Metaleptic Rewriting as Sham Authorial Justice in Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds

In Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds, a postmodernist novel avant la lettre, literary entities rewrite literary texts, including those in which they exist and I argue that they do so through metaleptic rewriting and in pursuit of different types of authorial justice, all of which are infelicitous. The novel’s intense self-reflexivity and intricate metafictional games create a foundation that is too fluid to sustain the weight of a heavy concept such as justice. Thus, myriad fictional worlds filled with authors wishing to impose what they deem to be fair in their own literary universe interact, intersect and overlap, allowing their justice-motivated characters to metaleptically transgress their ontological levels in order to undo the wrongs of their authors. Yet, in a novel that promotes itself as ‘a self-evident sham’, such attempts are mocked at every step and the quest for fairness is replaced by the thirst for authorial power.