Second paragraph of third story (“Eachta an Fhir Ólta: CEOL!,” translated by Jack Fennell as “The Tale of the Drunkard: MUSIC!”; sadly the original Irish-language text is not available):

“What is the meaning of this? What’s wrong with you!” I said. “It’d be more in your line to be in bed, instead of staggering around drunk all over the city like this. You’d be better off if you turned your back on the drink, and your face to the fireplace—an intelligent, mild-mannered man such as yourself—and took up another hobby, like fretwork, or listening to the gramophone. . . .”

I got this in preparation for the Flann O’Brien panel at the Dublin 2019 Worldcon, but I confess that I only skimmed it then. It’s a short collection of short pieces by the great man. The most interesting stuff is at the beginning, where he pokes fun at Irish language enthusiasts in a couple of pieces originally written in Irish (and heavily footnoted to explain the humour). Most of the middle section is material being tried out for deployment elsewhere (the story about the young man who was born for Ireland gets used twice).

At the end, Jack Fennell presents a story which he is certain is by a 21-year-old Flann O’Brien, and published in 1932 in, of all places, Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories – “Naval Control”, as by “John Shamus O’Donnell”. He has argued the case further in a recent Journey Planet, and I for one am convinced. How glorious, that Gernsback may have published the future author of The Third Policeman!

To be honest, I think this is really a book for Flann O’Brien completists, but there are a lot of us about, and it comes with a good foreword and scholarly apparatus. I don’t think any of the stories even clears the first step of the Bechdel test. But you can get it here.

This was my top book acquired in 2019 which is not by H.G. Wells. Next on that pile is The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless.