Comments on: Not in Praise of Bloomsday…

By: Abigail

Abigail — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:07:34 +0000

Tim,
Your kind of snobbism is precisely what I was talking about. Unfortunately Ulysses seems to be a book that attracts this kind of high handed, but in my opinion, ignorant comment. Not liking Ulysses has nothing to do with how well read the reader is and Joyce’s background does not necessarily have a bearing on whether or not the book he wrote has become over the years and in this city, elitist. It is Joyce readers who have made Bloomsday the middle class, middle aged farce that it is today…and you have done nothing to disprove my thesis. Kindly don’t comment again if all you are going to do it sling mud. If you have something that would further the debate feel free but otherwise goodbye.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:25:53 +0000

Thank you for your reply. It is gratifying that you have bestowed the epithet “gifted” on Joyce. This is very kind of you. However, you call Ulysses elitist. This is a gross over-simplification and a bit old hat. Just because someone with a low IQ is unable to read something does not mean that we fling the work into the bin of posterity. If that were the case then we’d all be reading Heat magazine – lots of pictures and no annoying portmanteau words to annoy the typing pool. You yourself teeter on the brink of elitism by expecting people to know who Douglas Adams is. I myself (well-read, if I may say so) had to look him up on the Internet. A mediocre “Science-Fiction” writer – give me strength! I wouldn’t mind if you brought in Nabokov, Proust, or even Ayn Rand to make a point – but “Marvin The Paranoid Android”….
I’m sorry if this is rude – but this is important. Elitism is a dirty word – and like a lot of dirty words should be used sparingly. Joyce himself could hardly have seen himself as rarefied – his father was a Dublin Corporation worker and they lived in Bray, for God’s sake. (As an aside, Joyce was a little too fond of the “cratur” – more a pastime of the Hoi Polloi than the Elysian Scribe you would have us see him as.)
Your assertion “Art does not always have to be accessible to all but it does when it is supposed to be representative of the city it describes” displays a sadly bourgeois attitude which does make me think, rather sadly, that you miss the point and that “representation” to someone such as yourself involves nice vases of flowers. Please don’t be too offended (and please take this in the spirit it’s meant) but Ulysses is ALL about the reconciliation of the Bohemian and the Bourgeois. It is a shame you remain resolutely in the latter category and will sit in your nice vase – flowerless.

By: Janina

Janina — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:20:45 +0000

…or, for an idea of Dublin-as-she-once-was, try any Roddy Doyle? or maybe not, us foreigners out here would find her quite disappointing, as of late, Dublin has done a from-rags-to-riches-Cinderella turn and… not so quaint, perhaps? – well, wait and see, exciting times going on, right there, right now… enough philosophy. <-lo behold, my own version of that stream-of-consciousness my English teacher raved on about… but, why?

By: Abigail

Abigail — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:13:17 +0000

Tim,
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I knew when I wrote the post that there was a chance that it might ruffle a few feathers with those who’ve put Joyce on a pedestal. Though as I see it, any art is, in essence, subjective. Once it has been created it is those who read or view it that take it any further. As far as Ulysses goes, I have no wish to take it any further.
I have never said that James Joyce is not a tremendously gifted writer, just that he is only one of many gifted writers who come from Ireland and they also deserve the same kind of merit. I do not even consider Ulysses to be his best book (and I am well aware as I said in the post, maybe you missed that bit, what he was doing technically) although it is certainly the longest. Art does not always have to be accessible to all but it does when it is supposed to be representative of the city it describes.
The main problem I have with Ulysses is that it is elitist. It is a middle class celebration and I can’t help but have a sneaking suspicion that Ulysses was chosen to be thus celebrated because it’s a difficult book to read and so anyone who’s read it can congratulate themselves with their cleverness. I’m tempted to quote Douglas Adams there (specifically Marvin the Paranoid Android) but I will restrain myself.
I’ve developed my view of Bloomsday from a rather unenjoyable reading of Ulysses and many years living in Dublin. As I said in the post, give me At Swim Two Birds any day!

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:54:21 +0000

Very good post – if a trifle wrong-headed and mean spirited. Ulysses wasn’t written to be read by every Tom, Mick or Larry – it was written at a time of tremendous change of focus in world literature. It was written as a “stream of consciousness” which intended to capture, in an impressionistic way, a day in the life of Dublin. This is not the sort of thing the artisan scholars of the time would have easily understood and it seems this attitude still prevails. Never a truer word was spoken than the phrase “Only a true Dub understands Ulysses”…and by “true Dub” I don’t mean those bookish littérateurs on Hill 16. The fact that the work as a whole is unreadable doesn’t detract from it’s power as a work of art. Do we lambaste Kandinsky or Jackson Pollock for missing the boat on Hallmark? Is Phillip Glass less of a talent because his music isn’t as “musical” as Manilow? Ok, a lot of people like their books to be “readable”, their art to be “accessible” and their music to be “tuneful” but there’s more to experience than the narrow confines to which you would seem to have us all consigned. I myself collaborated on an Arts Council (UK) musical production of “A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man” and had the reviews been a tad kinder a lot of people would have gained tremendous kudos in the proposed “Bloom – The Musical”. Narrow thinking keeps us twiddling our thumbs on the lower slopes of Parnassus.