Flann O'Brien, the much-loved Irish comic writer, lived uncomfortably in the shadow of James Joyce. An admirer of the great Dubliner's achievements and one of the first to formally celebrate Bloomsday, O'Brien was also deeply frustrated by his own inability to escape comparison with the author of Ulysses. This anxiety is brought to the surface for comic effect in O'Brien's late novel The Dalkey Archive (1964) where his central character, the civil servant Mick O'Shaughnessy, finds Joyce alive and well and working as a barman in the north County Dublin seaside resort of Skerries. Shy of public recognition and adulation, Joyce tells Mick, ‘I've had things imputed to me which – ah – I've had nothing to do with.’ He goes on to claim that he has in fact authored only one book, Dubliners, a collection that was co-written with Oliver St John Gogarty. Mick, astounded by his discovery, feels compelled to introduce Joyce to the only other genius he knows, the philosopher, inventor and distiller De Selby, in the hope that a meeting of these two great minds might lead to riches: