The Last Joycean

Is it worth reading? This question, after some consideration, seems to me the most appropriate to explain the value of Ulysses. Other questions, such as, 'Would you recommend it?', or, 'Is it any good?', brush awkwardly against such a literary landmark. 'Would you recommend Shakespeare?', I might ask in return. You would enjoy it, but not without some mental exertion. Asking these latter questions returns absurd answers, almost comically failing to capture the book's significance. If you really would like an answer to them, ask the website Goodreads, where it holds 3.7 out of 5 stars score, lagging behind both Cecelia Ahern's  P.S., I Love You and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

Challenging Modernist literature is a girl's best friend.

Many readers may feel too intimidating (or too bored) to advance beyond the first few pages. There is nothing to be feared, but I believe there are a couple of provisos when attempting to read such a text. Firstly, some annotated accompaniment is advised. As per the unwritten rules of art, I would ordinarily recommend reading a book alone before consulting external opinions (expert or otherwise). However, this book stands as a clear exception to the rule. The enormous wealth of literary references and shifts in style often prove impedimental. However, if you are guided by a thoughtful expert, and accompanied by good-humoured patience, those same encumbrances can become the very source of reading pleasure.

My second proviso pertains to that last point. A prospective reader should understand that a novel like Ulysses does not lead you from one plot point to another; it asks you to stop and grapple with intricate content of the text. If you are hurriedly rushing from one end of your life to the next, stopping only to check boxes on your to-do list, then reading Joyce will mean suffering for you. Conversely, if that last sentence describes you, slowing down to engage with a difficult text may be the very thing that will save you from wasting your short life. Itching to get from wherever you are to wherever you are not is surely a sub-optimal way to live. How often do we neglect the simple pleasure of sitting contently in the depths of an artfully crafted book, with no regard for the ticking of the clock? And how much poorer (and angrier and more anxious) is the world in the general absence of such delights?

That said, Ulysses is not without its challenges. Readers may feel like an alien in Joyce's Dublin, a place not entirely recognisable to contemporary denizens of city. Matters are not helped by a story replete with references and allusions to theology, antiquity, Irish history, and a broad range of literature. The structure of the book is mapped onto Homer's Odyssey, which gives us a handle on the story, but also another layer of allusions to grapple with. However, the book shines precisely because of these ostensible problems. Who among us would complain that a museum is too full of treasures and that absorbing all the information is a struggle? You would advise such a malcontent to take their time and to make multiple visits, not storm the building snapping all the highlights, just to say you have been there. 

And like any good museum or great art, Ulysses leaves you with an impression that lasts beyond the reading itself. With the humorous gravity that characterises much of Joyce's writing, the book traverses religion, colonialism, nationalism, heroism, the problems inherent in communication, the novel, gender roles, and a host of other ideas. The humble Odysseus of the book, Leopold Bloom, is as dignified, perverted, grounded, open-minded, absurd, and contented as any of us could hope to be. His day running errands around Dublin mirrors the hero's journey of the Homeric epic. One can appreciate the joke but might be inclined to ask if Joyce is imbuing heroism in the ordinary or trying to tell us that the heroic is risible? Perhaps both. What joylessness we would find in a definitive answer, and how definitively ruined is a vision of a better world if all the possibilities are already set. Indeed, it is this rejection of ridged thinking which Bloom can offer the more single-minded young artist of the book, Stephen Daedalus. Whether he does or not is not clear, as the crucial chapter, where the two men converse in Bloom's house, is written in the clinical language of a Catholic catechism - Joyce poking fun at religion, but also reminding us of the hazards of communication. And, indeed, having a laugh at the expense of the observant, sympathetic reader, who would like to see Stephen finally get the nurturing father figure who can truly guide him in life.

The book is, of course, not without its flaws. Some critics bemoan its unreasonable length, and in the depths some of the more formidable chapters lie readers past, who succumbed to the severity of the road. More damaging than anything else is the disappointing reality that this novel has been infected by 'woke' culture. The ending sees our hero, who we have accompanied nearly all book, yield the narrative to his wife. She is a background character who suddenly, in the last chapter, takes centre stage, babbling on pointlessly, in what is supposed to be to be an affirmation of womanhood. Now I don't mind a strong woman; many of my female friends are strong ladies. But clearly there's a feminist agenda at play. Such people say they are in favour of equality, yet where is our strong male character? We are only shown villainous boors and beta males. And she's unfaithful to her husband, but never called on it. If she was a male character, he would be the villain and her spouse the victim of a patriarchy of double standards.

This is not Joycean fiction. Joycean fiction is about a multitude of lives and people of different character, like in Dubliners, or a hero narrative about an artist, like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Nowadays, because of "diversity" and virtue signalling, writers feel they have to include Jewish Hungarians and women in everything. And the self-assured young man that Stephen Daedalus was in A Portrait is now a loser full of doubts. The true fans wanted to see the adventures of the trail-blazing artist he had become, not this directionless fool in need of help from a weak cuckold. (He's literally a cuckold!) They think they can pull the wool over our eyes, but a middling score on Goodreads tells us that this is not the classic they say it is. Let's call it what it REALLY is: an objectively bad, Cultural Marxist piece of PC garbage, written by a soy boy leftist. 

Nigel Fairflower has started a GoFundMe campaign to raise enough money to have Ulysses rewritten by a committee of TRUE Joycean fans. If you ever want to read a sequel to A Portrait of the Artist that actually honours the source material, please donate to the cause at notmyjoyce.com. 

That's more like it. Even if he does look a little like Phil Collins.