Flann O Brien and product placement?

All too often the US film and television programmes seem to be little more than engines for advertising but perhaps in the case of "Lost" (I must admit it has passed me by although it is shown on the British tv station Channel 4) we see for once product placement as a force for good! I jest of course but it did hearten me to see sales of theThird Policeman skyrocket in the US as a result of a brief appearance in this show. Now to get the producers to play some Robyn Hitchcock......

Surreal bicycle book rides to fame on back of cult TV show

The Guardian 24 February 2006

Once rejected for publication as too "fantastic", a surreal Irish novel featuring the interchanging of atoms between a man and his beloved bicycle has been racing off the shelves of American bookshops.

Flann O'Brien's dark comedy The Third Policeman was not published until after his death, but its appearance in the cult television series Lost has turned it into a top seller. The TV show chronicles the lives of a cast of photogenic survivors marooned after their aircraft crashes on a remote Pacific island. It involves a sprawling plot that delves into their former lives through flashbacks.
The book's cover was on screen for only a flash, but the exposure sent thousands of fans into bookshops eager to discover clues about the TV mystery. Their curiosity was heightened by an interview with the programme's scriptwriter, Craig Wright, who explained the book had been chosen "very specifically for a reason".

The Third Policemen sequence was broadcast in the US last autumn. "In three weeks we sold 15,000 copies - the same number as we'd sold in the last six years," said Chad Post of the Centre for Book Culture, which publishes O'Brien's works in the US. The book's European publisher, HarperCollins, says it has noticed a surge in demand. The same episode was shown in Ireland on Monday but has yet to be aired in Britain.

Flann O'Brien, whose real name was Brian O'Nolan, was a prolific writer. Besides other bizarre works, such as At Swim-Two-Birds, he was a columnist with the Irish Times, where he wrote under the name Myles na gCopaleen. James Joyce, Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene were among contemporary admirers.

The Third Policeman was completed in 1940 but rejected by the publisher Longmans, which sent back an apologetic note: "We realise the author's ability but think that he should become less fantastic; in this new novel he is more so."

It was finally published, to critical acclaim, in 1967, a year after the writer's death. The story is narrated by a character who has carried out a murder. A running gag in the book satirises the then emerging science of nuclear physics, suggesting that police who spend too long riding over bumpy Irish roads may end up exchanging atoms with their bicycles.

One officer is said to be half man and half two-wheeler. Its circular plot ends, almost as it begins, with a distracted policeman inquiring: "Is it about a bicycle?"