FLANN O'BRIEN Stories and Plays (RARE) 1st US Hardcover

Description: • For Your Consideration: • A (RARE) First US Edition HARDCOVER of: • “STORIES AND PLAYS” (Richard Seaver | Viking Press, 1973) (Hardcover, First US Edition) • BY FLANN O’BRIEN • INTRODUCED by CLAUD COCKBURN • “The best comic writer I can think of.” —S. J. PERELMAN • “That’s a real writer, with the true comic spirit.”—JAMES JOYCE • “FLANN O’BRIEN is unquestionably a major author. His work, like that of JOYCE, is so layered as to be almost DANTE-esque…. JOYCE and FLANN O’BRIEN assault your brain with words, style, magic, madness, and unlimited invention…. If we don’t cherish the work of FLANN O’BRIEN we are stupid fools who don’t deserve to have great men. FLANN O’BRIEN is a very great man.” —ANTHONY BURGESS • “Certainly there is no shortage of writers in Ireland, but there isn’t anybody remotely like him.” –WILLIAM SAROYAN • “FLANN O'BRIEN...redefined, after KAFKA and JOYCE, the boundaries of the comic.”—GUY DAVENPORT • “Along with JOYCE and BECKETT, [FLANN O'BRIEN] constitutes our trinity of great Irish writers. And who is funnier?” —EDNA O’BRIEN • “To lump O’BRIEN with JOYCE and BECKETT is to miss the playfulness, black humor, and deranged whimsy that characterize [O’BRIEN’s] style.” —NATHANIEL RICH, SLATE • “Tis the odd joke of modern Irish literature—of the three novelists in its holy trinity, JAMES JOYCE, SAMUEL BECKETT and FLANN O’BRIEN, the easiest and most accessible of the lot is O’BRIEN…. FLANN was too much his own man, Ireland’s man, to speak in any but his own tongue….” —MARK JAY MIRSKY, WASHINGTON POST • “Orthodox narration was never his forte; at his best, he went where he would, at a blithe speed, and carried the reader—a dazzle of verbal dust in his eyes—along.”—JOHN UPDIKE, THE NEW YORKER • “MR. O’BRIEN’s gifts are startling and heartless. He has the astounding genius for describing the human animal, its shameless and dilapidated body, its touching and proliferating fancy, its terrible interest in useless conundrums.”—V. S. PRITCHETT, THE NEW STATESMEN • ABOUT THIS BOOK: • “A rich collection of works either previously unpublished or unavailable in volume form, STORIES AND PLAYS offers new proof—if any is needed—that the man known variously as FLANN O’BRIEN, BRIAN O’NOLAN, and MYLES NA GAPALEEN…was of the major writers of our day.” —THE PUBLISHER • “To those who know [O’BRIEN’s] writing, this book is a treasure. To those who don’t, it is an excellent introduction, for every type of thing that he did in English is here, in brief, and in a rich assortment.” —WILLIAM SAROYAN, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • “This is required reading for all FLANN fans, bringing to our attention some of his theatre work, his unfinished novel, SLATTERY’S SAGO SAGA, as well as a typical O’BRIEN piece on JAMES JOYCE. CLAUD COCKBURN’s introduction is also very illuminating.”—MIKE I LONDON, AMAZON REVIEW • ABOUT “AT SWIM-TWO BIRDS”: • “AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS has remained in my mind ever since it first appeared as one of the best books of our century…. I read it with continual excitement, amusement and the kind of glee one experiences when people smash china on the stage.”—GRAHAM GREENE • “A really funny book.” —JAMES JOYCE • “O’BRIEN’s lack of readership is particularly surprising since of the holy Irish trinity [JOYCE, BECKETT, O’BRIEN], he is by far the funniest…. His masterpiece, AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS (1939), has the singular distinction of being consistently laugh-out-loud funny, even on a second or third read, even 70 years after its publication.”—NATHANIEL RICH, SLATE • “AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS is both a comedy and fantasy of such staggering originality that it baffles description and very nearly beggars our sense of delight.” —CHICAGO TRIBUNE • “AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS gleefully dismantles the primacy of an author over their creations—and also the distinctions between genres, as characters from different stories, including Irish legend and fairytale, leap their narrative bounds to interact. A great well of delight and a comic masterpiece.”—ALAN TROTTER, THE GUARDIAN • “I have enumerated many verbal labyrinths, but none so complex as the recent book by FLANN O’BRIEN, AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS…[which] is not only a labyrinth, [but also] a discussion of the many ways to conceive of the Irish novel and a repertory of exercises in prose and verse which parody all the styles of Ireland.”—JORGÉ LUIS BORGES • “One of the funniest first novels of the 20th century, AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS. This exhilarating and intoxicatingly self-referential extravaganza..., a mixture of autobiography, fantasy, farce and satire, is the love child of STERNE’s TRISTAM SHANDY and JOYCE’s PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST, while also being a mad elegy for an Irish culture apparently threatened with oblivion.” —ROBERT McCRUM, THE GUARDIAN (2016) • “Born into a somewhat peculiar nationalist family, his first language was Irish, although it was as a prose stylist in English that he wrought his finest achievements. Chief of these is the novel AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS, a comic masterpiece…. O’BRIEN was a philistine as well as a consummate prose stylist, an artist who threw away his talent, a Catholic who allowed himself to drift into the sin of despair, and a great comic sensibility thwarted and shriveled by emotional self-denial.”—JOHN BANVILLE, THE GUARDIAN (“MY HERO: FLANN O’BRIEN”) • ABOUT “THE THIRD POLICEMAN”: • “His undisputed masterpiece, THE THIRD POLICEMAN, is full of bizarre concepts derived from scientific principles taken to absurd extremes.”—JACK FENNELL, THE GUARDIAN• “BECKETT is the only writer known to me who can wring so much laughter out of so little hope, although some of the Russians, notably GOGOL and DOSTOEVSKY, com clos, and one or two of the French modernists, such as CELINE and CAMUS, live in the same emotional neighborhood, without the guffaws. But THE THIRD POLICEMAN is so entirely successful on all of its many levels as to be virtually sui generis.” —ROBERT BOYLAN, BOSTON REVIEW • “I first discovered THE THIRD POLICEMAN when someone…recommended it to me, claiming it was the funniest book ever written, bar none. I would agree, if to the adjective ‘funniest’ was added the conjunction and adjective ‘and scariest.’ I had never read anything quite like it, and now, although I have read books like it, I have never read anything of its kind (which is what? a Menippean satire?) to surpass it.” —CHARLES BAXTER • “Its stylistic innovations, such as the book’s rambling, pseudo-scientific footnotes, have been highly influential in contemporary fiction. (On DAVID FOSTER WALLACE in particular.)” —JOSEPH PATRICK BURKE, THE ARTS FUSE (2011) • “Listen. I’ll tell you something about the best book in the world. The best book in the world is so good you can use it to refine your social life. Take a copy of Irish author FLANN O’BRIEN’s THE THIRD POLICEMAN: you can lend it to somebody you know, and based on their reaction to its contents, decide whether to accept them as a friend, downgrade them to an acquaintance, or, if they really don’t like it, drop them completely. I have done this more than once, even with people I have known for some time. THE THIRD POLICEMAN has the sort of qualities that any good friend should appreciate, and any rather tiresome or dull sort of comrade would not. It is, from start to finish, funny. Like the very best literature, it is also abundantly dark. But it’s more than that. It has the sort of astounding absurdity that only the finest minds—the sort of mind one might demand of a chum—could produce and appreciate.” —DAVID LOUGHREY, THE IRISH TIMES (2019)• ABOUT “THE POOR MOUTH”: • “If THE POOR MOUTH [by FLANN O’BRIEN] is not quite a comic masterpiece, it nevertheless shows a comic genius working close to this best capability. Humor of this quality, this intensity, is very rare; as witty in its language as in its inventions….” —PETER PRESCOTT, NEWSWEEK • ABOUT THE AUTHOR, IN GENERAL: • “He could have been a celebrated national treasure—but he was far too radical for that.”—FINTAN O’TOOLE • • For other details about this book, please see below. • TITLE: “STORIES AND PLAYS” AUTHOR: FLANN O’BRIEN INTRODUCTION: CLAUD COCKBURN TYPE: HARDCOVER NUMBER OF PAGES: 208 PUBLISHER, LOCALE, & YEAR: A Richard Seaver Book | Viking Press (New York), 1973 EDITION: FIRST US EDITION, FIRST PRINTING* *RE: On the Copyright Page, the statement “Published in 1976 by the Viking Press, Inc.”—with no later printings listed.** **RE: “Viking Press. Until the late 1930s, no first edition statement, but subsequent printings noted. In 1937, began stating ‘First Published by Viking in (Year)’ or ‘Published by Viking in (Year)’ on first editions, and continued the practice of noting subsequent printings.” —QUILL & BRUSH (WEBSITE) NOTE: This copy is NOT ex-library NOR a book-club edition. ISBN: 0-670-67206-8 CONDITION OF DUST JACKET: GOOD.Price (4.95) is unclipped. Corners & spine tips are chipped. There is severe wear (inc. cuts & slices) along the edges—and some foxing. A paper-revealing scuff occurs near the front image. Inside flaps are creased. Sides have persistent scratching, scuffing & smudging. Text remains bright. All else–bright & clean. (Now protected in a Brodart archival cover.) CONDITION of BOOK: VERY GOOD. Book is square. Boards are clean with sharp corners. Spine is tight with bright lettering & faintly bumped tips. Top text-block edge has a smattering of foxing spots in one area. This foxing is restricted to that area & do NOT affect the interior. Other edges are fine. A few pages have accidental dog-ears but otherwise pages are bright & clean with no writing, no underlining, no doodling, no tears, no stains, no foxing, etc. In fact, this copy LOOKS UNREAD. SHIPPING NEWS: This book will be wrapped with care before being shipped in a cushioned and sturdy box. THANK YOU! ********************** /\___/\=•ᆺ•= “We believe it’s good business to be good to our customers.” *********** FLAPPINCAT’s HOUSE RULES ***********1. GENERAL TREATMENT. We enjoy treating FLAPPINCAT customers with honesty & respect & warmth because that’s how we like to be treated when we buy things on eBay.2. GENERAL ATTITUDE. We are grateful you choose to trust us with your business. We aim for that gratitude to permeate every part of how we engage with you.3. OUR DESCRIPTIONS. We describe every item we sell as clearly and accurately as we can. When it comes to describing condition, we tend toward being conservative. 4. PACKING & SHIPPING. 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Price: 44.99 USD

Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina

End Time: 2024-09-12T00:26:34.000Z

Shipping Cost: 5.99 USD