This notion is based on the "Mollycule
Theory", concerning the "interchanging of molecules",
originally put forward by the great Irish writer Flann O'Brien (above, 1911-66, real name Brian
O'Nolan, or Brian Ó Nualláin, aka Myles na gCopaleen) in two of his books, The Third Policeman and The Dalkley Archive.
O'Brien's characters believed in "a process of prolonged carnal intercussion" from riding bicycles. This bestowed intelligence and humanity to the instrument and a placid nonsentience to the user. "If you hit a rock hard enough and often enough with an iron hammer, some mollycules of the rock will go into the hammer and contrariwise likewise," wrote O'Brien. Why not substitute keytop for rock and finger for hammer? (I'm fixing a Bijou 5 portable as I post, and the keytops started out being as rigid as rocks, leaving my aching fingers feeling like they'd been used as hammers.)
In The Dalkey Archive, O'Brien adds that an already “monstrous exchange of tissue for metal” takes on a note of treason [at least for the republican Irish] because most of the bicycles in question were manufactured in Birmingham or Coventry. The same could be said, of course, for many of the typewriters used in Ireland in O'Brien's day (manufactured in West Bromwich outside Birmingham, Nottingham or Leicester).
Given the way typewriters were ridden (especially when pounded on shakey trestles, such as the one O'Brien himself made to type his novels) molecular transference would similarly have taken place between typewriters and writers and newspaper journalists.
"[It] is a very serious defalcation and an abstruse exacerbation ... but I’ll tell you the size of it. Everything is composed of small
molecules of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs
and segments and innumerable various other routes too numerous to mention
collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting
hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. Do you follow me
intelligently? ... They are as lively as 20 punky leprechauns doing a jig on the top of
a flat tombstone."
But, then, as O'Brien pointed out: "Mollycules is a very intricate theorem and can be worked out with algebra
but you would want to take it by degrees with rulers and cosines and familiar
other instruments and then at the wind-up not believe what you had proved at
all. If that happened you would have to go back to over it till you got a place
where you could believe your own facts and figures as exactly delineated from
Hall and Knight’s Algebra and then go on again from that particular place till
you had the whole pancake properly believed and not have bits of it
half-believed or a doubt in your head hearting you like when you lose the stud
of your shirt in the middle of your bed."
2 comments:
Now that first photograph has to be the first true bicycle typing! Notagain over at Manual Entry needs to see it.
I have sadly concluded that I will never understand Irish humor. Laugh at it sometimes, yes -- but not really understand it.
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