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Joyce's 'Ulysses' Under Fire in Centenary Year

Wed Feb 11, 9:37 AM ET

By Gideon Long

DUBLIN (Reuters) - James Joyce's "Ulysses," regarded by many as the greatest novel of the 20th century and by some as the finest work ever written in English, is under attack.

As Ireland gears up to celebrate the centenary of Bloomsday -- the day in June 1904 on which the novel is set -- some disgruntled writers and columnists say they are sick to death of the impenetrable book and its cult following.

By elevating him to the status of literary God, Joyce's fans are doing other Irish writers a disservice and creating a "Joyce industry" which has more to do with tourism and money-making than literature, they say.

Roddy Doyle, author of comic best-seller "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" and the screenplay for the hit film "The Commitments," opened the literary Pandora's Box last week with a scathing attack on Ulysses and its devoted followers.

"Ulysses could have done with a good editor," Doyle told a literary gathering in New York. "People are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written, but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it."

Continuing his attack in an Irish newspaper interview at the weekend, Doyle said Joyce's legacy cast a long and pernicious shadow over Irish literary life.

"If you're a writer in Dublin and you write a snatch of dialogue, everyone thinks you lifted it from Joyce," he said. "It's as if you're encroaching on his area...it gets on my nerves."

Doyle's comments struck a chord with populists.

Writing in the Irish Times Wednesday, columnist Kevin Myers described Ulysses as "one of the most unproductive cul-de-sacs in literary history."

"It is about 400,000 words long, which is probably about 250,000 words too many," he complained.

A NOVEL WITHOUT A PLOT?

Journalist Sean Moncrieff, writing in the Irish Examiner, said Ulysses would never see the light of day if written now.

"What happens in Ulysses?" he asked.

"Well, not much. Bloom has breakfast. Goes to a funeral. Wanders around Dublin a bit. Stephen Dedalus does the same. Gets pissed (drunk) and makes a fool of himself. They both go home."

"Send that plot outline to any modern publisher and see how far you get."

But Joyce's fans hit back.

"It's unfair to say that no one is moved by Ulysses," said Helen Monaghan, director of the James Joyce Center, a museum in Dublin dedicated to the writer and his works. "Many people enjoy Joyce's work and are moved by it."

"Our aim has always been to create an awareness and understanding of Joyce's work," she told Reuters, saying everyone, not just intellectuals, could find pleasure in Joyce's daunting prose.

Ulysses is widely regarded as one of the most inaccessible works in English literature.

Stuffed full of meandering, unpunctuated sentences, classical references, snatches of song and even the occasional diagram, it tells the story of advertising salesman Leopold Bloom's wander around Dublin on June 16, 1904.

Toward the end of the book, Bloom meets Stephen Dedalus, an aspiring young writer modeled partly on Joyce himself.

The novel's plot is minimal and the beauty of the book, for its fans, lies in Joyce's ostentatious use of language.

Thousands of people flock to Dublin on June 16 each year to retrace Bloom's footsteps, and this year the celebrations will be bigger than ever.

Some 10,000 people are expected to savor a Bloomsday breakfast on Dublin's O'Connell Street and there will be dozens of readings, Joyce-inspired art exhibitions and other Ulysses-related events in the city over the coming months.