Not really into this book; there’s a lot else going on so that I’m easily diverted. It’s also a matter of the way this book is written. It’s like reading several novels at once–which, of course, it is.
But I picked it up again for a few minutes this morning as I counted to 300 slowly while holding down the pilot light knob on the shop heater since it keeps going out on me overnight and it’s freezing in here. But I loved this sequence in the "coming to life" of the character, Mr. Furriskey:
He found it in the third wall he examined and it may be valuable to state–as an indication of the growing acuteness of his reasoning powers–that he neglected investigating one of the walls as a result of a deduction to the effect that the door of a room in the upper storey of a house is rarely to be found in the same wall which contains the window. (p. 71)
There are several things happening here: Furriskey is the creation of Trellis, who is the creation of the first person narrator of the physical book which is the creation of Flann O’Brien. So we’re several layers deep here. O’Brien is telling us how a character is created–born then, at the exact point in which he appears in a story. What intelligence do we give him? What experience?
And all the while, O’Brien is having a good laugh.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology