At Swim-Two-Birds

Flann O'Brien (aka Brian O'Nolan aka Myles na gCopaleen aka Brother Barnabas) wrote At Swim-Two-Birds in 1939 for my personal enjoyment. I have read it twice, and it is one of my favorite books. It is about a young man who spends most of his time idling in bed while (sort of) writing a novel in between going to College ("weather permitting") and downing pints at the local pub. The novel he is writing is not about Miss Heather Dionne, but about another person writing a novel, whose characters, including Irish folk heroes and cowboys from a Western, come to life when that author is asleep and not paying attention. They start writing narratives for themselves and drugging the author so he stays asleep. Such metafictional bombast! But that's okay, because this book is hilarious and as well written as they come in the way only the Irish can do it. (Does not include Bono who has the Irish talent of masculine pomposity but not of language.)

An excerpt:
It was my first taste of porter. Innumerable persons with whom I had conversed had represented to me that spirituous liquors and intoxicants generally had an adverse effect on the senses and the body and that those who became addicted to stimulants in youth were unhappy throughout their lives and met with death at the end by a drunkard's fall, expiring ingloriously at the stair-bottom in a welter of blood and puke. Indian tonic-waters had been proposed to me by an aged lay-brother as an incomparable specific for thirst. The importance of the subject had been impressed upon me in a school-book which I read at the age of twelve.

...

On the other hand, young men of my acquaintance who were in the habit of voluntarily placing themselves under the influence of alcohol had often surprised me with a recital of their strange adventures. The mind may be impaired by alcohol, I mused, but withal it may be pleasantly impaired. Personal experience appeared to me to be the only satisfactory means to the resolution of my doubts.

...

I proceeded home one evening in October after leaving a gallon of half-digested porter on the floor of a public-house in Parnell Street and put myself with considerable difficulty into bed, where I remained for three days on the pretence of a chill.

Conclusion of excerpt.

Go read this book, dammit! It is a strange intoxicating brew to put into your body and you might find yourself in bed for three days, but personal experience is the only satisfactory means to the resolution of any doubts to its greatness.