Flann O' Brien
Form and Structure/Levels and Layers
Calling At Swim a frame tale is a little like calling Moby-Dick a fishing story: there may be truth in the term, but it falls so far from adequacy as to be almost meaningless. O'Brien builds in so many frames that interact so freely that it becomes nearly impossible at times to identify the frame in which a given scene is taking place. This overlapping-frame issue derives from characters from one frame climbing, as it were, into the previous frame and participating in action on that "upper" level.
For instance, Dermot Trellis begets his son, Orlick, on a character he has created for his story. Is Orlick, then, a product of Dermot's frame or that of the unfortunate mother, Sheila Lamont? Moreover, when Orlick leads a revolt against his sleeping father, his confederates are the characters Dermot has created for his novel. When the father-author sleeps, however, he loses control of his creatures and they can act as independent agents in his world. This business of frames sliding through and over one another is addressed more fully below by Monique Gallagher in her essay, "Frontier Instability in O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds."
Calling At Swim a frame tale is a little like calling Moby-Dick a fishing story: there may be truth in the term, but it falls so far from adequacy as to be almost meaningless. O'Brien builds in so many frames that interact so freely that it becomes nearly impossible at times to identify the frame in which a given scene is taking place. This overlapping-frame issue derives from characters from one frame climbing, as it were, into the previous frame and participating in action on that "upper" level.
For instance, Dermot Trellis begets his son, Orlick, on a character he has created for his story. Is Orlick, then, a product of Dermot's frame or that of the unfortunate mother, Sheila Lamont? Moreover, when Orlick leads a revolt against his sleeping father, his confederates are the characters Dermot has created for his novel. When the father-author sleeps, however, he loses control of his creatures and they can act as independent agents in his world. This business of frames sliding through and over one another is addressed more fully below by Monique Gallagher in her essay, "Frontier Instability in O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds."
posted by Chris Titan at 7:33 PM
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