[At] every point [in "At Swim-Two-Birds"] there are satirical glimpses of Dublin life. If the whole were simple, broad farce, it would soon pall. What transforms it is the great, if often maddening, influence of Irish pedantry—the comedy of hairsplitting—and O'Brien's ear for the nuances of Irish talk: above all, for its self-inflating love of formal utterance and insinuation. His humor … depends on the intricacy of its texture. Language is all: he is a native of a country of grammarians, thriving on the perplexities of a mixed culture, and creating, as Joyce did, vulgar or scholarly myths.

To say this is not to underrate O'Brien's superb invention in broad farce—in, say, "The Hard Life."… O'Brien's extravagant mock encounters with Joyce (who is heard saying that "Ulysses" was smut written by American academics) and with Keats and Chapman paralytically drunk in a pub after closing time...