Sometimes not only are we not part of the conversation, sometimes we are not even on the same playing field. I think Brian O’Nolan may have felt like that as an author. When he submitted (as Flann O’Brien) The Third Policeman to his publishers it was rejected as too fantastic. The manuscript sat on his sideboard chastising him (as I think of it) for the next quarter century and during that time he told friends that enquired of its fate that the manuscript had been irretrievably lost. It wasn’t published until after his death, and now, of course, it is considered “a masterpiece.”

The mad policemen, the unnamed narrator, the police building inside the walls of a dead man’s house, the bicycles and rides around the countryside and the fact that the book ends almost exactly as it opens: I loved the book, but then I was born to a situation where oddity was bound to be something I came to understand and welcome.

The book’s vision of the world is deeply skewed: O’Nolan not only wasn’t on the playing field, he wasn’t even close. It’s more like he was hunting butterflies on a bog somewhere far distant, while the intellectuals and artists of his day were holding deep conversation on the pitcher’s mound some thousands of miles away. I imagine him, though, wanting to take part. Probably shattered by the rejection notice saying “too fantastic.” I suspect he went down into death feeling, in part at least, a failure because he just couldn’t be what it took to be at the central mound with all the others. I suspect that his “bogs” called to him, and he answered, but he couldn’t find a way to share what he had found. Or at least he couldn’t share it in a way that gave him the emotional and writerly resources to mount more trips, to find curiouser and curiouser examples of odd life.

Odd people: butterfly hunters in a dangerous bog. Many, if not most, of them drown without the rest of the world having the chance to see what life they have captured. That’s why I dedicated this post to the writer of The Third Butterfly, because, if it was ever written, The Third Butterfly never made it off the writer’s sideboard, at least not until it came time to consign it to the evening fire.

I suppose the internet offers a partial solution to the problem of the lost butterfly hunters but I cannot help but wonder about a species where oddity is so essential to innovation and yet where those that are actually odd are so deeply disdained or at best, uncomfortable to be around for long. That damn oddity – you think you’re passing and then – WHAM – you see the “look” and you know you’ve blown it.

So Dear Sir or Madam, you who are the author of The Third Butterfly, I can offer you no solace except for my acknowledgment of your existence. May you find the most wondrous specimens of life and may you, someday, be lucky enough to have someone else share in your marvel – even if you don’t live long enough to be its witness.