In an interview on The Comic Novel

There are novels here that don’t burden the reader with the necessity of attending too closely to detail. Wodehouse, for example, who, like Jeeves, takes pride in smoothing the way for the reader. But there are two novels on your list that don’t really conform to that paradigm, Flann O’Brien’s Third Policeman and Samuel Beckett’s Murphy, both by Irishmen, both written within a year of each other, just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Well, I don’t have a lot to say about the Second World War, but I think what I like about these books is more in terms of what happens to the comic novel later on in the twentieth century. Both these authors are interested in writing a kind of anti-novel. So if you think about Murphy, what happens if I evacuate character, plot and emotional interest, what remains to this novel? There’s a way in which, when people criticise Murphy, I understand, because there’s a lot that’s adolescent in it – the glee of taking the sacred cow and punching holes in it. But what I like about these books is that they both have a weird sort of warmth and energy and liveliness, almost as if they had tried to empty the novel of character and just can’t quite do it. And there’s a note, too, of genuine humility. Murphy, for example, who is a kind of a Beckett projection, mocks the Puritans, but hates sex. At least the Puritans wanted to have children. Murphy’s not even sure if that’s a good idea.