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| The very tome read by Belgo Geordie |
Ulysses by a lesser known Irish writer, Mr James Joyce
Started Ulysses twice at age of seventeen and then at eighteen and hoyed it both times after two hundred pages. I decided then I was obviously not clever enough to do it justice. My elder brother, a working class intellectual, sneered at my lack of mental stamina. And so be it. It does require stamina, fortitude, determination and enough supplements to stun a bull rhino to get through all 934 pages. So at the age of fifty eight I embarked on a further journey to read each and every page-well up to page 503 after that it was switch to speed auto read. Ok, so completed around 1920 (the novel-not the reader) it is and remains for obvious reasons a classic. Mr Joyce was a smart and creative force. Dublin in a day and everyman's journey (Leopold Bloom) is a worthy vehicle to drive this opus.
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| The observation |
The elephant in the tome is that after a while it becomes as tedious to read as a shopping list of facts and fancies. And I sank beneath the syrup of clever use of language; sufficient to scream enough! Its parts, the glittering pearly stuff do not justify the mad-dog doggerel, bulk of the whole. I lack a classical education, well ok, education full stop. I am self-taught but widely read. From the Dandy to the Illiad but Ulysses? "War and Peace" it is not. Me brother loved it because in general it excludes clarts like me. He, with a brain like a combined harvester on steroids could churn through and admire multiple levels of thought, process and he got a lot of the literary in-jokes. Me, I just wiped me brow, sweated on, rolled up more of me sleeve and wondered when the agony would end. Prostatitis of the grey matter aching in areas that had not had a thought pass by in a long while. When the last page turned, did I feel a better man for it? Not a bit. But good on you Mr Joyce, you kicked the shite out of the traditional novel and for that we ought to hold you in gratitude. But will I read it for fun at ninety? Don't hold your breath. Now did I say Dandy? That was a grand read and the smell of fresh printers ink as you stood outside the newsagents freezing yer developing bollocks off in a North Sea gale? Desperate Dan astride a cow horn pie-that's more like it!
