Bloomsday

'There's no accounting for taste', as an old women I knew used to explain people whose taste was, er, questionable. And there isn't.

Joyce is overrated, as is Shakespeare (yes, the plagiarist Shakespeare) and most of the other sacred cows of current fashion. For example, somebody should have taught Joyce how to write a succinct, sharp sentence. The lad had no discipline when it came to finding that full stop. Awful, self-absorbed, elongated, obtuse nonsense.

Saying these things is like piercing a dagger through the heart of some of the delicate little flowers who almost fall to tears at any criticism of Shakespeare (if that was his name!) or the other pompous git with notions.


Dostoevsky, Kafka & Camus had better imaginary worlds and stronger philosophical messages. For instance, The Grand Inquisitor is philosophical genius in literature in its truest sense. So, too, is Notes from the Underground. Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' is also genius - an entire 'play where nothing happens, twice', as the famous review put it. As is L'Étranger by Camus. New, fresh, original. The sort of creative works where it hits you months later what it was all about and then you develop different interpretations about it every time you reflect on it.