At Swim-Two-Birds

“Thanks for your faith in me, it is very comforting to know that I have clients who are sportsmen who do not lose heart when the luck is ‘the wrong way.’”

At Swim-Two-Birds provides numerous investigations into the nature of fiction. In addition to the manuscript excerpts that the student reads during the novel, the gambling tips are a separate kind of fiction. Verney’s letter contain plots and character arcs in which he appeals to the reader for trust. He requires the reader’s investment in the same way that the student wants audiences to invest in his own works of fiction. The gambling tips are an alternative form of literature that works toward similar goals but for different purposes.

“I am every hero from the crack of time.”

In the context of the novel, different characters can appear an infinite number of times across all fiction. Minor characters from Trellis’s work appear in works by other authors, while Trellis borrows characters from other books. For traditional folk heroes like Finn Mac Cool and Mad Sweeny, this interconnectivity of fictional works means that they have reappeared an almost infinite number of times throughout history. Finn is an archaic, exhausted echo of the past, a person who has appeared in so many stories across the expanse of time that he feels anachronistic in the literary present of the novel.

“Trellis has absolute control over his minions but this control is abandoned when he falls asleep.”

Trellis’s lack of control over his own characters while asleep prompts the audience to ask about the student’s control over his own characters given his love of sleeping. The student’s uncle criticizes his nephew for sleeping all day. This laziness is no longer just a moral issue but an existential threat. Given the thin line between fiction and reality in the novel, the student’s laziness could become a genuine problem, and it speaks to the authors’ tenuous grasp over their creations.

“Two laughs in unison, these were my rewards.”

The student appreciates the immediate positive feedback his joke garners. His relationship to his friends is somewhat transactional: they frequently borrow cigarettes or money for alcohol from one another. Rather than genuine camaraderie, laughs are issued as rewards for jokes and good behavior. Even when out with his friends, the student takes a somewhat dispassionate view of their relationship with them, like the writers’ relationship to their characters.

“One day Tracey sent for me and gave me my orders and said it was one of his cowboy books.”

The lives of the characters in Trellis’s novels are described like menial labor. They’re summoned to perform shifts in work of fiction, reducing literature to a working-class enterprise in which the managers (the writers) exploit the workers (their characters). The characters resent the exploitation, but due to the system and society they inhabit, they initially struggle to imagine a world in which they can wrestle back control of their lives.

“He’s a terrible man for talk.”

This is how the other characters describe Finn Mac Cool. The description functions on several levels. First, it’s an idiomatic way of describing Finn as a talkative person. Second, it’s a way to describe his archaic and outdated manner of talk, which doesn’t match their own. Third, the storytelling of Finn Mac Cool is an annoyance for characters who are already trapped in a work of fiction by the authors. They don’t want Finn trapping others like they’ve been trapped, giving his talk a sinister implication, as the other characters are aware of the perils of fiction.

“A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.”

The characters in the student’s novel relish their independence but in certain ways cannot escape their creator’s influence. Shanahan shares his favorite poem, which extols the virtues of beer. He claims that this poem is insightful and real in ways that other poems aren’t. His opinions echo those of the student, who spends his days drinking heavily and shares many of Shanahan’s opinions in this regard. The poems that Shanahan praises are exactly those that validate the student’s lifestyle.

“I do not relish / the mad clack of humans / sweeter warble of the bird / in the place he is.”

While Casey’s poems may echo the student’s sentiments, the contrast between Casey’s poem and Finn's hints at the deteriorating effects of fiction upon the characters. Finn is an old and weary man. He has appeared in many stories throughout history and is now tired of “the mad clack of humans.” While Casey’s poems are modern descriptions of the positive aspects of life, Finn’s poem is a desperate plea for help from a man who is worn down and tired.

“What class of a death will you die?”

One reason the characters resent the control the authors have over them is the lack of agency they have over their own lives. Being able to know their fate and the "“class of death” they will suffer represents a level of control and power the fictional characters lack. When Sweeny asks a friend about the nature of their death, the answer shows that the characters are beholden to the story rather than their own free will. Ultimately, these characters’ fate is to die rather than to live their lives.

“Go where you like in the wide world, you will always find that the Irishman is looked up to for his jumping.”

When sitting around and talking to one another, the fictional characters indulge in storytelling of their own. They exaggerate the truth and share folk stories in the same way that Trellis shares stories about them. Shanahan’s comments about the Irish and their skill at jumping is an example of a fictional character extending folklore. He may resent Trellis, but Shanahan can’t help but indulge in his own stories.

“We should not sleep to recover the energy expended when awake but rather wake occasionally to defecate the unwanted energy that sleep engenders.”

Trellis is vulnerable while asleep. Given that Trellis is a character invented by the student, Trellis’s vulnerability functions as a subtle expression of the student’s guilt. The student’s uncle criticizes him for sleeping all day and not tending to his studies. As such, after the uncle’s criticism, the student works his unspoken guilt and shame into his novel as a point of weakness for the character. Like Trellis, the student should spend more time tending to his own creations.

“Do you know how many subordinate clauses you used in that last oration of yours, Sir?”

The Good Fairy uses grammar as a mode of debate and a way to assert authority in a decidedly literary context. The Good Fairy is one of many characters who become aware that they exist in a work of fiction (or several works of fiction). As such, one of the few ways the characters can rebel against their masters is to assert some knowledge about literature and grammar. By criticizing another person’s use of subordinate clauses, the Good Fairy is subtly establishing his own literary credentials in comparison to his authorial master. By criticizing grammar, the Good Fairy is trying to demonstrate his own agency by turning the master’s tools against the master.

“The idea that all spirits are accomplished instrumentalists is a popular fallacy.”

As the characters begin to turn on the authors who created them, one of their primary methods of attack is literary criticism. Mistakes, errors, misconceptions, and cliches are literary errors that should be avoided. By accusing authors of making such mistakes, the characters attempt to undermine the authors’ legitimacy and show the world why these people don’t deserve to be in positions of power. Authors accused of a “popular fallacy” can’t be trusted to exert so much control and power over their creations.

“Bolshevism will be the next step.”

The Good Fairy takes umbrage with Casey’s explicitly political poetry, worrying that Casey’s praise of the working class will result in the rise of communism. The political debate between Casey and the Good Fairy hints at a political purpose to literature that is absent from Trellis’s work. Even though Trellis is the author who creates these characters, his writing is inconsequential and trivial. The political subtext of Casey’s poetry hints at the higher purpose of literature and suggests that Trellis is in an unworthy position of power.

“Jem Casey was kneeling at the pock-haunched form of the king pouring questions into the cup of his dead ear and picking small thorns from his gashed chest with absent thoughtless fingers, poet on poet, a bard unthorning a fellow-bard.”

Casey tending to the wounds of a fellow poet functions as a smaller-scale version of the novel’s structure. In At Swim-Two-Birds, the student is a writer who invents and then tortures Trellis, just as the characters Trellis invents turn against Trellis. Writers and characters rage and war against one another, to the point that the student’s novel is an attempt to compare the wounds of writers and their creations, just as Casey tends to the wounds of Sweeny. The “bard unthorning a fellow bard” (104) is an echo of both the student creating Trellis and Orlick turning on Trellis.

“Leave the waltz to the jazz boys.”

As the old men argue about music, their commentary on the competing musical genres echoes the competing literary genres in the student’s novel. Poetry, folklore, and Western novels all compete in the student’s novel, conflicting with each other in stylistic terms and for resources such as characters. The old men believe that each genre should be left to itself, but the student’s novel throws together numerous genres and forces them into conflict with one another. The competing genres mark a generational shift in which vastly different characters, people, and styles are forced to live in proximity.

“They have passed below me in their course, the stags across Ben Boirche, their antlers tear the sky, I will take a hand.”

Sweeny’s dialogue reveals the tensions in his character. He would like to join the other characters in playing cards but can’t just agree. Sweeny has been driven out of his mind not only through his own narrative but through his constant recasting in numerous stories across the centuries. He is forced to adhere to the expectations of his character—namely, speaking in archaic language presented in a poetic style. While trying to integrate himself into a group of more modern characters, the juxtaposition between their dialogue styles illustrates the difficulty of integrating the past into the present.

“Pooka MacPhellimey, having won dominion over Orlick by virtue of superior card-play, brings him home to his hut in the fir-wood and prevails upon him to live there as a P.G. (Paying Guest), for a period not exceeding six months, sowing in his heart throughout that time the seeds of evil, revolt, and non-serviam.”

Fergus is a malevolent spirit, but his practical approach to his mischief distinguishes him from his often-chaotic surroundings. The Pooka wins influence over Fergus and begins to shape the young man’s life, but does so in a sensible manner, to the point that he charges Orlick rent while corrupting him. Fergus’s practical approach to mischief hints that his actual character may not be as whimsical and as mischievous as the legends suggest, again hinting at how characters may differ from the versions of themselves that appear in fiction.

“This fancy stuff, couldn’t you leave it out or make it short, Sir?”

Shanahan’s criticizing Orlick’s use of the “fancy stuff” (136) is an ironic comment on the novel itself. At Swim-Two-Birds breaks narrative conventions in ways that Shanahan might consider fancier than necessary. Ironically, this character criticizes literary flourishes while engaging in an example of metafiction. Shanahan’s dislike of the fancy stuff is a coy reference to the unconventional way that the novel is written and illustrates the extent to which it is aware of its own unconventional approach to literature.

“A little party on our own.”

Orlick’s fancy prose style doesn’t satisfy the other characters’ lust for revenge against Trellis. Orlick dwells on many finer details, while the other characters would rather inflict as much pain as quickly as possible on the man who holds so much power over them. Ironically, Trellis is a simpler, less fancy writer than his estranged son Orlick. As such, Shanahan, Furriskey, and Lamont are simply aping Trellis’s blunter approach to prose and turning it against Trellis. Trellis becomes a victim of the casual lack of artistry that defines his writing.

“In appearance and physique, it could not be truly said by an impartial observer that he was in any way inferior to Mr. Shanahan, magnificent specimen of manhood as the latter undoubtedly was.”

The characters write themselves into the novel that punishes Trellis but exhibit the same lack of restraint and indulgence they found abhorrent in Trellis’s fiction. Orlick’s descriptions of characters like Shanahan are wildly overexaggerated and—though they insist otherwise—aren’t written by an impartial observer. The way the characters quickly abuse their power hints at the corrupting forces of literature and suggests that Trellis’s crimes are not unique to Trellis but common to all fiction.

“The pair of them reveled in the enchantment of three fine voices mingling together in pleasing counterpoint, each of them sweeter than the dulcet strains of the ocarina.”

Late in the novel, the student returns to Brinsley’s earlier remark that the characters and their speaking styles are difficult to distinguish. The “three fine voices” (152) becoming a singular voice is heralded as a good rather than a bad example of writing. The student turns a criticism into praise, showing the same kind of literary indulgence that has corrupted Trellis and the other writers. The self-aware characters in the student’s novel are now being written by a self-aware character.

“A judge acting as a juryman is bad enough, said Trellis, but to act also as a witness, that is most irregular.”

The dual role of judge and juror is a dynamic like the dual role of writer and character. The writer (whether Trellis or the student) is in a position of both power and judgment; he gets to force the character to act—and then cast judgment on the ways in which the characters act. Trellis complains about this when he’s placed on trial—but fails to recognize the similar power imbalance when he’s in control of his characters and forcing them to act against their nature.