The Third Policeman (well, 2 out of 3 isn't bad)

I am over halfway done with Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman  and I'm still not entirely sure that I know what's going on. So far, the narrator's dad has died, he's gone away to school, he's come back from school to work on the family farm, he's killed a guy (one of these things is not like the other), and he's had a conversation with the man he supposedly murdered. No, it doesn't make sense to me either. This book is very, very odd.

Anyways, I am not really going into depth on any of these strange events because there are even stranger events to follow. After his conversation with Mathers (the man he thought he had killed), the narrator embarks on a journey to the police barracks, where he is to meet two of the three policemen who work there. And let me tell you, they are pretty much crazy. Like, honest-to-goodness losing it. Before I pass judgement on these two zany officers, though, let me explain.

The Sergeant is obsessed with bicycles. It sounds weird, but it's true. He seems under the impression that all crime, and all life in fact, revolves around bicycles. This leads to some pretty humorous exchanges. For example, upon the narrator's arrival at the police station he seems astonished that there was no bicycle involved in his travels. He goes through just about every type of wheeled transportation available trying to find the one on which the narrator arrived, going as far as a velocipede before giving up. Later, he explains his crazy theory on how, through the transfer of atoms, humans are turning into bicycles and vice versa (anyone who knows anything about science should know that this is absurd). It was at this point that I began questioning the sanity, and the effectiveness for that matter, of these two officers. And the Sergeant is the more normal of the two.

The other officer is called MacCruiskeen, and he is an odd one for sure. For many years, in addition to his police work, MacCruiskeen has been making boxes. Every box is exactly the same in all but size, because as the number of the box gets higher the box itself gets smaller.The highest numbers are so small that they are completely invisible, and millions of them would fit into the first box. It hurts my head to think about, and I'm pretty sure it almost drove the narrator insane. In a book filled with odd characters, I think MacCruiskeen is the strangest thus far.

Basically, I don't know what's going on in this book and I think all of the characters are nuts. For some strange reason, though, I like it! I hope that at eventually there will be an "aha" moment and I'll understand the point of this book, but even if I don't it's definitely an interesting read. Have any of you read this before? Do you remember having a moment of sudden understanding, or was it all just confusing?