of Association early(1913) editorial theIrishVigilance portends: The is the Literature so nor fight not against liberty the properly of Press, against called... itis a fight a badPress--against that their columns, against papers fill issueafter with immoral issue, vile, matter, to be readbyourIrish filthy, unfit men andwomen which ... and the presence sanctity purity our sullybytheir of Irishhomes. [T]heevilpublications are nottheproduct Irishbrains, ... ... of northeoutput Irishhands. are to idealand aspiration of of They foreign every theclean-minded and mostly Faithand hatred theCatholic Celt, inspired of by Christian (citedby Adams,16) morality. A supreme ofwhatBrown labelled"cultural act has protectionism," censorship to closetheborders a monologic, of monocular Irishculture Joyce (as attempted foresaw whenhe casttheCitizenas Cyclops). This increasingly and essentializedIreland was the isolated,xenophobic, narrow fieldontowhichFlannO'Brien'sgeneration the to green emerged, first achieve adulthoodin the Free State.Paradoxically, and perhaps inevitably, horizons.As Niall Sheridan, O'Brien'sUniversity theysoughtwidercultural Dublin classmatein 1930,recalls:"The scars leftby the Civil War College whichfollowedthe [Anglo-Irish] were stillraw,and the new generaTreaty tionofstudents wereequallyconcerned ... of aboutthecultural identity thenew stateand its place in thewiderintellectual context Europe" (32). The intelof lectual and professional elite of the new nation,O'Brien and his classmates "feltuncomfortable, it was theywho were mostirkedby theCatholictrifor the the and the peasant or umphalism, pious philistinism, Puritanmorality

petit bourgeoisoutlook of the new state" according to O'Brien's biographer Anthony Cronin (48). Inevitably,yet another Irish turfbattle emerged in the decades that followed, waged this time over the boundaries of cultural identity.It was a classic "neo-colonial plight,"according to Seamus Deane, taking "the customary formof a battle between provincialismand cosmopolitanism, inwardness and outgoingness,nativetraditions and foreign (Short importations"

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of was 203). History, Themonologia cultural by protectionism challenged an internationalist Modernism wouldfly that even abovenational boundaries, as suchrealists Frank as O'Connor SeanO'Faolain to and remained home camat Irish and from mists nationalist of paigntosalvage people customs the hagiogwhileAt Swim-Two-Birds scrutiBut,as I shallargue, raphy. intertextually nizeseachofthese it none novel O'Brien's Instead, positions,embraces ofthem. Irish for as of contemplates culture a system languages competing ascendancy; itsparodies the of ofthe evenas constructions Irish explore parametersvarious itcelebrates rich the of from domination. cacophony a nation emerging colonial a Neither cosmopolitan of traditions a provincial nor repudiation native regurof At to doubleness gitation them, Swim-Two-Birds's begins locate postmodern theparadoxical to that has is "self-irony" Terry Eagleton argued vital anynationalist that the it perspective seekstoavoidreproducing totalizing impulses hasstruggled abolish "Nationalism: andCommitment"). to (see Irony II AtSwim-Two-Birds's overt most subversion monologic of discourse eavesdrops ona brigade "cultural of inaction, a scene in which echoes protectionists" slyly Room" and which broadens satire Irish of "IvyDay in theCommittee Joyce's to the of committee O'Brien's politics scrutinize politics Irishness. plansa a Irish to ceilidhe, quintessential celebration welcomethatquintessential Irishman-"an exilehomefrom foreign the an clime" (192)-with obligatory redcarpet, regulation the Irish cead and (193), "friendly welcome, mileftiilte" a doggedly literal of recitation provincial a When lonecosmopolistereotypes. tanmeekly "one waltz... It'sas Irish anyofthem, as proposes old-time nothing abouttheold-time waltz"(189),thecommittee rallies cultural its deforeign with Mr. fenses: wrong it,ofcourse, Connors, "Nothing wrong nothing actually with ... Butafter a Ceilidhe nottheplacefor that's A Ceilidhe it is all. all, it, is a Ceilidhe. mean, haveourown.We haveplenty ourowndances I we of without the what can't we wear....Leavethewaltzto crossing roadtoborrow thejazz-boys TheGaelic to waltz... So are ... Leagueis opposed theold-time theclergy" are exposedas coercive (189-91). Trifling pleasures ideological as silences waltz's advocate votes closethe the sole and to agents theassembly to In from O'Brien's short scene program dangers abroad. turn, exposes farcically thedangers cultural of at home: exercised itcalprotectionism unselfcritically, cifies self-parody becomes agent isolationism, into and the of and xenophobia, reactionary morality. As AtSwim-Two-Birds's implies, there an "obvious was to parody rejoinder" the protectionist's insistence that"thetrue,essential Irishreality the is Gaelic": "since seventh the ... have a invasions produced comcentury frequent

or 44). This view de-essentializes positecivilization indeeda mosaic"(Brown, "Irishness"by restoring historical a perspective upon a cultureshaped by Gaelic, Christian monastic, Norse,Norman,British, Europeanand American not in diversities class,gender, and religion. O'Brien contributions, to mention a in recognizes mechanism thedialogicnovel to releasemanyof thesevoices

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were engaged" (Short correctivesremain 217). Moreover,these fictional History, limited, reactionary,and monologic, failing to discover the liberating multiplicity sought in The Bell editorial, precisely because of theirchosen narrative strategies.Proposing, in the name of realism, a unified vision to "correct"the officialview, such mimeticfictionwas unable to initiatea more intensive criconstruction theIrishto theextentthatit claimeda sinof tiqueofthecultural

cover"'Lifebefore 137).In the (citedby Cairnsand Richards, any abstraction'" of Irishpluralism, Bell soughtsubmissions from"'Gentileor Jew, (The spirit Protestant Catholic, or priestor layman, House or Small House'" [Cairns Big and Richards, in of O'Faolain, 137]) and sometimes defiance Irishcensorship, and others mounted vigorous a dissentfrom protecthe O'Connor, O'Flaherty, tionist attitudes it On parodiedin At Swim-Two-Birds. thefaceofit,therefore, would seemperverse thatAt Swim'smostsustained satireshouldbe aimed at authorDermotTrellis, whoserealist aesthetic crusading and didacticism echoe theworkof theverywriters might we O'Briento embrace allies.But as expect in his portrait Trellis'sparticular of O'Brien locates the typeof Irish artist, same dangerous in tendencies mistrusts chauvinistic he nationalism. monologic Thus the parody of realismand the anti-mimetic dissometimes strategies missedbycritics postmodern of narratives aesthetic as or solipsism "blankparcritical in function At Swim-Two-Birds. ody" takeon an explicitly the "unvarnished Certainly portrait" paintedby Irishrealismin the 1930's and 40's "registered social reality a thatflewin the faceof nationalistic selffor it revealed that the athleticyouthsand (Brown,122), congratulation" comelymaidens of the authorizednationalbiographywere deeply disillusioned or spiritually or isolated.Yet paradoxically, impoverished emotionally as correctives idealizations, to thesenarratives became "dependent theciron cumstances weredesignedtocombat" to they according Deane, so that"[t]here is something dated bothabout the issues and about the forms whichthey in

Boru, Granuaile, the Shan van Vocht ...'" and with an avowed mission to re-

from ruleintomutualinterrogation, as Ken Hirschkop for observes, monologic Bakhtin's itsdialogism, novel(or moreprecisely novel)seeksto through "[t]he subvert monological's the claimto be timeless, sacredand natural; authorless, and precisely, theextent to it thatits project subversive, will do thisby reis (76). This authored, vealinglanguageto be temporal, prosaic,and historical" is preciselyAt Swim-Two-Birds's of to officialconstructions the challenge textwhicharticulates Irelandas a Irish,forit shapes an open, encyclopedic "some thirty-six different and forty-two exdialogicmosaic,embedding styles tracts" and (Clissman,86) in its 316 pages. Its parodicdestabilizations comic releasea centrifugal orforce thatpersistently unsettles multiplicity emerging thodoxy. Centralto its campaignto declarethebordersof "Ireland"open, At Swim another of the challenges majorantagonist protectionist monologiathroughout 1930's and 1940's-the fictional realismof writers like O'Faolain, O'Connor, and Liam O'Flaherty. to from some ofthehisidealization Attempting recover toricalspecificity contemporary of Irish life,O'Faolain foundedThe Bellin 1940in explicit of words.Theyare as dead as Brian rejection "'theold symbolic

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whichthe authorviewed the worldand an augle privileged positionfrom thoritative discoursewithwhichhe or she spoke it. In failing expose the to necessarilyhistorically-situated positionof the author and the necessarily value-laden a one qualityofanydiscourse-particularly engagedin inscribing of a people--it eschewed the dialogic narrative thatis inportrait strategy strumental At Swim'sefforts destabilizemonologicculturaldiscourse. to to in as O'Brien, speaking pseudonymously Mylesna Gopaleen, complains an Irish Times column abouta "peasant" manenters sketch Frank O'Connor: by "Literary examines 'tries' them varioustopics, on thenwrites folk, cottage, shiny country piece forTheBell."But,laments onlythrough Myles,we see thescenefiltered O'Connor'sperspective, vantagepointthatclaimsempirical a authority: Mr. O'Connor's a clinical is attitude. tries suggest his relationship He to that withthese ... is the his people that a scientist examining specimens I think of have ... at as specimens analytic powers least goodas Mr. O'Connor's sincethe are ... in ownkitchen with specimens at home their by unimpaired judgment Whatwas said after Mr. O'Connor left?... Havingread superciliousness. the[O'Connor]book, cannot reader theOther the read Book?" why (Cuttings, 107-8) At Swim-Two-Birds undermines such realistdiscourse,whichseeks to rewitha new image "empirically" auplace an essentializednationalist myth in of thorized, its parodyof the fiction DermotTrellis.Trellisis theprotagonovelon thesecondlevelofAt Swim's and nistoftheUCD student's frametale, he himself writing novel (level 3) which,like the realismof the thirties is a and forties, it to conditions is intended expose. dependsforitsend on thevery While Trelliswants his "salutarybook to be read by all. He realizes that tract would not reachthepublic.Therefore is putting he purelya moralizing of to Trellis's plenty smutintohisbook" (47). Significantly, plan yokesmimesis moralconservatism naiveZolaesque naturalism: and It appeared himthata greatand a daring to book-a greenbook-was the need book would that show terrible the cancer sin in its crying ofthe hour--a of truelight act as a clarion-call torn and to ... were humanity all children born cleanand innocent.... grewup to be polluted their environment They foul by and transformed-was theword feeble not a and criminals one!-into bawds and harpies.... wouldpresent examples humanity-a he two manofgreat of and is virtue. The woman depravity a woman unprecedented of Theymeet. in ravished doneto death a backlane.Presented and in corrupted, eventually itsownmilieu,in thetimeless sin and gold conflict grime beauty, and black, of
and grace,thetale wouldbe a moving and a salutary one. (48-49) To maintain his moral and aesthetic rule, Trellis "compel[s] all his characters to live with him in the Red Swan Hotel so thathe can keep an eye on themand see that thereis no boozing" (47). O'Brien thus literalizesthe pose of the realist narratoras reporterby violating frametaleontology to permitnovelist and

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that a given character'slanguage, in the dialogic text,becomes itselfthe object of narrative scrutiny, "simultaneously represented and representing" 45). In Pushkin's Eugene Onegin,forexample, "the author repre("Prehistory," sents Onegin's 'language' (a period-bound language associated with a particular world view) as an image that speaks and that is therefore preconditioned." Entering into dialogue with this language, observes Bakhtin, the text

to In the characters occupythesame levelof "reality." doingso, he interrogates centralartifice literary of realism.While the realistmay pose as a disinterof estedobserver a scenewhichshareshisor herontological nonetheless frame, the realistobviouslycreates(and thuscontrols and authorizes)thefictional of characters and theirworld.Trellis'sartifice maskedby thepretense linis and authorialimpartiality, thathis creationsseem auso guisticneutrality thorless, timeless,and naturalphenomenaupon which he simplyreports. coerciveimand However,O'Brienexposes the self-contradictory potentially of thatTrellisis duped by his own artiplications thisaesthetic revealing by fice:he is so takenwiththebeautyofone ofhis own characters he forgets that her fictiveness rapes her. The resultof thisliteral/literary violationis a and son"-and if we hearblasphemous echoesof theVirginBirth, "quasi-illusory in so muchthebetter. curOrlick, turn, exposesthewizardbehindthemimetic tainby authoring courtroom a dramain whichTrellis charged withaesthetic is A and characters. cow, inconsistency autocratic by tyranny his own exploited indeed-The ClosedCloister," appearing "in a work entitled-pleonastically, in complains:"I was engaged to dischargemy naturalfunctions a field.My was notattended withregularity.... sixoccasionsduring curthe to On milking of without attention very for to, rency theworkreferred I was left longperiods" (294-95). At first thana proponent theinof seem less a realist glance,Trellismight that animatesAt Swim-Two-Birds borrows for itself, he freely tertextuality characters from earlier literature use in his own novel:"FINN MACCOOL, a to character the on [from epic fenian legendary cyclewas] hiredby Trellis account of theformer's venerable to appearanceand experience, act as [theheroine's] father chastiseherforhertransgressions and againstthemorallaw" (85). The choiceof Finnmight seem capricious sincehis cameo rolerequires simplythe of but readsonlybookswithgreencovers, concern, Trellis expression paternal and sincetheIrishTextSociety's translations earlymanuscripts boundin are of thathue, his selection patriarchs of becomesinevitable. Howeverit is a magnificent the old control assault to pieceofmiscasting: lusty heroeludes Trellis's thevery"daughter" has been hiredto protect. he Another O'Brien'sparoof dies of culturalprotectionism, Trellis'spreoccupation withgreenbooks and Celticheroesparallelsa myopicobsessionwitha pure Gaelic past justas his echoes theultimately ineffectual sexual prudery thecensorship of moralizing laws. More pointedly, O'Brien criticizesTrellis-and realism generally-fora univocal aestheticwhich silences the criticalpotentialsof intertextuality. Bakhtin of argues that"thelanguageof the novel is a system languagesthat each other" ("Prehistory," mutuallyand ideologicallyinteranimate 47), so

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Nero.... When the cityof Rome, continuedFurriskey, course, was our old friend the holy city and the centreand the heartof the Catholic world was a mass of flames,with people roasting there in the streetsby the God Almightydozen, here is my man as cool as you please in his palace with his fiddle at his jaw" (221).

with[it],argueswithit,agreeswithit, ... interrogates eavesit, "polemicizes on it,but also ridicules it,parodically exaggerates it ... " ("Prehistory," drops 46). Had Trellis engaged the dialogic potentialof the novel genre which Bakhtin he have read beyondthegreencoversof the fenian describes, might to recognize-and critically cycle gap interrogate--the betweenhis own bourand an earlyIrishethosthatcelebrated partof Finn'sheroas geois morality ism"rummaging women" and with (18-19) spending "Lammas generous morning at far-from-simple (16). But Trellisdecontextualizes girdledgirls chess-play" his borrowed and characters from complexsystem cultural, the of ideological, in aesthetic relations withinwhichtheywere inscribed the priortext,effecworldview. Instead, their utterances from their tively disengaging particular Trellis demandsthatthey voice-unsurrender their to discourses themaster's til of courseO'Brien's narrative, withits ontological of the frame of rupture Trellis'snovel,releasesthemand their attendant worldviews intodialogicrebellionagainsthis monologic rule. "Trellis'spowersare suspendedwhen he fallsasleep,"reports to herintended assailantFurriskey and when (85), Peggy thus freed"theyarrangeto lead virtuous aclives,to simulatethe immoral and wordswhichTrellis demandsofthem pain of theseveron tions, thoughts est penalties"(86). Bakhtin would excludeTrellis'spolemictextfrom dishis cussionof thenovelas a dialogicgenre, has identiand indeedPatricia Waugh fiedsuch monologicrule as Trellis'swithrealismin general:"The [dialogic] conflict languages and voices is apparently of resolved in realisticfiction their to subordination thedominant 'voice' oftheomniscient, through godlike narrator" And thatis precisely O'Brien'scomplaint. (6). unthe of At By underwriting sedition Trellis'scharacters, Swim-Two-Birds leashes the dialogic interanimation languagesas Bakhtin of describesit: "[a disbut character's] speechis notsimplytranscribed, represented authorial by course."The speaking "is always,toone degreeor another, ideologue, an person and his wordsare alwaysideologemes;" novel itself the becomes"a dialogized of an ideologicallyfreighted discourse" ("Discourse," 333). representation With Trellis asleep, Peggy and Furriskey embark upon an independent narrative counter to in Trellis's sensationalist and itsdiscourse, text, bourgeois offers O'Brien the opportunity interrogate ideologyof novels of to the turn, in manners ironic relation Ireland's to middleclasses:"Tea was stirred emerging and breadwas buttered ... and trisected; Theaccidental swiftly gongofa creamand a milk-plate was the signal fora resumption lightconversation" of jug of (216). But thegentility thisbenignexchange violinists immediately, on is and pointedly, a fascination withviolence thatemerges soon as as betrayed by thespeakers "The biggest mouths: ruffian thelot [offiddlers], of of open their

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a Another Trellis'scharacters, of Shanahan,has been borrowedfrom pulp to the and he too capitalizes his nocturnal on freedom narrate story of western, a daredevil and Dublin "cornerboy": cattle raidin a creoleofAmerican cowboy "Be damnedto thelot of us, I roared, the flaying nags and bashingthebuckboardacrosstheprairie, and outlorries trams sending and poorso-andpassing mix on bicycles downside-lanes " (77). Theincongruous ofcowso's ... scuttling at result theIrishcensorship of of hints one unanticipated boy/cornerboy slang seriousliterature: libraries filledwith"'an Irishstew of imported provincial of obstat fiftyblood-and-murders westerns, sloppyromances, bearingthenihil two vigilantes" a CountyClare librarian reported as has (citedby Carlson,12; see also O'Toole, 85). Moresignificantly, Shanahan'stalecan be read as a loose and Americanized of the twelfth-century epic Tain Bo Cualnge, Irish retelling his discoursereinvigorates old tale witha folkenergydrainedfromthe the statusas "highart"duringtheCelticRevival,even earlyIrishcyclesby their as his livelycreolereminds of mass emigrations Sea us acrosstheWestern and At the creativepotential Irish-American of cross-fertilization. the same time, O'Brien'sparodyalso highlights gratuitous the violenceand motivehowever, less vengeanceof talesof highadventure their whatever epoch and warnsof thepotential trivialization mass culture's for in of conscription theclassics. III While RobertAlterhails At Swim-Two-Birds one of the first as postmodern he nonetheless dismisses its seriousness and value, for its narratives, "novelistic and self-consciousness goneslackbecausefiction everywhere has is thereis no longerany quixotictension and whatis betweenwhatis fictional real" (224).Morerecently, Fredric has Jameson criticized generpostmodernism forits reliance "blankparody"whichhas surrendered critical on its funcally tion.ForJameson, of such "pastiche""is, likeparody,theimitation a peculiar or uniquestyle... butitis a neutral of without parody's practice suchmimicry, ulterior without satirical that the without without motive, impulse, laughter, still latentfeelingthat thereexists something normalcompared to which what is being imitatedis rathercomic" (114). Yet as I have been arguing, O'Brien'stextreleasesa collective and at timessubversive of interrogation the discursive construction Irish of culture without a or invoking "norm" a "real," by an for initiating interanimated dialogueamongthevariousdiscourses vying asThe "tension" betweentheliterary and its social realmmayretext cendancy. mainimplicit-andmayrequire broader a conof knowledge theextra-literary textthanmanynon-Irish readers easilysupply-but At Swim's can comicinter-

textualityemphasizes the constructedand necessarily relational status of any attempt to articulate "Irishness" at a time when virtually the entire nation was undertakingthat task with extraordinary self-consciousness.As each discourse is dialogically engaged in At Swim-Two-Birds, is exposed not as a it of but as a systemof rules marking "transparent"representation a priorreality, various borders of Irish possibility,as these rules themselves functionwithina systemof ideological and social relations.

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wandersin the The Dublin landscape through narrator whichthe student on level one of thenovel is a worldalreadysubfragments autobiographical as mostobviously A Portrait the Man,and written, by of Artist a Young stantially of itsborders O'Brien'sown historical allows At Swimto interrogate scrutiny into which intrude documents" auepoch.The "found gratuitously thestudent's reveal the conflicted discursivefieldswithinwhichthe textof tobiography in selfcould be written Dublin in the thirties, intertextual and juxtapositions and parodicexaggerations force each discourse revealitssocial significance, to its "ideologemes." and These rangefrom breezyopportunism somewhat the materialism VerneyWright, of British TurfCorrespondent whose desperate all who act 'pronto'and give their bookmaker shockof his life.To all my the friendsforwarding and two S.A.E.'s I will presentthis THREE-STAR 6d. CAST-IRONPLUNGER and we will have thewin of our livesand all thebad luckforgotten" of based in class privilege eigh[15]),to thequietdevotionalism William of whose "description how a day teenth-century English poet Cowper, to as maybe spent"is embeddedin At Swim exactly it appearedin a 1766letter his cousin2("As to amusements, mean what the worldcalls such,we have I and nine;tilleleven, readeiwe between none;... We breakfast commonly eight ther Scripture, thesermons somefaithful the or ... at eleven,we atof preacher tenddivine service... and from twelveto threewe separateand amuse ourselvesas we please" [790]).By including texts British in two of origin thegeneral Irishcolloquy,At Swimpointedly of the effects acknowledges lingering British colonialrule,particularly eighteenth-century More slyly, in the traces. tout'stipsheet ironically exposesIreland'sinevitable-if precarious-economic on tariffs and interdependence Britain, despitethe Free State's protectionist criesof Irishself-sufficiency, thedialogiccomparison thesetwo texts while of underlines classdisparities post-independence in Ireland. lingering As a portrait an artist, of to O'Brien's student stands in pointedcontrast Trellisand moresignificantly Joyce's to acStephenDedalus, forhe himself knowledges that his utterancesare already necessarilyhistorically posiso he for muchless superior, tioned, that can can claimno autonomous, position theliterary For creator. example, solemnattempts encodehis first his taste to of porter demonstrate recognition thediscourse whichhe inscribes his that by this emblematicmomentwill locate him in a symbolicsocial landscape of over-dewhich-given the stereotype thedrunken Paddy-is significantly termined. first He considers drink the the of through grimsensationalism folk his uncle:"[T]hosewho becameadwisdom,possibly gleanedfrom bourgeois dictedto stimulants youth... metwithdeathat theend by a drunkard's in fall, at in of expiring ingloriously thestair-bottoma welter blood and puke"(27). He
next turnsto a ChristianBrothers temperancetractwhich masks its melodrama with quasi-scientific froma peculiar formof jargon: "... many inebriatessuffer consumption called alcoholic phthisis-many, many cases of which are, alas, to be found in our hospitals,where the unhappy victimsawait the slow but sure
2 See William Cowper, "Letterto Mrs. Cowper at the Park House, Hertford, Prose October 20, 1766" in Eighteenth-Century edited by Louis Bredvold, RobertRoot, George Sherburn.(New York: The Ronald Press, 1932), 789-90.

tipsheetthe studentreceives (" ... therewill be a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY to

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of march an earlydeath"(28). Whenhe decidesthatappeal to "personal experience ... theonlysatisfactory of meansto theresolution [his]doubts"(28),it [is] a but may seem thathe has embraced naive empiricism, he inevitably pauses drink his again to view thesymbolic through self-conscious as a "literary" pose man versedin Milton and Keats:"Who are myfuture whereour mad cronies, carousals?Whatneat repastshall feastus lightand choiceof Attictastewith wine whencewe mayriseto hearthelutewell touchedor artful voice warble immortal notesor Tuscanair?"(29). Finally, conscious in deference hisdrinkto a turnedscholarwho punctuates own quaffwitha his ing partner, farmboy the is and belch, student's class-conscious, in theverpronouncementconvivial, nacular: "You can'tbeata good pint"(29). Such self-conscious variouscomposithe intertextuality permeates student's and itscritical becomemostacuteat thediscursive tions, implications junctions of variousconflicted of The xenophobic aspectsof Irishculture. provincialism theceilidhe's musicalprogram emphasized a is whenthestudent invents counin ternarrative whicha heterogeneous of from moa borrowed troupe Irishmen saic of texts-westerns, fenian cycles, tale medievallegends, class poworking and fairytales-sing international an etry, medleyof folk, popularand classical songs: airs, eversangHome on the Rangeand the They pickoftheoldcowboy the and the ... green favourites thebunkhouse prairie theoldcome-all-ye's, ageof lessminstrelsythenative-land, in their a sob as voice thelastnote died;they of ... rendered gleesand round-songs riddle-me-raddies, and Tipperary and Nellie Deane andThe Shade oftheOld AppleTree ... Cubanlove-songs ... moonsweet and theItalian madrigals selections thebestand the from of finest and in (242) operas... twohundred forty-two songsbySchubert theoriginal
German... a chorusfromFidelio ... a long excerpt froma Mass by Bach ...

(186-87).

Shanahan's Irish-American cattle rustlingsaga is juxtaposed Similarly, withthebardicrendering ancient of fenian exploits FinnMacCool himself: by No manis taken the till hole in [into ranks the of fianna] a black is hollowed the world thedepth histwooxters heputintoit togazefrom with to and it his of headand nothing himbuthisshield a stick hazel.Thenmust to and lonely of ninewarriors their at one and fly spears him, withtheother together.he be If or he spear-holed hisshield, spear-killed, is nottaken wantofshieldpast for skill.(20-21)
Impressed with Finn's statureas a hero of old Ireland-and a subsequent nationalist icon-Shanahan nonetheless disdains epic discourse as irrelevantto an increasingly urban and modernworking-class population: You can't beatif,ofcourse... therealold stuff thenativeland ... thatbrought of scholarsto our shorewhenyourmenon theother side wereon thefiatof their

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bellies the man.It's thestuff a around their before calfofgoldwith sheepskin ... that ourcountry manin she Mr. where stands put to-day, Furriskey Butthe thestreet, doeshe come ByGodhedoesn't where in? come at all as faras I in can see.105-6) O'Brien's point isn't simplythat the icons of romantic Ireland are with he O'Grady,Yeats,and Pearsein thegrave.Rather seeksto expose thevalues implicitwithin the epic images by which the Celtic Revivalists of the 1880's-like the latercultural to the protectionists-sought represent Irishto themselves. construct heroic To a Irishessence, Revivalists minedsuchancient texts theTain Bo Cualnge as and Silva Gadelica figures thatcould lend epic for stature cultural and coherence thestruggle independence, in inventing to for yet thissingular and unitary charac"Celtic"past,they buriedtheheterogeneous ter of Irishhistory. O'Brienbeginsits restoration engaging"the real old by stuff the nativeland" in a comicdialogue whichundermines of Revialism's and highlights excess.As Bakhtin its observes suchtactics: of highseriousness literature corrective laughof introduces permanent the "Parodic-travestying of on direct seriousness thelofty of ter, a critique theone-sided word,thecorrectiveof reality thatis always richer, morefundamental moreimportantly and toocontradictory heteroglot be fitintoa highand straightforward and to genre" 55). ("Prehistory," In FlannO'Brien'sbook,FinnMacCool-the object muchantiquarian of symresistsiconization: "Finn thatis twistedand trambol-mongering-actively for Whobuta bookbook-web. pled and tortured theweavingofa story-teller's Finnforthesake ofa gap-worded the poetwould dishonour God-big story? ... has of the [T]here been ill-usageto themenof Erinfrom book-poets theworld Two-Birds deflates indulging thepointof self-betrayal: "FinnMac Cool to by was a legendary hero of old Ireland.... Each of his thighswas as thickas a horse'sbelly,narrowing a calfas thick thebellyof a foal.Threefifties to as of could engage withhandballagainstthe widenessof his backside, fosterlings whichwas largeenoughto haltthemarchof men through mountain-pass" a
..." (24). Such ill-usage is latent within epic discourse itself,which At Swim-

(10).

IV
Howevervigorously O'Brienparodiestheheroiclanguageof theRevival,he neverfully breakswiththeheritage of upon whichvariousmanifestations official Ireland erected their icons of national identity, his is not the for "inverted sow neurosis"of IrishModernism, eat "whereinthe farrow their dam" (314-15).Rather, O'Brien'spostmodern allows an equivocalpostrategy

gether" (10). A "cultural orthodoxy"in which the presentbecomes "'a rational continuationof the past'" (11), the revivalist"ideology of identity"(12) can be

to revive the past" and those who "choose to rewrite repudiateit altoor

sition which neitherembraces nor rejectsthe "real old stuff the native land." of Critic Richard Kearney formulatesthe "crisis" of twentieth-century Irish cultureas a clash between "revivalismand modernism"-between those who "seek

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of bothin theCelticRevivaland in theFreeState'slaterprogram recognized In culturalprotectionism. contrast, a Modernism "affirms radicalbreakwith tradition and endorsesa practiceof culturalself-reflection where inherited ofidentity subject question" to its are (12);it "turn[s] backon thepoliticoncepts cal agenda of nationalrevival... [to] espouse an aesthetic of 'revolution the word'" (Kearney, 13). GivenKearney's and At experiment, emphasison demythologization formal Swim-Two-Birds seemunequivocally Modem and, indeed,Kearney credmight its O'Brien'sdeconstruction "inherited of narratives bothclassical realism of and cultural revivalism" a legacyfrom as (85). But Kearney's Joyce simpleopof and of or position Modernism revivalism-reenactmenttradition repudiation of it-finallyfails to finda place forthe complexequivocationof O'Brien's treatment the various textsand traditions Swimintertextually of At scrutinizes. Kearneyreads At Swim'sparodicdialogue withmythic and legendary textsas simple rejection: is "The traditional quest-structure ridiculedin the aimlesswanderings suchIrish of or heroes FinnMcCool,Sweeney, as legendary the pseudo-bardic Pooka" (85). More troublesome, attributes At Swim he to what he has identified theahistorical as rebellions Modernism:"In Flann of ... O'Brien'sfiction imagination reigns is the supreme; history no morethana ofthenarrator's own comicdesigns....In At Swim-Two-Birds snake the figment offiction curlsup and swallowsitsown tail"(84,86). such solipsism, Swim-Two-Birds's At However,farfrom dialogismexplicin that of Irishidentity a scrutiny is necessarily itlyengagespriorinscriptions historicized political, and and historical" baexposingthe "authored, prosaic, sis of theCelticRevivalists' and thecultural romantic antiquarianism protecto tionists'essentialism. Therefore, Kearney's"either/or" oppositionof revivalistreenactment Modernist or of we rejection mustadd a third category to a whichboth valuesand accountfor text "both/and" adequately postmodern and as innovation an agentofidetradition, whichdeploysformal interrogates of thepassages withwhichAt for ologicalcritique.Ironically, example, many SwimparodiesRevivalism's heroicdiscourseare,at thesame time, legitimate translations the Silva Gadelica, Irishtale cycledatingfrom fifth of an the cenand originally translated theIrishTextSociety StandishO'Grady. for tury by admissionrequirements the for Comparethepassage quotedabove,outlining withO'Grady'sversion:4 fianna, No manwas taken till a [intothe fiannal in theground largeholehad been made the of and must nine (suchas toreach fold hisbelt) heputintoit ... Then ninespears, witha tenfurrow's and widthbetwixt them warriors, having
3 To be fair Kearney's to I must that the of in argument, acknowledge hehimself recognizes limitations hisbinary opposition a footnote identifies that a "third narrative to that be from that tendency" "may termed postmodern,theextent itborrows freely theidioms bothmodernity tradition, moment of and one a of another and endorsing deconstructiontradition, reinventing the of is and, rewriting stories thepast..." (14).However analysis dominated theoriginal by binary Kearney's opposition moreimportant myown discussion, never for he at identifies "third this narrative tendency" workin FlannO'Brien's fictions. to of Fictions: Novel within Novel in theWorks Lessing, the I owe thisobservation HollyKing,"Convenient Gide,and of Los 61-162. to O'Brien."(Diss. University California, Angleles, 1975), Kingrefers thesame passagesin O'Gradyand but ofthis reference differs from O'Brien, herinterpretation intertextual substantially myown.

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assailhimand in concert flyat him. pastthat let him, guardofhishe were If hurt then, was notreceived Fianship. he into (Silva Gadelica,100) of O'Brien'spresent tenserendering a vigorous is acknowledgement thevitality littlefrom the and continued and of the Gaelic inheritance, it differs energy Such passages are directwords" of O'Grady's authorizedtranslation. "lofty to "hardlyparodiesat all," according J.C.C.Mays (254),yetjuxtaposedwith "Mr. in morecontemporary discourses At Swim and narrated thebombastic by FinnMacCool,they seemantiquated, and can overblown, self-parStorybook," the odic-a comicdeflation Revivalist to of attempts recover heroicpast. inheritance At Swimbothproblematizes celebrates cultural its and through Linda Hutcheon a parodicstrategy thatis distinctly As theorist postmodern. of from "ridiculing imitation thestandard the ... argues,such parodydiverges of definitions parody]that rootedin eighteenth-century theories wit..." are [of or to to (26). Refusing occupya position postsuperior thepriortext tradition, modern both"incorporates challenges and thatwhichit parodies"(11), parody bothchangeand cultural (26). Thus,as"paradoxically enact[ing] continuity" formalsertsHutcheon,"it is precisely introverted parody-that seemingly with ism-that paradoxically about a directconfrontation theproblem brings of the relationof the aesthetic... to a discursiveworld of sociallydefined meaningsystems (past and present)-in otherwords,to thepoliticaland the historical" (22). Ratherthancurling to swallow its own tale,postmodern up inits fiction such as At Swim-Two-Birds evokesand challenges cultural both "it is forthe heritance as Bakhtin observes, thoughenergetic dialogismand, samereason[that] in a of novelsarenever danger becoming mereaimlessverbal The novel, being a dialogized representation an ideologically of play. to discourse... is of all verbalgenresthe one least susceptible aesfreighted theticism such"("Discourse," as 333). It is a significant equivocation,that the Flann part of this postmodern O'Brienwho was bornintothatfirst, and cosmopolitan, critical post-independence generation was also paradoxically withIrishtraditions more familiar who rethanmanyof the Revivalists who embraced themor theModernists them.Born"BrianO'Nuallain" in 1911intoa family ardentcultural of jected nationalists where"no English all was spoken"(Cronin, whose vacations at 9), Brian in were spentin theGaeltacht and who sang Irishfolksongs theparlor, a himself becamean accomplished student old and middleIrish, of completing Mastersthesison "Naturein IrishPoetry" University at (Cronin, pasCollege not sim).All of thesevoicesare drawnintothecolloquyofAt Swim-Two-Birds, but witha conservator's didacticism a "blankparodist's"frivolity witha nor comicmimicry provokes that botha continuity withand a critical distancing

fromthe past. We can easily see this postmodern equivocation at work in another of O'Brien's contributionsto the articulationof Irish cultural identity-his 1941 novel An Bdal Bocht, published in Irish under the pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen and translatedThe PoorMouth(1973). As Terence Brown observes,An B~al Bocht parodies such popular "western island" novels as Tombs O'Criomthainn's Am t-Oilednachfor reinforcingthe DeValeran myth of an

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IrishEden populatedby a noble,ifimpoverished, whose veryisolapeasantry an tionhas keptthem reintroduces inAn pure.Butsimultaneously, BealBocht urbanpopulation theIrishlanguagethrough soto a creasingly cosmopolitan phisticatedsatire thatimplicitly acknowledgesthatIreland had outgrown theGaelic League's iconization "ruralimpoverishment deprivation and of and folk ... a semiartificial culturethatmanyIrishpeople foundembarrassing" or a of folk 148).Far from rejection traditional narrative a satireofru(Brown, ral poverty, Beal Bocht of An the challenges ideologicalconscription theseimnationalbiography theIrishand simultaneof ages intoa singular, petrified the relevance. ouslyrestores Irishlanguageto contemporary This same doublenesspermeates Swim-Two-Birds, the Irishcultural for At richness embodiesdemandsa narrative it bothto privithat strategy refuses of on lege a singular perspective thepastor to relaxitsscrutiny theideological of of parameters any invocation it. At Swim-Two-Birds's parodies interrogate inheritednarrativesto forestalltheir ossificationinto cripplingcultural Yet the stereotypes. theseparodiccitations simultaneously refigure past,by inor themodernreaderto a traditional such as theSilva Gadelica text troducing BuileSuibhne thatmight or otherwise have remained unknown, untranslated, it themintodithesenarratives bringing by passe. Moreover, recontextualizes withthecritical "Culture" thusbeneedsand conditions thepresent. of alogue comesan on-going as theIrishpastis engagedin continual, critical and process, self-conscious, colloquy. It is in thiscontext O'Brien'sdialoguewithModernism-andwithJoyce that in particular--develops added dimension. Swim-Two-Birds's profound At most to deArtist a Young as Man engageswhatHutcheon challenge A Portrait the of scribes a pervasive as a work toward publicdiscourse postmodern program-"to thatwould overtly eschewmodernist and and aestheticism hermeticism itsattendant each new (23). As At Swimintroduces politicalself-marginalization" it the of one's culallusion, deconstructs verypossibility transcending Joycean turalinheritance achievetheaesthetic to Dedalus seeks independence Stephen whenhe vows to "forge thesmithy [his]soul theuncreated in of conscience of Dedalus's nameringswithsymbolic [his]race" (Portrait, 253). IfStephen (and O'Brien's protagonist remainsunnamed.If "unIrish")portent, symbolically Portrait witha highly conof thedeveloping artistic opens symbolic rendering At withnonchalant and "One beginning one sciousness, Swim begins reflexivity: a I A endingfor bookwas a thing did notagreewith. good bookmayhavethree dissimilar inter-related in theprescience theauof and openingsentirely only thor... Examples three concludes (9). IfPortrait of separate openings-the first:" witha ringing vow thatoffers At closureto the text'sdestabilizing ironies,
Swim's "Conclusion, ultimate,of the book" is perhaps the most gratuitousintertextual inclusion of all. At SwimrewritesPortrait subvertany Modernistdesire to transcendnets of to nation,language, and Church in order to discover an eternalvalue in art. It demythologizes the exile of the heroic artist by demonstrating the degree to which the cultural horizons of its own artistprotagonistsare already written, and it articulatesa postmodernaestheticthat stands in self-consciousdefiance

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ofStephen's own program. Dedaleanartist The commands worldto "mean" the a processof revelation: "This supreme is through by quality[quiditas] felt the artist when theesthetic ... is first conceivedin his imagination The inimage stantwhereinthatsupremequalityof beauty,the clear radianceof the esthetic image,is apprehended luminously themindwhichhas been arrested by itswholeness and fascinated itsharmony theluminous is silentstasisof by by desiresto illuminate worldby theword.WhileJoyce the immanence, Stephen ironizeStephen'spretensions theaesthetic O'Brien'sstuto might priesthood, dentartist mockshisown pretensions: dimroomrangwiththeironoffine "My words ... concerning own work, an as its my affording insight to itsaesthetic, its its and its cleardaemon, argument, sorrow, itsjoy,itsdarkness, sun-twinkle ness" (32). More important, student's a the aesthetic-obviously self-ironizing reflexive reference At Swim-Two-Birds to desire the itself-subverts Modernist to escape thenightmare history a transcendent in of vision: unitary Thenovel, the in hands an unscrupulous ... could despotic a satisbe writer, of novel should a self-evident towhich reader be sham couldregulate the factory at willthedegree hiscredulity. was undemocraticcompel It to to characters of be uniformly or badorpooror rich... Characters should interchangebe good ableas between book another. entire one and The literature of corpus existing should regarded a limbo be as which authors coulddrawtheir discerning from characters required Themodern as ... a should largely work refernovel be of ence.(32-33) Like postmodernism At sham" "self-evident generally, Swim-Two-Birds's that"'[t]here be no simpleopposition culture, transcencan no to acknowledges dent perspective language,no singularsecure self-definition, all find or for theirmeaningonly withina social framework'" Russell cited by (Charles dethrones Modernartist, the his 51). Hutcheon, At Swim returning or hervoice to thegeneral cultural as whenpoetsCaseyand Sweeney colloquy, jointhecowfairies and pookas in "thedelights colloquyand harmonized of boys,naavies, talk contrapuntal character" in of (185). Such democratization culturalconwith the dialogic interanimation discourse, of assertsthe struction, coupled relational and historically-positioned of any formulation of status necessarily "theuncreated conscience [the]race"and developsa "publicdiscourse" of that moves beyond Modernism's "political self-marginalization" well as as Revivalism's heroicessentialism theFreeState'scultural and protectionism. V
Given Ireland's history a colonized island on the fringes Europe, one senses as of in At Swim-Two-Bird's postmodern strategiesa particular postcolonial trajectorywhich overthrowsthe monologism inheritedfromimperialism to open a dynamic cultural colloquy that begins to engage Irish diversity.As Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin have suggested generallyof postcolonial texts: estheticpleasure ..." (Portrait, 213). Through the artist's priestlyrevelation of

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In pushing colonial the world themargins experience 'centre' the to pushed of consciousness in the pointat whichmonocentrism all spheres of beyond couldbeaccepted the In words alienating without thought proquestion. other cess which to the world the'margin' to served relegate post-colonial initially ... turned andactedtopushthat world intoa position which uponitself from all experience couldbe viewed uncentred, and multifarious.... as pluralistic, Theimpetus in towards and has decentring pluralism alwaysbeenpresent the in postand has reached latest its of thought development history European and structuralism. thesituation marginalized But societies cultures enabled of
them cometo thisposition to ... muchearlier and more directly (12)

if in that"all oppositional Moreover, Terry Eagletonis correct his assertion to aboutthemasincethey "exist bring ... moveunderthesignofirony" politics terialconditions thatwill spell theirown demise,and so always have some antidevice builtintothem"(26), thenthe exhuberant peculiarself-destruct for narrative At Swim-Two-Birds be seenas a strategy reintroducing of an might ironicnoteintoIrishculture a timewhenthattone-and its "self-destruct" at of (or at least self-critical) dampenedby themonologism the Free force--was State.At Swim-Two-Birds's can innovations thusbe seen to open narratologic Irishculture its multiple the to inheritance without postcolonial relaxing selfcritical whichinhibits petrifaction-and culthe irony potential tyranny--of turalforms. culthe of Whether Irishfollowed O'Brien'slead in terms greater turalself-consciousness, of increased or fuller heteroglossia, acknowledgement remains problematic,although Fintan O'Toole asserts that historicity, the thoseassumptions and seventies, "[s]lowlybut inexorably, through sixties becameuntenable" [that"'Ireland'was a single, (11) and a imaginable entity"] "cultural "in whichit had becomeimpossible think to of instability" emerged Irelandas a unifying social thatwould underlie and overhang concept every and cultural in and there weremanycompeting conflicting phenomenon, which on Irelands thesame island"(12). But thereare limitsto O'Brien'sheterogloss for enterprise: all of its intertextual we to exuberance, can surelytax O'Brien'sown textwitha failure enmorebroadly and directly rangeof conflicting voices.Whileno the Irish gage novelcan achievecomplete intertextual some of O'Brien'somisinclusiveness, sions are striking: thereare, forexample,no Northern voices nor explicitly voicesheardin At Swim-Two-Birds, women-exceptas objects and Anglo-Irish of narration-are significantly At absent.5 Equally troubling, Swim'scritical failsat important as when the racismof the cowboysis moments, dialogism voiced without And, while At Swimparodiesthe challengeor counterclaim. and of the itdoes notconfront ispuritanism monologia cultural protectionism,
sue of censorship directlyand avoids any explicitlypolitical confrontations.
Brendan P. O Hehir objects much more categorically than I do to such absences, accusing O'Brien of xenophobia and sexism: "Outside the small island that was Flann O'Brien's sensibilitylay all that was otherto him-all that was not Irish, such Catholic, and male" (212). In a textthat seems to celebrate pluralityas vigorously as At Suwim-Two-Birds, omissions are indeed significant, and perhaps one can read them as the limitingblindness that is the underside of O'Brien's insight.I hope, at any rate,thatI have demonstratedthatO'Brien's textreleases the very kindof deconstructive critiquethat animates falls short of exposing fullythe ideological limitationsof his own O Hehir's analysis, so that while O'Brien's self-critique text,its very dialogic strategiesnecessarilysponsor the criticaldismantlingof any utterance--includinghis own.

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to liberated Opposed in narrative strategy stableor monologicarticulations, withlaughter nevertheless from At and illusion, Swim-Two-Birds aspedantry narrative a difor of postmodern sertsthe generative, decentering, potential from mutedatthe versepeople stillseeking voicesyearsafter their emerging ofcolonialdomination. mosphere Thus it seemsfitting at thedecentered of center At Swim-Two-Birds we that findthelegendary to anti-hero rivalthe Sweeny-a postmodern postcolonial of Revivalist'sCuchulainand the Modernist's Dedalus. The protagonist the BuileSuibhne, thirteenth-century text, whose disa Irish Sweenyis a "native" orientation resuscitation-both and the through powerof theword--embody Ireland'sstruggle cultural for O'Brienhappensearlyupon thefigure survival.6 whichFintan O'Toole identifies an emblem thenew opennessofIrishculas of turein the 1980s(13), foras Seamus Heaneywrites theintroduction his in of own 1984translation BuileSuibhne, of Sweeney Astray: was which imagination ... theliterary uponhim as an image clearly fastened in thegripofa tension and the ethos between newly the dominant Christian recalcitrant ... Celtic is as older, of temperamentinsofar Sweeney also a figure theartist, to it displaced, assuaging himself hisutterance,is possible by guilty, readthework an aspect thequarrel as and between creative imagination of free the constraints of religious, political, and domestic obligation. unnumbered) ("Introduction," labelled both parodic (Clissman,129) and "serious Througha translation and accurate"(Wiippling, 60), O'Brien introduces Sweeny'slegend into At As Swim-Two-Birds one of FinnMacCool's "spare timeliterary as activities." it of contact-that Celt and of Heaney suggests, locatesa keymoment cultural a of the and of Christian--in longhistory suchencounters, illustrates centrality discourse colonial to The as powerrelations. clashoccurs St.Ronanis "outin the matin-hours out church and ringing of taping thewall-steads a new sun-bright his bell in the morning" marksterrain (90)-that is, as he literally previously animated Celticspirituality occupation theChurch. for by by Enragedby "the clack of the clergyman'sbell," Sweeny attemptsto overpower him by the from clericand put[ting] in it the "snatch[ing] beauteouslight-lined psalter thelake" (90). He intends same fateforRonan, is interrupted a call the but by to armswhichhe,a good Celticwarrior-king, answers. immediately By drowningthe psalter,Sweeny challengesthe emblemof the priest's Christian devotionand earthly If authority. the Word is God, language becomesmonologic absolute, repository unchanging, and its the becausescripted,

holy text.In his attempted logocide, the Celtic Sweeny whose culture is oral, desires to submergethe authority upon which the Church's subsequent occupation of the Irish landscape is to be built-the Word. In turn,Ronan invokes the power of that Word to condemn Sweeny to madness and exile by utteringa "melodious lay" that "will banish thee to branches" and "put thee on a par
6

O'Brien's textanglicizes as whilemostother I choice writers prefer "Sweeney." will honor O'Brien's Suibhme "Sweeny" throughout owntext. my

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with fowls" (92). Maddened through this clash of cultures,exiled by and fliesacrossIreland, beautiful within language,Sweeny intensely lyrics singing thatrehearsethe spirituality the land itself an alternative Christian of as to bountiful and harsh,not yetbounded by the psalmody.It is a wild terrain, Church: There a time was when preferred I tothetinkle neighbour [from monastery] bells the of the voice theblackbird the of from crag and the belling a stagina storm. of There a time was I when preferred the yapping the of wolves tothe voice a cleric of and within.(126-27) melling megling it word to of Ironically, is only in his resistance the authority the Christian that Sweeny is driven to reclaimthe topography Ireland in his native of and equivocalconvergence twist thiscomplex to of And,in yetanother tongue. are (becauseoral) lyrics preserved a self-apcultures, by Sweeny'sephemeral Christian pointedscribe-the literate Moling-and Sweeny'sown words become textbound. the Deeply paradoxical, legenddoes not so muchsurrender Celticto Christian rediscourseas it createsa mosaicof thetwo,dialogically of mise of and vealingpoints conflict, congruence, interanimation-a enabym At Swim-Two-Birds and itself, of Irishculture. it Howeveremblematic O'Brien'spostmodern enterprise, Sweeny'staleis for is not installed as a master discourse. It too is deconstructed-by that inter"man in the street" Shanahan,who initiates another quintessential yet textual with"pomes dialogue by countering Sweeny'smedievalnaturelyrics written a manthat one ofourselves written is and to downfor ourselves read" by Man's Poet: (106)-JemCasey,PoetofthePick,theWorking When is scarce your and bare larder food Andno rashers grease your pan, When as meals rareare hunger grows your A PINT OF PLAINIS YOUR ONLY MAN. (108) "Thatpome," crows Lamont,"is a pome that'llbe heard wherever Irish the race is wontto gather, live as long as there'sa hard rootof an Irishman it'll

left..." (109). And O'Brien thus succeeds in parodying Sweeny, Casey, the dimensions of working class taste, the pretensionsof antiquarianism, medieval the bibulous stereotypeof the Irish, and any lyricism,cultural protectionism, text-working class or Revivalist,Christianor Celtic, modern or postmodern, narrative or critical-which presumes to claim the last word on "the Irish."

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