Osmosis

Oh bejasus,  osmosis , a challenging theme if ever there was one. Happily, I think I've got an angle on it, and it's all to do with bicycles and policemen, if memory serves.

When I was at university (over fifty years ago now, how can that possibly be?), I had an Irish friend, one Dhiarmad MacDhiarmad, who introduced me to the writings of Flann O'Brien (real name Brian Ó Nualláin). 

O'Brien had only recently died and his novels - now regarded as prominent examples of modernist metafiction - hadn't yet reached a wide audience or the cult status they were to achieve in the last quarter of the 20th century.

Indeed, the book that inspired today's blog, 'The Third Policeman', although written in 1939/1940, was not even published until after O'Brien's untimely death in Dublin in 1966. He was so disappointed when it was originally rejected that he pretended the manuscript had been lost and he didn't write another novel for over twenty years.

a bicycle

I haven't re-read 'The Third Policeman' since the early 1970s but what I do remember of the absurd and entertaining plot is as follows:

The narrator, who is never named, has written a book about de Selby, a philosopher and scientist, but lacks the funds to get the book published. With an accomplice, he kills a local man-of-means in the parish by hitting him around the head with a bicycle pump, so as to acquire the money to publish his book. Unfortunately, the accomplice absconds with the money-box. The narrator is then persuaded by the dead man's ghost to go and enlist the help of the police in locating the money. He goes to the police barracks where he meets two bicycle-obsessed policemen, Sergeant Pluck and Policeman MacCruiskeen

At the barracks, the narrator is introduced to various peculiar or irrational concepts, artefacts, and locations, including a contraption that collects sound and converts it to light based on a theory regarding 'omnium', the fundamental energy of the universe; and a vast underground chamber called 'eternity' where time stands still, and mysterious numbers are devoutly recorded and worried about by the policemen. They try and arrest the narrator as the likeliest suspect in the murder case, but he claims as he has no name he cannot be brought to law. 

He persuades a friend to help him escape custody but his rescue is thwarted by MacCruiskeen riding a bicycle painted an unknown colour which drives those who see it mad. He faces the gallows, but then the two policemen are called away by dangerously high readings in the underground chamber. 

He eventually manages his escape from the barracks on a bicycle of unusual perfection. Riding past the house of the man he murdered, he is tempted to go in, whereupon he encounters the mysterious and reportedly all-powerful third policeman, Fox, who reveals that the money-box contains not money but 'omnium', which can become anything he desires. To be honest, I can't remember what happens in the end. I shall have to get hold of a second-hand copy from somewhere and read it again.

more bicycles (third policeman not shown)

And the osmosis part? After all, that's why 'The Third Policeman' has been dragged into today's blog...

Osmosis is never mentioned explicitly in the novel, but it is clearly the governing principle behind the 'atomic theory' posited by Sergeant Pluck and Policeman MacCruiskeen, namely that through excessive use, the atoms of a person and their bicycle are exchanged. 

As people ride their bicycles, they absorb atoms from their bikes, while the bikes absorb human atoms. This leads to a blending of identities, whereby, according to Pluck and MacCruiskeen, people become part-bicycle and bicycles become part-human.

The inhabitants of the parish are often described by the percentage of bicycle they have become, with some residents being over 70% bicycle. Because of this atomic transfer, people in the novel often lean against walls on one elbow, a position described by the narrator as a bicycle posture.

The result of all this osmosis is that bicycles often try to enter houses, while people develop strange, metallic, or mechanical behaviours. The policemen worry that if this trend were to continue unchecked, the residents and their bicycles would completely swap roles.

Sergeant Pluck is so wary of his own bicycle that he keeps it, or rather her, locked in the lone jail cell.

a leaning bicycle (she/her)

If you wish to investigate Flann O'Brien's writings (and I urge you to do so), here's a brief bibliography:

'At-Swim-Two-Birds' - pub. 1939, a metafictional satire populated entirely by characters borrowed from other books and legends, on the grounds that "there are already far too many existing fictional characters". It was a favourite of James Joyce and is widely considered O'Brien's greatest achievement.

'The Third Policeman' - pub. 1967, as summarised above already.

'The Poor Mouth' - pub. 1941, a darkly comedic pseudo-biography written by a man from his prison cell where he is banged up for a murder he didn't commit. 

'The Hard Life' - pub. 1961, a comedic coming-of-age novel set in the squalor of turn-of-the-century Dublin, deriving humour from despair at the human condition.

'The Dalkey Archive' - pub. 1964, featuring both De Selby (from The Third Policeman) and a fictionalised James Joyce, this comic philosophical novel set mainly in the bars of Dalkey recycles many of the ideas from O'Brien's second novel, still unpublished at that time.

Back-pedalling madly, I've taken inspiration from musing about people and bicycles and osmosis and such and have been working on two new bicycle poems today, a semi-serious and a silly one, (the latter wrapped around an old joke).

Bicycle People

Hunting mammoths on mountain bikes
might have been fun ten millennia ago,
likewise chasing prey on tandem across
vast savannahs, spear guy at the back -
but where was the wheel when they needed it?

Take-away curries by Deliveroo cyclists
could’ve been speedier in four thousand
B.C. for Harrapan city roads were paved
for sure and side panniers were a thing -
but where was the wheel when they needed it?

And Pheidippides, that original marathon
man two thousand five hundred years past
could certainly have smashed his personal
best with a bicycle and not burst his lungs –
but where was the wheel when he needed it?

Because there were wheels around by then -
in potters’ sheds and on chariots, they just
hadn’t gone inline in pairs on a frame, For
that leap was still over two millennia away
and even Leo da Vinci couldn’t conceive it.

We had to wait so long for Baron von Drais
and his Dandy Horse, with saddle but minus
mane and tail, for Trésaguet and a scientific
approach to road surfaces, and then whoosh -
the industrial age rushed in all metal frames

and pedal cranks pneumatic tyres and brakes
so little girls in Glasgow didn’t get knocked
over in the street.  Nowadays bicycle people
are everywhere- - hunting for work, jumping
red lights and waiting for the oil to run out...

Officer Doggerel

We were just settling down to plates of curried curate's eggs

on toast  last night  when insistent  knocking interrupted our 

repast. I cursed.  The doorway framed a vast  policeman, his

thumbs  hooked  into  his tunic, pantomime style. Without a

nod  he made  his accusation.  "Your dog's  reported  to have

chased a man  on a bicycle  the length  of  the street  barking

in a  most  threatening  manner." He  rocked  backwards and 

forwards  on his  size  fourteen  feet  waiting for  me to speak. 

"Not  my dog,  officer.  He's sick  in bed.  Anyway  he  doesn't 

own a  bike. Must  be someone else's." "Is your  dog brown?" 

"Black, officer."  "This  dog  too  was black. Is he a heathen?"

"No, a good  catholic sort." "Wearing a dog  collar  perhaps?"

"Only on  holy  days, since you ask." I answered, forgetting it

was  Good Friday.  "Do you mind if  I  just come in and take a

quick look around? " If  you must," I replied, playing for time.

To my relief, Seamus had  wheeled the bike out into the yard

and was already  pedalling  away down the back lane, his tail

wagging behind him, before  the policeman  stepped through.

"What do we have here?" he enquired,  "curried curate's eggs

if  I'm not  mistaken. My very favourites."  The least  I could do

was invite  him to join me.  "Were you anticipating  company"

he asked coldly,  "somebody who doesn't use  a knife or fork?

Who wears  a dog collar  and  rides  a  bicycle  perhaps?"   We

sat on in silence while he  scoffed  Seamus's Good  Friday  tea.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)