Murphy

"Well, I don’t have a lot to say about the Second World War, but I think what I like about these books is more in terms of what happens to the comic novel later on in the twentieth century. Both these authors are interested in writing a kind of anti-novel. So if you think about Murphy , what happens if I evacuate character, plot and emotional interest, what remains to this novel? There’s a way in which, when people criticise Murphy , I understand, because there’s a lot that’s adolescent in it – the glee of taking the sacred cow and punching holes in it. But what I like about these books is that they both have a weird sort of warmth and energy and liveliness, almost as if they had tried to empty the novel of character and just can’t quite do it. And there’s a note, too, of genuine humility. Murphy , for example, who is a kind of a Beckett projection, mocks the Puritans, but hates sex. At least the Puritans wanted to have children. Murphy ’s not even sure if that’s a good idea. Well The Pirates is pretty funny. The plot is basically that Charles Darwin on the Beagle is boarded by pirates who befriend him. Then they go back to London and help him out with some problems. It’s like a Monty Python sketch in the form of the novel. Defoe’s clearly been watching Monty Python and listening to Eddy Izzard stand up routines because it has that strange combination of history and anachronism. It’s kind of an insane idea he has to create a novel with dozens and dozens and dozens of thin throw away characters that are brought on only to have a joke made at their expense and then thrown off the page again. He never stops with the silliness machine. It’s almost exhausting so that you realise that with Pirates Defoe has reached some kind of outer limit. Of what the novel form can stand. If you compare it to Wodehouse, for example, you can see the other work that Wodehouse does. Wodehouse creates a confection, but it’s a confection between substantial characters. Wodehouse believes in his characters. He actually needs his characters. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter That’s hard. There are different moods and different needs aren’t there? I guess I might say Flann O’Brien’s Third Policeman . There’s something about that novel. It’s just unlike anything I’ve ever read. You talk about it but you can’t quite put your finger on why it’s such fun. I’ve got this idea that the comic novel is like madness without mental illness, and it has to do with this protective bubble that the comic novel throws up around its characters and its readers. You get to experience people saying and doing completely insane things which in a different, or let’s say real context might have them either suffering from a very disturbing mental illness – visions or voices or whatever. Some of the ramblings you get from these people are not that different from what you might hear from a paranoid schizophrenic. But not having the darker problem of what it might be like to actually be a paranoid schizophrenic is the gift. It seems to me that Flann O’Brien has noticed that relationship between madness and mental illness in the comic novel and pushes it to the very outer limits. It’s incredibly funny. You feel constantly that there are no differentiating markers – that the world is about to turn into chaos, mush, soup, that there are no longer any familiar points by which you might get your bearings – but that the intelligence behind the confusion is essentially benign. It’s a feeling very like being tickled."