ERAP, Again

I have written previously about The Third Policeman, by Flann O’Brien (Kerrymen are reminded that the blue text indicates a link, and that if you click on a link, things happen).  Nominally, it is about a man being punished in the afterlife for a murder, but in substance it is a bunch of comic pyrotechnics, delivered in Irish dialect.  Here is a clip, pulled at random from pages 112-113 of the Dalkey Archive Press edition.  In it, two men are discussing the price of building a gallows to hang the narrator:

‘Is it about a bicycle?’ he asked casually.

‘Only about timber’, said Gilhaney.

‘And what is your timber news?’

‘The prices have been put up by a Dutch ring, the cost of a good scaffold would cost a fortune.’

‘Trust the Dutchmen,’ MacCruiskeen said in a tone that meant that he knew the timber trade inside out.

‘A three-man scaffold with a good trap and satisfactory steps would set you back ten pounds without rope or labour,’ Gilhaney said.

‘Ten pounds is a lot of money for a hanger,’ said MacCruiskeen.

‘But a two-man scaffold with a push-off instead of the mechanical trap and a ladder for the steps would cost the best majority of six pound, rope extra.’

‘And dear at the same price,’ said MacCruiskeen.

‘But the ten-pound scaffold is a better job, there is more class about it,’ said Gilhaney.  There is a charm about a scaffold if it is well-made and satisfactory.’

What occurred next I did not see properly because I was listening to this pitiless talk even with my eyes.  But something astonishing happened again.  Gilhaney had gone near MacCruiskeen to talk down at him seriously and I think he made the mistake of stopping dead completely instead of keeping on the move to preserve his perpendicular balance.  The outcome was that he crashed down, half on bent MacCruiskeen and half on the table, bringing the two of them with him into a heap of shouts and legs and confusion onto the floor…

O’Brien’s real name in English was Brian O’Nolan.  He was born in 1911 and died in 1966.  He spent much of his life working as a civil servant in the Irish government until a combination of substance abuse and impolitic office behavior forced him to retire early.  Although his writing is Joycean, he is credited with having said, “I declare to God if I hear that name Joyce one more time I will surely froth at the gob.”  He was not bothered when pub closing times in Dublin were changed; he was as drunk at the new closing time as he was at the old closing time.

Like O’Brien, the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek also drank himself to death.  In his novel The Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk in the World War, the main character, Švejk, fights against bureaucracy by pretending to be an idiot.  Like O’Brien, Hašek engages in pyrotechnics.  Here is a clip pulled at random from near the end of the unfinished manuscript (trans. Cecil Parrott):

That very day the officers of the battalion were having a banquet.  They had clubbed together and bought a pig and Jurada was making a pork feast for them.  He was surrounded by various hangers-on from those ranks who served the officers, among whom the quartermaster seargeant-major played an important part.  He advised Jurada how to carve the pig’s head so that a piece of its snout was left for him.

The eyes which goggled most were those of the insatiable Baloun.

He had the same lustful and longing look as cannibals must have when they see a missionary roast on a spit and the fat runs down and fives out a pleasant smell when it is fired.  Baloun felt like a dog leading a milk-cart when a boy from the delicatessen shop goes past with a basket of pieces of freshly smoked meat on his head.  A string of smoked sausages hangs out of the basket over his back and the dog would jump and snap at it, were it not for the nasty straps in which it is harnessed and its horrible muzzle…

I believe that there is a section of hell managed by O’Brien and Hašek.  In it, they run an ERAP help line.  Callers who encounter a computer glitch can’t speak with an IT tech, and callers who have questions about their cases can not speak with a case manager.  They can, however, speak with a person who presents as either an Irish cop or an Austrian army officer.  The people who take the calls are drawn from a pool of pimps, card-sharps, pickpockets, swindlers, used-car salesmen, hedge-fund managers, mobile home manufacturers, chattel lenders and arbitrageurs who are in hell on minor charges.  In exchange for a reduction in their sentence, they tell callers that an IT tech will reach out to them shortly; that all relevant documents have been received; that the LRAP program is real; that a case worker will call them; that their application was received before the cutoff; that the federal government will provide further funding; and that there is a chance that some or all of the monies due the caller will be paid shortly.  When asked, “When”, they are trained to say, “We can’t answer that.”  After the third time, they are trained to respond, “This is the afterlife.  You have all the time in the world.”