James Joyce-Is it all rubbish or what?

Hairy Homer

Is the work of Ireland's supposedly greatest ever writer a load of inpenetrable codswollop?

Roddy Doyle seems to think so.

So does Kevin Myers. (I realise many of you won't have a sub to Ireland.com so I cheerfully rip it off below. Love the one about the 'Massive Allied Irish'. Somehow a Joddrell or a Sherman doesn't convey the necessary force in this context.

Enjoy!!

An Irishman's Diary Kevin Myers Feb 11/2004

I'm not sure which I dislike more: Ulysses or the James Joyce estate. Admittedly, a few people have got some pleasure from Ulysses, but against that, you have to weigh the millions of lives that have been ruined by the futile attempts, to read it (never mind Finnegans bloody Wake and that precious bloody missing apostrophe).

On the other hand, we are probably agreed on the Joyce estate: ungenerous, litigious, humourless and sour, a sleepless Cerberus guarding a literary bone that should long since have been public property.

It is a grisly reaffirmation of the power of the legal profession that all the main events in this year's "Rejoyce Dublin 2004" are going have to be vetted by lawyers. As it is, no readings from the Joyce canon will be permitted at the festival - for which, however, I can only express deep gratitude to the Joyce estate. Indeed, part of me wishes that, given its permanently churlish condition, the estate would copyright the names James and Joyce, Bloom and Stephen, and so on, thereby putting a kibosh on the pretentious shenanigans of the Joyce industry once and for all.

The truth is that there was nothing wrong with Ulysses which a good editor couldn't have put write - or is it rite? (We can all do this sort of thing, but we don't get called geniuses for it.) It is about 400,000 words long, which is probably about 250,000 words too many. It is full of spelling mistakes and typos, and they'll have to be tidied up. The main role in the novel will go to the great Jack Myers (the grand-uncle) who in the original version had a shamefully tiny part.

There's a great deal of meaningless rambling about Dublin, and that will have to go. The Molly Bloom soliloquy, which is (apparently: I've never read it) all about her masturbating, lasts over 40 pages and takes up about 20,000 words. The final chapter will thus be condensed to: Then Molly had a massive Allied Irish. The End.

Actually, I blame the first World War. Ulysses and it began the same year. The novel finished three years after the war did, and was often far more terrible. The Somme and Ypres meant that all the good editors and critics were dead, blind or barking, and the few remaining didn't have the nerve to tell Joyce that there was nothing clever or funny about spelling the aphetic of the future tense of the first person singular Ill. It's just a silly affectation for which a good editor would have twisted his nose and given him a boot up the backside.

Joyce was an aberrant genius who should have been given 350 pages of lined foolscap and told to write a novel of 25 chapters, with a beginning, middle and end. Spelling must be perfect, and no punctuation errors. Multilingual puns allowable, provided they're not obvious, and absolutely no showing off.

But that didn't happen because of Kaiser Bill, and as a result we got one of the most unproductive cul-de-sacs in literary history, down which other potentially great writers have been drawn. Unable to escape the force-field of stream-of-consciousness mumbo-jumbo, they too sat down and wrote gibberish, which was reviewed by other residents of the cul-de-sac, and given prizes by yet other residents. Thus the Booker was born.

But non-residents of the cul-de-sac don't read these books because they can't. They are unreadable in the sense that usually the word "read" is not just about our brain clinically deciphering hieroglyphs on a page, but involves capturing the heart and the mind and the body of the reader.

I'm not saying Ulysses does this for absolutely nobody. I'm perfectly sure it captivates some people, as does collecting train-numbers for others. But both pastimes are very much minority tastes. The vast majority of literate people cannot read Ulysses as they read Pride and Prejudice - that is, with simple pleasure. Yes, people can indeed plough their way from stately plump buck mulligan through to yes i said yes i will yes, but with the joyless concentration of an Eircom sub-editor proof-reading a telephone directory.

It's one of the defining features of storytelling since the first yarns were spun beside the Neolithic fire that the audience doesn't have to work to understand. The effort comes from the bard. To be sure, to attend with more application will probably mean more pleasure: but the primary medium, the tale itself, must be agreeable. It shouldn't be like pushing sand uphill.

Yet certain personality types are drawn to sand-pushing. We call these people "Joyceans". These eccentrics think that Ulysses can be translated into Chinese, Aztec and Arapahoe - and indeed it can, much in the same way that Calcutta's telephone exchange can, with comparable success, be installed in the USAF's Stategic Air Command's command and control centre in Nebraska.

There's nothing wrong with such eccentrics, and it's perfectly splendid that the capital will have a three-month party on the centenary of the first Bloomsday. But the truth is that few of the revellers will have read any Ulysses at all; some will have read only parts of it, and only with a great effort, before abandoning it; and just a tiny minority, the equivalent of the Hassidic Jewish population of Greenland, will have devoured it all with undiluted pleasure.

I just make this humble request: that no politician who hasn't read Ulysses will this summer call it a work of genius. Is that too much to ask?



© The Irish Times _ _

simu

Kevin Myers isn't a very good literary critic as, from what I've seen, he tends to dismiss ideas he has very little understanding of. An example that springs to mind is a column he wrote on Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire about a year ago where he displayed a profound ignorance of the culture in which this poem was composed.

As for Joyce, some enjoy him, some don't - why not leave it at that? Ulysses is difficult to read but there's room in the world for both difficult and light books. Actually, I find the best way to read the more obscure passages of Ulysses is to read them aloud or even better, to listen to somebody else reading them aloud.

I think that the frustrations of Myers and Doyle spring more from the fact that Joyce is constantly declared to be a genius in the media by people who have probably never even read him. It's ridiculous to reduce literature to lists like the top 100 books of the century or the 10 greatest writers ever or whatever but such are the ways of today's soundbite-driven media. It's hardly a reason to criticise Joyce himself.

Reyman

Touche -- Simu!

Hairy Homer

Originally posted by simu
I find the best way to read the more obscure passages of Ulysses is to read them aloud or even better, to listen to somebody else reading them aloud.

Is Myers correct when he says that the Joyce estate has refused permission for readings such as this to take place during the centenary celebrations? And if so, what's the justification for this?

simu

Originally posted by Hairy Homer
Is Myers correct when he says that the Joyce estate has refused permission for readings such as this to take place during the centenary celebrations? And if so, what's the justification for this?

Don't know but having public readings would be a good way to get more people into his writing. Estates of writers (that sounds odd!) can be very snotty though.

Reyman

Kevin Myers may be correct. I suspect he probably is !

The EU copyright for books was extended in 1995 from 50 to 70 years after the author's death. This meant that Joyce's works which were out of copyright between 1991 and 1995 came back into copyright and will remain so till 2011 (Joyce died in 1941).

The Joyce estate is managed by Joyce's grandson Stephen who was 9 when Joyce died and is now 72. He is a very wealthy individual, living in Paris and keeps an iron hand on anything activity concerning Joyce. These kind of readings are a particular target of his, and be warned

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the Estate sues at a moment's notice!

Hairy Homer

That's a pity. I've never read the books. Any of them. But I seem to remember the 'Leopold Bloom consumed with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls' spiel being played on the news every Bloomsday.

And I would have payed money to listen to someone like Keira Knightley or Mariella Frostrup reading the 'Allied Irish' scene.

Call me uncouth. :-)

Reyman

Read "Portrait of the Artist"

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it's quite accessible and interesting.

Ulysses, now that's another matter -- heavy going for anyone!

simu

The EU copyright for books was extended in 1995 from 50 to 70 years after the author's death. This meant that Joyce's works which were out of copyright between 1991 and 1995 came back into copyright and will remain so till 2011 (Joyce died in 1941).

The Joyce estate is managed by Joyce's grandson Stephen who was 9 when Joyce died and is now 72. He is a very wealthy individual, living in Paris and keeps an iron hand on anything activity concerning Joyce. These kind of readings are a particular target of his, and be warned

---

the Estate sues at a moment's notice!

Why on Earth did the Eu do this? What is desirable about people becoming rich just because they had a talented relative? IMO, once the author dies, their work should be in the public domain.

Reyman

You're probably right about the EU but there would be a lot of vested interests in places like France for extended copyright privileges to protect earnings and possibly fund support Trusts of various sorts for the likes of Proust, Sartre and De Beauvoir

I'd suspect also, that the objective might have been to prevent major film companies in Hollywood cashing in commercially on literary talents and giving very little back!

In fairness to Stephen, this is the stance that he takes, that he is protecting unwarranted commercialisiation of his Grandfather's name and this is more important than the availablity of cheaper books. As a side effect he may have become rich but such 'are the slings and arrows'

simu

Maybe twould be better if the money went to the Arts Councils of the countries the writer worked in then.

Bibliofemme

Have read 'Portrait' and loved it and Dubliners is one of the best examples of what a short story collection should be - it's great.

Have tried to read Ulysses three times and always give up at the same point, about 3/4's of the way through (around Circe). Some of is great, some of it is a headwreck. I'm determined to finish it this year though and then bring on 'Finnegan's Wake'!

Gleanndún

i havent read it but i think finnegans wake cms really cool. i especially love the way that its circular. thats the most awsome thing ever!

vorbis

I don't know, I couldn't get my head around "Portrait" at all. Then again I was being forced to read it. It just seemed to dis integrate for me. The story began to slow down as Dedalus went from obsessing about one thing to the next. Would it be terrible to suggest that Joyce is simply not a good storyteller?

pork99

I read "Portrait of the Artist" when I was 14 years old and off school sick. I just picked it up because I was bored and was soon transfixed by it. You know when you read a book and you feel it's almost about you, that the author has got inside your head?

I had a similiar experience with "Catcher in the Rye" so possibly both books are best read by pretentious adolescents.

The difference though is that I would find "Catcher in the Rye" hard to reread now but "Portrait of the Artist" I can pick up and start reading and I'm still enchanted by it.

I also read "Ulysses" but that was hard going, took me 5 or 6 months. Some chapters are easy others are complete showstoppers. Still rewarding though.

As for "Finnegans Wake", forget it!

Archvillain

I think a large part of the problem with Ulysses is how people come to it. THey see a huge fat doorstop of a book written a little differently and are thrown simply because it tries something a little new. The first mistake is to imagine there are 400 esoteric meanings at play. To put this simply: take from it what you will.
Most of it is tongue in cheek pisstaking for a reason. It's not sombre or stuffed with unapproachable codes, like some books like Lolita people don't even realise.
This is such an enjoyable book if given a chance.
Marketeers ruin everything. This is a great book which changed literature. THere can be no arguing against that surely?

Chinafoot

Originally posted by vorbis
Would it be terrible to suggest that Joyce is simply not a good storyteller?

i think Dubliners shows Joyce to be an excellent story teller. its a very enjoyable and readable book.

begbie

I never read any of his work, and i never will! It just doesn't sound like its for me.

carpocrates

I'll be lazy and repeat what I said in the other thread...
It would surprise me into a stroke if Roddy Doyle could spell his own name, or tie his shoelaces, let alone hope to finish reading a book without his ma reading it to him over a cup of steaming milk and bread and jam in bed.

After proving himself an outstanding comic-novelist someone obviously hit him over the head an odd number of times so that he began wearing black skullcaps, took on wearing a filthy glowering countenance along the lines of grumpy smurf, taking himself seriously in interviews and talking about writers he clearly never understood, the Russians for example. Joyce is another example.

He's saying Joyce was overrated. Why? Because he doesn't understand modernism? Or Joyce's influence? I think Mr. Doyle should go back to writing his funny little books about Colm Meaney and pints of Guinness and stop trying to be a grown up :P

joe_chicken

I got Ulysses about 5 years...(i had read that it was one of the best novels of the 20th century and it was based in Dublin!!!... how could i not be interested)

First reading: I read about 20 pages and decided it was crap and threw it in the corner!

Second reading: Rainy day nothing else to do, read about 200 pages... understood it a little bit better, still thought it was pretty crap!

Third reading: A long summer, no other books, read about 500 pages, enjoyed it, got to some hallucination bit.... freaked out ..... threw the book down the stairs

Fourth reading: Picked up enough nerve to start again... really really really enjoyed it.... (mind you i skipped a few bits)


....still havent finished it

simu

Originally posted by joe_chicken
I got Ulysses about 5 years...(i had read that it was one of the best novels of the 20th century and it was based in Dublin!!!... how could i not be interested)

First reading: I read about 20 pages and decided it was crap and threw it in the corner!

Second reading: Rainy day nothing else to do, read about 200 pages... understood it a little bit better, still thought it was pretty crap!

Third reading: A long summer, no other books, read about 500 pages, enjoyed it, got to some hallucination bit.... freaked out ..... threw the book down the stairs

Fourth reading: Picked up enough nerve to start again... really really really enjoyed it.... (mind you i skipped a few bits)


....still havent finished it

So, if the trend continues, you'll really enjoy it when you do finish it!

It's the sort of book that takes a while to get into alright but I think it's worth it in the end.

Thorbar

Originally posted by simu
Why on Earth did the Eu do this? What is desirable about people becoming rich just because they had a talented relative? IMO, once the author dies, their work should be in the public domain.

Do you disagree with the general idea of inheritance or just that writer's descendants should get no direct benefits from their talent and labour?

simu

Originally posted by Thorbar
Do you disagree with the general idea of inheritance or just that writer's descendants should get no direct benefits from their talent and labour?

Well, I'd have to go way off topic to answer that. To be very brief about it, I don't like the idea of people living off the work of their ancestors and not contributing to society in any way themselves.

tHE vAGGABOND

read dubliners, did not enjoy it to be honest, was left wondering what all the fuss was about..

Have have a peek through other peoples copies of Joyce stuff, and would not touch it. Looks like Indulgent waffle to me and anyway, I only read things written in english

I reckon a large percentage of these people go about telling people Joyce is a genius have not touched half his books.

carpocrates

you're probably right. But the majority of people who think the same about Shakespeare or Debussy or Van Eyck or Einstein would be in exactly the same bracket. This is because most people don't care enough to try and understand it, like you for example.
You believe reading Ulysses should be the same as reading a 2000AD comic book. Well this is a different kind of book. Just because you're not arsed taking the time to read it properly doesn't mean it's indulgent or overrated. It just means that you should stick to reading Harry Potter.