Big and Learned and Far from Simple Intellectual Narration in ‘The Plain People of Ireland’ & The Third Policeman

Brian Ó Nualláin is a man of many names and many voices. The narrative power he possesses is exemplified when comparing the ‘Plain People of Ireland’ segments of the Cruiskeen Lawn columns in The Irish Times, penned under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen, and the voice of the nameless narrator in Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. Within these two works, the position of the intellectual in Irish society is portrayed through quite different lenses: the self-confident, perpetually correct Myles, and the timid, obsessively rational narrator. While both voices are erudite and authoritative, their positioning within the environments they inhabit could not be more different. This article examines the positioning of the ‘intellectual narrator’ in Ireland, as portrayed by the various voices of Ó Nualláin, focusing specifically on the tone utilised throughout the respective pieces to differentiate the social standing of the narrators from those they encounter. The mastery of language apparent in both ‘The Plain People of Ireland’ and The Third Policeman subverts the expected portrayal of a public intellectual, destabilising the inherent class politics that imbue both works without dismantling them all together.

Regardless, he valued his own depth of knowledge and was confident enough in his position as an intellectual to assert the right to pontificate on matters of public concerndespite the prohibitions on publicly stating political opinions that came with his position as a civil servant -and was 'able to claim expertise as [a] promulgator of general cultural values,' and 'to act as [an] arbiter of public morality.' 5 This intellectual confidence informed the wide breadth of work he published under his various pseudonyms, which is characterised by its diversity of genre and style, its masterful manipulation of multiple languages, and the distinctive personalities it portrays.
As well as being a masterful storyteller in his own right, Ó Nualláin had the ability to reproduce the voices around him, switching linguistic registers with ease, which allowed him to produce very pointed social commentary. The personalities he was able to portray throughout his career were cultivated by his unique position in Dublin society; as Jennika Baines explains, as 'the civil servant, the Irish Times columnist, and the version many in his family used throughout their lives, and it has been used for his work in Irish, including his Master's thesis from University College Dublin. While for the most part, I will discuss his interrogation of the intellectual in Irish society in his English writing in Cruiskeen Lawn and The Third Policeman, I will refer to him throughout this article as Ó Nualláin, the name under which his own scholarly work was composed. 2   The main voice throughout both texts presents itself as erudite and authoritative; the type of person who is accustomed to being listened to and not questioned, albeit with varying levels of success. Ó Nualláin's decision to forefront and mimic the voice of the intelligentsia in his work is intriguing: due in part to a conservative and consensualist social order of the mid-20th century, public discussions of class and status, and public critiques of societal roles, were taboo in Irish social commentary. 10 This proscription held especially true when discussing the perceived élites, those whose supposed standing in society was heavily reliant not on material wealth or governing power, but cultural capital and social posturing.
The exact social standing of the intelligentsia and the intellectuals in Irish society while Ó Nualláin was active as a writer and columnist has been widely debated. Liam O'Dowd defines members of both parties as individuals who are 'typically accredited professionals or specialists who have acquired credentials within the formal education system and whose activity is regulated and validated by professional organisations and specific institutional environments.' 11 He further asserts that the intelligentsia and intellectuals inhabit a class of their own due to their control Glass: Big and Learned and Far from Simple 3 of specialised knowledge and particular forms of critical discourse. 12 R. W. Connell notes that the public role of the intellectual has two sides. On one side, they play the part of the alienated outsider, the critic and often the victim of powerful interests, the misunderstood scholar whose work is underappreciated; on the other side, they are bound to the existing social order and rely upon 'their recruitment, their pecking order, their funding, their fights.' 13 Eva Etzioni-Halevy suggests that the intelligentsia are consistently among the élites in various spheres who have 'influence but little power over others.' 14 Moreover, O'Dowd notes that 'recruitment to the intellectual stratum is highly selective in class terms, especially to its upper echelons.' 15 There is a greater distinction between the intellectuals and intelligentsia and the lower and middle classes -yet, there is still a class disparity between the intelligentsia and the upper class. Although the intelligentsia have no actual governmental power, they are still able to command the attention of the social élites who do not necessarily have the same accreditation. The 'intellectual narrator,' therefore, sees themself as inhabiting a separate class from the majority of the people who surround them. They command authority based on their (perceived) expertise on specific topics, which is dependent on their ability to make their audience believe that the intellectual's breadth of knowledge is superior to their own, and therefore that the opinion of the intellectual must necessarily be the most valid. This authority, however, is dependent on the projected confidence of the narrator in their own mental acumen and is easily challenged by a reader who does not have 'appropriate' deference to the information the narrator possesses.  People of Ireland and demonstrates his cultural capital in his stated preference for books over playing cards. While the act of playing cards for money is not inherently prescribed to the lower classes, the specification of the game happening in the back room of a pub with 'the lads' in complete silence, with low buy-ins and pints of stout, stands in stark opposition to the glamour of high stakes games in posh casinos with expensive cocktails and banter that may attract a well-read, well-off clientele. Na gCopaleen's stated preference for books over cards, then, situates him within the cohort who would prefer the latter over the former.
Brooker describes na gCopaleen as a figure who 'seems to know an immense, intimidating amount. He expounds and opines on architecture, painting, music, philosophy, and politics as well as literature; his ability to turn up one day in Latin and the next in Irish must have sealed the sense of unassailable erudition.' 21 Na gCopaleen uses this perception fully to his own benefit; after opining about the electric chair, and discussing the logistics of a theoretical prison break to avoid that fate with The Plain People, he digresses to point out a mistake he has discovered while reading: He lacks any formal qualifications; despite every intention, he was unable to attend university after leaving school at the age of nineteen due to familial obligations. He channels his thirst for knowledge and desire to understand the world around him by devoting his entire life to the study of the theories of the philosopher de Selby, much in line with the activities of an active academic; however, he is not socially protected by the symbolic capital of titles and degrees.
It is, perhaps, this lack of formal higher education that allows the narrator to become the self-appointed leading expert on de Selby, as he had not received the formal analytical training to dissuade himself of the advisability of, or his suitability to, the project. He was first introduced to the philosopher's theories in secondary school, and 'spent some months in other places broadening [his] mind' 33 before returning home to spend years working on a book to disprove what he believes to be misconceptions about de Selby's work. All this, despite the fact that the philosopher's absurd theories make no sense either within the logic of Ó Nualláin's text, or without it, as observed by nearly everyone but the narrator himself:

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The Parish Review 5.1 (Spring 2021) spirituous liquors, reviving and quietly restoring the spiritual tissue. This benign property of his prose is not, one hopes, to be attributed to the reason noticed by the eccentric du Garbandier, who said 'the beauty of reading a page of de Selby is that it leads one inescapably to the happy conviction that one is not, of all nincompoops, the greatest.' 1 This is, I think, an overstatement of one of de Selby's most ingratiating qualities. The humanising urbanity of his work has always seemed to me to be enhanced rather than vitiated by the chance obtrusion here and there of his minor failings, all the more pathetic because he regarded some of them as pinnacles of his intellectual prowess rather than indications of his frailty as a human being.
[…] 1 'Le Suprème charme qu'on trouve à lire une page de de Selby est qu'elle vous counduit inexorablement a l'heureuse certitude que des sots vous n'êtes pas le plus grand.' 34 The narrator's obsession with de Selby becomes the focal point of his personality and is his driving motivation throughout the text, leading him to commit his 'greatest sin': the murder of old Mathers for his fortune to fund the narrator's further studies. 35 The narrator is so charmed with de Selby that he cannot accept any criticism toward the philosopher, immediately dismissing du Garbandier as an eccentric, instead of reflecting upon the absurdity of such inventions as de Selby's 'tent-suit.' 36 While du Garbandier is able to make himself feel superior to de Selby in calling out his nincompoopery, his opinions hold no authority for the narrator.
During an encounter with the now deceased Mathers, the narrator is joined by a voice that only he can hear, helpfully dubbed Joe, who seems to be the true critical thinker of the pair. Joe is something of a spirit guide for the protagonist, reminiscent of the complete self-confidence of the Mylesian-style, guiding both the reader and the narrator through the more baffling aspects of the text. The discussions between Joe and the narrator echo those of na gCopaleen and The Plain People, however the roles are subverted. Instead of taking the dominant role in the conversation, the self-styled intellectual narrator plays a passive part. While the narrator considers the names he may encounter in his journey as he is lacking one of his own, Joe begins an extended bibliographical explanation for every name listed, filling almost two pages of the text.
While this recital initially amuses the narrator, he loses patience with the polemic exposition and interrupts Joe: 34 Ibid., 95. 35 Ibid., 9. 36 Ibid., 52. In the end, he completely rejects Policeman Fox's use of omnium to create the Parish's Eternity as an 'oafish underground invention [which] was the product of a mind which fed upon adventure books of small boys.' 43 It is, however, his 'innocent superiority' and intellectual conditioning that prevents him from being able to truly grasp the gravity of the situation in which he finds himself. 44 Later, after he is sentenced to 'a stretching' 45 for the murder of old Mathers, the legality of the sentence is questioned, as the narrator cannot satisfactorily provide a name for himself, with the Sergeant stating, 'if you have no name you possess nothing and do not exist.' 46 The narrator is then cheerfully informed that the last time the parish had a hanging, the criminal in question was a bicycle, which had taken on human qualities and must therefore atone for the crime committed. 47 After it becomes clear that the narrator will not be acquitted and spared his fate of hanging, there is an attempted rescue by a band of one-leggèd men who tie their legs together to create the illusion of one man for every two, and who then suffer an implied derangement from a colour that is so bizarre that it would 'blast a man's brain to imbecility by the surprise of it.' 48 Oddly, throughout the entire discussion that would ultimately conclude in his death, salvation by way of one-leggèd men aside, the narrator seems to be incredibly blasé about the whole ordeal, and passively yields to the inevitability of his fate.
Brooker notes that the narrator is 'describing a personal catastrophe in the most inappropriately dry terms,' 49 as though he were simply describing a day in his family's pub. Taaffe agrees, commenting that the humour in The Third Policeman 'depends for its effect on the narrator's pained reasonableness in the face of an incomprehensible world.' 50 However, as the world around him grows increasingly surreal, the narrator retreats deeper into the theories of de Selby, trying to make sense of what is happening to him in the form of increasingly frantic footnoted analyses which punctuate the text with enough rigour to placate even the most citation happy academic. 51 However, to add to the nightmare, 'the more meticulously his theories and achievements are catalogued, the more their pathetic misguidedness is revealed.' 52 It is almost as if 43 Ibid., 196. 44   Both na gCopaleen and the narrator of The Third Policeman are linguistically set apart from the parochial dialect of most of the characters with whom they come into contact, as both typically use a cultured, standard manner of speech. 59 Language difference is commonly used to denote class standing: the most common way to identify and control the social strata is to identify members of speech communities and classify them accordingly. Ó Nualláin plays on this throughout his work, using phonetic rendering In this instance, the pronunciation, if spoken aloud, is reminiscent of upper-class British diction. 61 Ó Nualláin rarely applies a phonetic rendering to the speech of The Plain People, instead allowing his Irish readership to interpret their accents for themselves. This practice departs from the wider anglophone literary tradition of only marking phonetic variation of characters from less prestigious dialect groups. 62 In the same way, Ó Nualláin gives his traditionally rural characters the ability to subvert their expected language use through educated language. Sergeant Pluck is quickly established as a fount of knowledge essential to surviving the strange otherworld he inhabits. Upon meeting the nameless narrator, Pluck asks him first for his 'pronoun,' and when he is not given an adequate answer presses on, asking for his 'cog.' When the narrator is again left baffled, he clarifies that he is after losing his 'surnoun.' 63 It is entirely unexpected for someone of Pluck's social standing to be aware of Roman onomastic conventions, let alone to try to mitigate confusion by switching to Anglo-Norman. 64 Pluck is allowed the same eloquence and sense of humour as regularly afforded to na gCopaleen, effectively removing the narrator from the role of the singular intellectual of the text. The policemen in The Third Policemen have a similar narrative purpose as The intellectual type with whom they are forced to interact, although na gCopaleen is much more competent than the nameless narrator.
While Ó Nualláin himself was fond of playing the plain man, 65  Policeman, on the other hand, destabilises this relationship: his lack of formal accreditation places him firmly within Connell's description of the intellectual as an alienated outsider. 68 In both cases, Ó Nualláin takes as a given an implicit superiority of intellectuals over lower and middle classes, earned through mastery of the linguistic arena. In the domain of language, he destabilises that hierarchy, although