Pop culture and Irish Modernism collide! Again!

I was wondering why there was such a plenitude of second-hand copies of Flann O’Brien’s novels in the second-hand bookshops of Chiang Mai and said as much to a young Irishman with whom I was enjoying a conversation about his national literature. Demonstrating immediately his knack for rapid character appraisal, he looked at me like I was way out of touch with the times. ‘You do know Lost, the TV show, don’t you?,’ he asked, quite politely I think. I confessed that whilst I was aware that there was a TV show called Lost on air from time to time, I had not ever had the pleasure of watching it. Had I known then what I know now! Lost, apparently, takes its narrative structure from The Third Policeman! All that mangling with the timescheme, the notion of a reality beneath (this is how it was described to me), all of that is poached, and acknowledged to be poached from the wondersome Flann O’Brien. That one episode of Seinfeld owed its plot to Krapp’s Last Tape was big news. (Of course, it was still news to me several years after the Seinfeld episode was first broadcast.) That Flann O’Brien should inveigle himself on the scene thus was delightful news. With Bloomsday approaching, I’m now sorely tempted to make grandiose claims for the impact of Joyce on popular culture but will endeavour to restrain myself for just a few days more.