we need to talk about this. spoilers inbound

Ok so it turns out he was dead this whole time. O'brien said he intended the story to be a living hell for the protagonist. What kind of "hell" is that? Isn't hell supposed to be scary and hurtful? His conception of hell is being told about atomization and people slowly turning into bicycles and vice versa from cops in 2D stations that make chests within chests within chests and spears with undetectably faint endpoints?

What??

>>9922575
That's bicycle talk. You'll be wanting the vote next. I'm not having it.

>>9922580
lol
I forgot to mention fox's police station in the walls of a house. I suppose the anxiety that comes with an impending hanging that never happens is scary but not enough to be hellish. Is he in Hell? I'm assuming he is. This is payback for killing the guy. Btw what about that bit about that guy they kill who tell him about seeing the color of air & gowns that determine the timeline of your mortality? Am I just a pleb for wanting it to make sense? I like the ideas explored and I enjoy this kind of zany shit but the 'big reveal' was a bit of a let down. Anyone else feel the same way?

>>9922607
>Am I just a pleb for wanting it to make sense?
Yup.

I remember being really creeped out at the last part of the book where he sees the light from hidden room outside of the house. Something about that whole sequence is the stuff of nightmares, so I can understand the hell interpretation.

>>9922617
>I remember being really creeped out at the last part of the book where he sees the light from hidden room outside of the house.
Yeah definitely a highlight. Who do you think it was? The third policeman? He's fast enough to have also walked up behind him and make his presence known as he did

>>9922617
the elevator you need the same weight for has serious nightmare fuel potential

>>9922607
oh shit, I forgot to respond to the let down thing. I think it gets scarier, because he's not back at the start of the book, he's back the start of recovering his memory. It's like a Momento horror thing, except like a century early. He's going to work it out again and then he'll find Fox again, and he'll be back at remembering all over again.

>>9922575
Think I remember reading that Flann just made up his stories as he went along and claimed to hate all of them. But yeah, it's a vision of hell where nothing is certain and all this bizarre shit happens for ultimately no reason - which is makes it quintessentially postmodern.

I prefer At Swim-Two-Birds tho.

>>9923217
He claimed The Third Policeman had fallen out of the back of his car for a couple decades after Random House told him they wouldn't pick it up and the manuscript was irretrievably lost. As far as I remember, he actually ate dinner ever night looking at it on the sideboard.

Flann was the ultimate troll.

>>9923229
*every night