At Swim-Two-Birds - Opening

CHAPTER 1

HAVING placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare time literary activities. One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.

'Εξισταται γαρ παντ απ αλληλων διχα

Copyright 1951, 1966 by Brian Nolan

Introduction copyright 1988 by William H. Gass

First Dalkey Archive edition, 1998

Second printing, 2001

Third printing, 2005

Fourth printing, 2008

All rights reserved

Partially funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Printed on the permanent/durable acid-free paper and bound in the United States of America.