Review Post 14 - Poetry in Emotion

Poets are funny people; at least if you go by the descriptions in my latest bout of reading. In yet another slightly tenuously-constructed post, I'll have a look at two differing views of poets and whether it is nature or nurture that creates and moulds them. Don't worry: there's no chance of any more of my poetry...

*****

The first of our poetic delights is Milan Kundera's Life is Elsewhere, a detached, sardonic description of Jaromil (the poet), a young man growing up in pre- and post-war Czechoslovakia. From an early age, Jaromil has been encouraged - mainly by his mother - to believe that he is special and talented, and this talent manifests itself in the form of poetry.

We follow the young poet through his formative years and see his efforts to make sense of the world and his desire to achieve love (or, at least, lust). Sadly, Jaromil, while possibly gifted with poetry, is a much less perfect human being in most other respects, and as the story progresses, the reader becomes ever more tired of his immaturity and stupidity. Don't worry; that's exactly as Kundera means it.

One of the most striking aspects of this book is the relationship between Jaromil and his mother, who smothers him from a desperate sense of belonging and a desire to live life vicariously through her precious son. I was reminded a little of Paul Morel and his mother (from D.H. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers) in the way Jaromil attempts to free himself from the apron strings (although Morel was a lot more successful at it...).

Immature, pathetic, pitiful: this may sound a little harsh, but if you read the book, you'll see that Jaromil is not the most appealing of characters, and Kundera's slightly mocking portrayal gradually exposes his weaknesses. Far from being a great poet and a hero of the revolution, he becomes a cringing, mindless coward who betrays loved ones for pointless (and misguided) ideals. Don't worry: (relatively-) instant karma's going to get him...

*****

Over in Dublin, meanwhile, James Joyce paints his alter-ego Stephen Dedalus (one of the main protagonists of the ever-so-slightly complicated Ulysses) in a slightly more sympathetic light (although the theorists in the introduction to my version would disagree, obsessed as they are with the 'ironic' treatment). A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a surprisingly readable plotless novel, through which the reader follows Dedalus through his childhood and youth until he embarks on his quest to become an artist.

From his early, relatively comfortable days, we accompany Stephen on selected, important events in his life, defining moments which help to shape his character - and, perhaps his soul. Despite his eventual rejection of church teachings, his language and demeanour remain immersed in his pious upbringing (one of the ironies mentioned earlier). After overcoming his teenage angst and sinning, he briefly considers becoming a priest himself, but a chance encounter on the beach, one of several moments of poetic beauty, strengthens his conviction of the inevitability of his 'fall' back into real life.

The contrasts with Kundera's young poet are numerous. Jaromil is seen through Kundera's usual detached, quasi-scientific viewpoint, more like a specimen in a laboratory than a real person. He is supremely egocentric, seemingly unable to pick up on other people's thoughts and emotions, but utterly convinced of his own worth and talent (which consists mainly of imitation and works which catch the rather feeble zeitgeist). Blindly accepting the communist view of the events unfolding in his country, he quickly becomes a part of the machine, despite his role as a poet. What is worse, it is done knowingly and willingly...

Dedalus, on the other hand, is portrayed mostly from inside. We see things as he sees them, especially in his younger days. Admittedly, the older he gets, the more we see Stephen (as opposed to seeing through Stephen's eyes), but he is never objectified to the extent that Jaromil is. In contrast to the young Czech poet, Stephen has doubts, both about his gift and (more importantly) his soul. The chapter in which he wrestles with the concept of hell and his possible fall shows a beauty of description which Jaromil would be unable to comprehend.

Perhaps the biggest difference though is Dedalus' rejection of the institutions which claim to lead us in the right direction but which, in fact, may tie us down. Stephen rejects both the Catholic Church and the Irish nationalist movement, seeing both as nets which are there to prevent him fulfilling his potential and ambitions. However, he does not impose his beliefs on others, content instead to stand aside and create his own beliefs in preparation for the departure into a new life.

*****

Though I have praised Stephen and cursed Jaromil in the lines above, please do not fall into the trap of confusing my opinions of the characters with my opinions of the books. Both of these novels are wonderful to read, but in very different ways. Kundera's light (unberably light?), ironic style contasts with the brooding intensity and introspection of Joyce's lightly-veiled self-portrait; however, the end result is equally as pleasing. Joyce's book is just a portrait of a young poet; Kundera's is equally valid - and entertaining.

Review Post 9 - You don't have to be Irish

You may remember recently, dear reader, that I took you on a journey through space (well, the Kansai region of Japan anyway). Well, today's post is more of a journey through time instead, as I guide you (with the help of three books) through Ireland's recent history, from the mid-fifties up to a few years ago. It's OK, you can thank me later...

*****

We start in the 1950s with Heinrich Böll's Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Diary), a delightful collection of reflections and sketches covering his time travelling and living in Ireland. Böll has quickly become my favourite German writer, and his usual humorous, non-judgemental style works even better here in an informal setting than it does in his weightier (fiction) works. From a land far away, where people smoke anywhere and everywhere, pounds still have shillings, and footwear is a luxury, rather than a necessity (even in a country of incessant pouring rain), the German novelist brings forth the true character of the Emerald Isle.

The work successfully evokes an image of an Ireland of the past, and while the writer touches on the down side of Irish life, the overall effect is one of a gentle, admirable way of life. In many ways this book reminds me of the way Luciano de Crescenzo (in Thus Spake Bellavista) lifted the life of Naple's poor out of the gutter and gave it a sort of nobility in its (involuntary?) rejection of modern business norms. The anecdotes of the 'bona-fide travellers' who cycle from their village to another at least three miles away (passing each other in the process), in order to circumvent the Sunday drinking laws; the traffic policeman who, after a long meandering conversation, asks for a driver's licence and is not at all bothered that the driver hasn't got it; travelling from Dublin to the West of Ireland on the promise of paying at some later date: all these tales are told with a wry humour which emphasises the affection the writer has for the country, and people, he is describing.

The darker side is, as mentioned, touched upon, but this too is done in an almost poetic manner. Böll and his family, out for a weekend walk, stumble upon a ghost village, deserted and left to decay in the countryside. This collection of houses, roads and even a church, left behind by those who fled for pastures more fertile during the potato blight epidemic and the ensuing famine, leaves the family spellbound and dumbfounded. The locals hadn't even found the spectacle worth mentioning; after all, it was just one of thousands dotted all over Erin's fair land...

*****

Let's move on to the 70s and 80s now, as we take a look at life through the eyes of one of Roddy Doyle's most impressive inventions, Paula Spencer. In my post on The Van, I mentioned that the slightly misogynistic view marred my enjoyment of the book: well, perhaps Roddy realised this himself. In the wonderful The Woman who Walked into Doors, Doyle creates a Dublin housewife, a prisoner of the soul-crushing suburban poverty of a poor country - and a victim of brutal abuse.

Against a background of boom and bust, and the faded dreams of the Irish in a post-decimal, IRA-present, heavy-drinking (and smoking) era, Paula tells us how she met Charlo Spencer, how she fell in love (violently) and how she was knocked off her feet (metaphorically and then literally). Still in love with her husband, despite the frequent beatings, she drowns herself in drink, denying the abuse and making it through her days as best she can, trying (and failing) to bring up her four children properly. From the very start, we know that Charlo is dead, shot by the police at the scene of a violent crime - and we know that Paula is well rid of him.

The first three-quarters of the book are absorbing and thought provoking: Paula is brutally candid about what she is, what she was and what she is unlikely to become. And then... And then Doyle lets loose. Where in the first part of the book the abuse is mainly hinted at, reported, suggested, all at once the reader is confronted with a sickening train of events, a constant barrage of attacks which leave us feeling almost as shell-shocked as Paula herself. The assaults pass by, one after the other, no end in sight... It is brilliant writing. It is horrible writing.

At the end of it all, Paula is free, but shattered. Her life is in tatters, but she has the support of her family. Her children are scarred but (mostly) still functional. We are left wondering what has become of Paula and her family...

*****

For about six hours anyway! I've had a copy of Paula Spencer, the sequel to The Woman who Walked into Doors, for a fair while now, and this seemed like the perfect time to read it. We rejoin Paula about a decade later: the Celtic Tiger has roared, and panic-stricken emigration has now turned into mass European and African immigration; the Pound, whether decimal or not, has disappeared over the Irish Sea, replaced by the Euro; and cigarettes have finally become a social stigma with smoking banned in pubs and restaurants.

Paula has been sober for around a year when we meet her again, and she is slowly getting herself back into a 'normal' way of life. Her four children are now grown up: baby Jack is sixteen and working hard at school; Nicola, the eldest child, is a mother herself (and just as much to Paula as to her own kids); Jon Paul has returned from his drug-induced absence, a calm example of how to survive life after addiction. And Leanne? Well, it was too much to expect four well-adjusted children to emerge from the wreckage of Paula and Charlo's marriage...

Paula Spencer is actually less about Paula herself and more about the effect her marriage and her alcoholism have had on the people around her, especially her children. Emerging from decades of drunken numbness, she is trying to mend the ties strained by her neglect, mostly succeeding but, in Leanne's case especially, occasionally unable to make things right. In Jon Paul, she has a picture of what you need to do to avoid temptation, but it is hard: very hard.

Although it's a good read, the sequel does not have the kick of the original. There's no defining purpose to the novel, no scenes of physical abuse (or even the eventual disintegration of a family as described in Paddy Clarke... ). I kept thinking that there was a twist around the corner, that Jack could not be as well adjusted as he appeared, that Paula's various ailments were concealing something more serious. It never appeared.

Still, a third installment of Paula's life would not come amiss. Perhaps a post-GFC story chronicling Ireland's downturn and the wave of emigration back to Eastern Europe of the workers drawn by the Irish success story. Roddy Doyle has already written The Barrytown Trilogy and the Henry Smart trilogy, so you never know. I wonder what Ireland's future will bring... Sorry, my trip through time isn't going any further today; you'll just have to imagine it for yourselves.

Review Post 3 - Of Novels and Telenovelas

OK, no more poetry - I promise...

On finishing The Iliad, I decided (naturally enough) that it was time to read something a little lighter, so my eyes landed on one of the Roddy Doyle books sprawled across one of my long-suffering bookshelves (note to self - operation Bookshelf Overhaul is long overdue!). Most people will have heard of or read (or, more likely, seen) Doyle's The Commitments, the first of the Barrytown trilogy (also the setting for Paddy Clarke, Ha, Ha, Ha), and The Van is the third of these novels. Set in Dublin in the wondrous year of 1990, amidst the backdrop of the Republic of Ireland's first trip to the World Cup (something more important than non-football followers could ever imagine), The Van takes Jimmy Rabbitte snr. as its main protagonist, following his experiences from unemployment to setting up a mobile fish and chip shop, the van of the title, with his best friend, Bimbo.

It's written in Doyle's usual funny, yet profound, style, giving us an insight into the day of a man who, undereducated and unemployed, has been left to make his own way through the week, drifting from the local golf course to the park, with the occasional pint or two in the evening when he can afford it. The reader can really empathise with Jimmy and his struggle to adapt to time spent alone after an adult life of work (although I, for one, would be quite happy with a bit more spare time), and his attempts to make himself useful to his family are faintly noble.

Doyle also uses the book to muse on adult male relationships, taking the long-term friendship of Jimmy and Bimbo and subjecting it to the pressure-cooker environment (or should that be deep-frier environment?) of their fledgling business. As the money comes in, emotions start to fray: the role reversal whereby the usually dominant Jimmy becomes Bimbo's side-kick, and then employee, places a great strain on their friendship until the tension becomes too much for other people to bear. Now, how do you resolve something like that...

While the gradual breakdown of a lifelong friendship and the nostalgic joy of reliving the halcyon days of Italia '90 made this a pleasure to read, the enjoyment of this novel was tainted at times by the handling of the role of women. Jimmy and his friends have a voyeuristic tendency, and women (and some girls on the cusp of attaining womanhood) are used mainly as objects to be ogled - and later pursued. I'm not doubting the reality of what Doyle has written; it's easy to believe that someone of a certain age, in a time and setting far from today's, would act as Jimmy would and not really think anything of it. It just made me feel a little uncomfortable (and I have seen a couple of reviewers who have agreed with me). That may well have been the point, but this book could well have done with a little more female perspective. Where I felt sorry for Jimmy towards the start of the book, by the end I was a little ambivalent towards him and his greasy endeavours. Which is a shame.

*****

One author who never finds me ambivalent is Thomas Hardy, whose works I started reading again last year (and will continue to enjoy in 2010). After the rolling farmlands of Far from the Madding Crowd and the ominous heaths of The Return of the Native, this time it is the woody glades of Wessex which take centre stage in his novel The Woodlanders.

Grace Melbury, educated beyond her station by her ambitious father, returns to the sylvan Wessex village of Little Hintock unable to fulfil the family promise of a marriage to Giles Winterbourne. Instead, she succumbs to the advances of a local doctor, an outsider from a higher social background, but with lower morals. I think we can all see that there won't be many happily ever afters here...

It's a lovely little read, if not a patch on his major works, and, as always, you can almost imagine yourself transported to the leafy glades by Hardy's measured prose (even if he never uses a couple of short words where a complicated - and occasionally invented - Greek-based word will do). The book abounds with love triangles and unrequited passions, and the moral seems to be to choose wisely before rushing into wedlock, especially if you're marrying above/below your station. Hardy also reflects on the unfairness of the law, particularly as regards the differing ease with which men and women were able to obtain divorces in olden days (I wonder if he'd be happier now...). Something to reflect on when remembering your wedding vows.

*****

Where Hardy is restraint and pastoral calm, my most recent book is passion and despair, usually in equal and mixed up proportions. Just as you may have heard that some bloke called Shakespeare is a fairly famous writer of English, you've probably come across the name Goethe in the context of German literature. As an avid reader, and a modern languages graduate, I am a little ashamed to say that I had never read anything by the great man - until now, that is.

Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther) is an epistolary (or letter form) novel, in which the Werther of the title, a young, romantic German, pours out the contents of his overflowing heart to his friend Wilhelm. Escaping city life for nature, Werther settles in a small town where he meets the angelic Lotte - and promptly falls head-over-heels in love. Sadly, despite their mutual understanding and attraction, their relationship can only be platonic as Lotte is promised to another man. So begins Werther's slow spiral into depression, madness and suicide...

This novel is one of the most famous Sturm und Drang works, and it is certainly stormy. On reading the first part of the novel, I was blown away by the intensity of the writing and the openness of emotion which Goethe breathed into his literary alter-ego. Werther is actually a mixture of the young Goethe's own obsession with a young woman called Lotte and the fate of a friend who ended his life at an early age. Although embarrassed by this early work later in life (he was only 25 when he wrote this - bloody geniuses...), it was an instant Europe-wide hit and found many admirers and Werther copycats. Of course, the church was not so happy with Goethe as some of those copycats went a little too far; in fact, the work was seen as an apology for those committing suicide.

A word of warning for anyone wanting to read this book in German; written in 1774, you may be a little surprised by what you see on the page. The original text varies ever so slightly from modern German, with several common and consistent spelling conventions different from today's, slight grammatical variations and a few vocabulary peculiarities. In fairness though, once you have waded through a few pages (removing redundant 'h's and swapping a few vowels around), it is surprisingly easy to read, provided you have a fairly high standard of German (and a high tolerance for chest beating, hair pulling and teeth gnashing).
Is it any good? Definitely. The prose is breath-takingly vivid at times, and Goethe drags the reader along as Werther swings between the highs of his halcyon days in Lotte's company to the lows of his attempts to come to terms with the impossibility of his desires. While the cynic in me did at times long to give him a slap and say "get over it, you cretin", it was a small voice at the back of my head and was usually drowned out by the passion Werther poured into his outbursts of grief and declarations of love.

Ready for Faust? I might give it a few months...

*****

From the sublime to the ridiculous we go as I explain what that i-Pod is doing amongst the books in my post photo. Well, having eventually succumbed to the temptation of upgrading my trusty, battered old i-Pod Mini to a sleek new Classic before Christmas, and having finally got around to upgrading my internet connection to Broadband, I am now able to download video podcasts (and able to time that process with a watch rather than a calendar). Which brings me to Alisa - Folge deinem Herzen (Alisa - Follow your Heart), a telenovela which has been running on the German channel ZDF since March last year.

Now, you may not think of me as the type of person to be obsessed with kitschy telly programmes (and you'd be right - I'm far too intellectual for all that. No, really...), but watching rubbish is a great way to practice languages. I think I got more from watching a couple of years of the soap opera Unter Uns than from three years of German at university. As a language teacher myself, I encourage students to watch programmes like Neighbours and Home and Away as they model the kind of language people use every day - and there's a limit to how much news the average language student really wants to watch.

Anyway, Alisa runs for about 40 minutes every day, Monday to Friday, and follows the trials and tribulations of Alisa Lenz, who has come back to live with her adopted parents in the small town of Schönroda after a failed business (and relationship) in Berlin. The angelic-looking Alisa, played by Teresa Scholze (who, were she British, would be a certainty to be playing Cinderella in pantomime next Christmas), stumbles across Christian, a sensitive, good-looking man (I don't know the actor's name, but I bet he's played Prince Charming a few times in his career) who happens to be the son and heir of the powerful local Castellhof family. Can you see where this is going yet?

In her first week in Schönroda, Alisa manages to seriously annoy Christian's uncle (who is then revealed to be the one interviewing her for her new job), save Christian's sister from drowning and get on the wrong side of Christian's fiancee, Ellen (who, conveniently, is as dark and brooding as Alisa is blonde and bubbly; good witch - evil witch, anyone?). Throw in a stereotypically over-exuberant Italian woman who, despite speaking perfect German, has a huge accent and starts every sentence with an Italian word, a mean supervisor who has been instructed to get rid of Alisa at all costs and a family doctor who appears to be keeping a dark secret about one of the Castellhofs, and you have the set-up for the rest of the show. Oh, did I mention that Alisa accidentally saw Ellen in flagrante with Christian's Uncle Oskar in his office on her first day of work? Now if this series does not end in a wedding, I'll eat my i-Pod.


While it's depressing how low your standards sink when you're looking for free programmes in a foreign language, I must confess that it's all good entertainment. Yes, the dialogue is stilted, the characters are caricatures, and everyone has more secrets than I could hope to accumulate in a lifetime. Still, it's a pleasant way to while away an idle hour, and we can't be reading Goethe all the time now, can we?

Oh, alright, I admit it: I'm addicted...

68 - 'Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha' by Roddy Doyle

Those of you who have seen the film 'The Commitments' will already be well aware of Barrytown, the fictional suburb chosen as the setting of Roddy Doyle's first trilogy of novels (the above-mentioned book, 'The Snapper' and 'The Van'). 'Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha' is also set in Barrytown, but this time further in the past. The story focuses on the life of a young boy in a small village slowly being linked to the city by urban spread and follows him through his daily life. There's no singing though (well, not much, anyway).

Barrytown in 1968 is a very far away place for most of us today. Paddy and his friends roam around in acres of fields, annoying the locals with their antics, fighting, playing football and generally getting into the kinds of mischief young boys (used to) get into. In a small place like Barrytown, everyone knows everyone else, which makes the trouble the boys get into more exciting with the risk of being seen by someone who will tell their parents (which brings back a couple of painful childhood memories for me!). There's no phone, no internet (!) and very little for the boys to do except wander the streets and fields looking for fun and trouble.

Paddy talks about his daily life in the illogical, non-sequential style of a young boy, constantly going off at tangents and coming up with non sequiturs which make you stop reading and check that you haven't turned a couple of pages by mistake. However, this deceptively simple style, for a while at least, masks the real story here, which is Paddy's home troubles. As the eldest of four children, he starts to feel responsible for the tension he feels at home and the arguments he hears more and more often. At first, the story appears to be a simple recount of a young boy's life, but the tale become more and more serious as it progresses.

At the start of the novel, Paddy is a fairly innocent (if slightly rough and ready) young lad; he picks on his little brother Francis (or 'Sinbad'), he hangs around with his best friend Kevin and he tries not to fall foul of his teacher. Over the course of the 282 pages, however, his relationship with each changes. Paddy realises that his brother is not just a young punchbag, but a fellow sufferer in the tense home environment, and tries to reach out and become friends. His voracious reading spills over into his schoolwork, leading to improvements at school and a perception that his teacher is not quite as bad as he thought. He becomes tired of pandering to the bullying Kevin and looks for other friends, trying to change his life. For a young boy, that's quite a lot of progress...

Doyle is a master at using simple, funny, up-beat prose to describe lives which are anything but. He manages to create a confused character who is completely real, neither an angelic, hard-done-to urchin like Oliver Twist or a tough, good-for-nothing street boy. Every time Paddy appears to have matured a little, he'll do something completely random or lash out at his poor brother. In fact, at times, his thoughts and actions are at odds, as he acts tough to cover the doubt and worry he carries inside. The impression we get from events is that despite being decent at core, Paddy is vulnerable, and his future could be affected enormously by his disturbed home life.

My childhood was spent about twenty years after Paddy's, and, although there were many differences, it was recognisably similar to the one described in the book. I remember playing football in the street, charging around in fields, hurdling hedges in gardens, fighting with friends and strangers, snooping around in abandoned houses and sheds, setting fire to the grass and then fleeing when it got out of control... Now, twenty years on, I don't think that kind of childhood is possible any more. Parents today (and I include myself in this) are much more cautious and would be loath to allow their kids to wander far from home without supervision. Urbanisation has swallowed up a lot of the land children used to mess around in, and technology has provided more interesting ways for kids to spend their free time. In a society of risk-aversion, it's rarely possible to grow up in the trial-and-error way of previous generations.

So what is this book? What can you expect from it? I would settle on two main ideas. The first is the effect trouble at home can have on a young child just discovering how the world works and expanding his thoughts outside his personal space (something to remember the next time you're about to have a row with your partner). The second is the passing of the free childhood that most of us remember, and this may not even be something that the writer meant (at least, not to the extent that I have interpreted it). 'Paddy Clarke...' was written in 1993. In terms of generational change in today's society, that really is a long, long time ago; the past can indeed seem like a different country.

66 - 'Dubliners' by James Joyce

"In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty, I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone..." Sorry, just catching up on some family business. It's true though; I saw the statue of my semi-fictional possible ancestor on Grafton Street about ten years ago (I couldn't see any resemblance myself, but you never know).

Aside from the famous fishmonger/woman of the night, of course, the Irish capital's most well-known artistic creations are those of James Joyce, whose epic (in all senses of the word) novel 'Ulysses', did so much for Dublin's culture - not to mention the tourism industry. However, Joyce's preoccupation with his home city started much earlier, with the writing of a group of short stories which were to become the collection entitled (simply, and somewhat unimaginatively) 'Dubliners'.

This collection consists of fifteen short stories, most of which are very short indeed (in fact, if you take out 'The Dead', a late addition to the book, they average about nine pages each). Each of the stories takes place in Dublin, usually over a very limited time span, and follows a local resident along their merry (or not so merry) way before ending, if not suddenly, at least unexpectedly. By this I mean that there is no real conclusion to many of the tales; the story simply stops, and we move on to the next little view of the great city.

The writing is beautiful, seemingly effortless, and despite the brevity of most of the stories, the reader is sucked into the details of the main protagonist's life - what little we see of it anyway. Joyce also manages to tell the tale through language tailored to suit the speech and thoughts of the character he has created, which may sound obvious but is not actually that easy to do. As the book progresses, the age of the main character increases; where the first few tales are centred around children, by the end of the collection, the central personalities are far more mature (in years, if not always in behaviour).

The last of the stories, 'The Dead', which, at 34 pages, is by far the longest in the collection, could easily serve as an example for the rest of the tales. A seemingly simple account of a Christmas party at a dance academy, followed by the main character's trip back to his hotel with his wife, manages to cram in several of Joyce's most common themes: the status of Ireland as an occupied country in search of its past in the face of an uncertain present; the presence of sexual desires, despite the teachings of the church; above all, the importance of the everyday, the common, the mundane. The final passages, with Gabriel in his bed imagining the snow falling all over Ireland, "upon all the dead and the living", are simply beautiful.

Having read 'Ulysses' earlier this year, one of the questions I had about this book was whether, forgetting what was to come in the future, this set of short stories would actually measure up. It would be (and is) very easy to see in it the germs of the great novels to come, but is 'Dubliners' any good in its own right? I can assure you that the answer is an emphatic yes: it is a perfect example of the art of telling short stories. In fact, while 'Ulysses' is an undoubted classic, it would have been very interesting to see what kind of novels Joyce would have produced had he decided to become merely a successful novellist and not a genre-destroying genius. Something to ponder as I look out of my window and see the raindrops slowly sliding down the glass.

P.S. For those still confused by the first paragraph, let me introduce myself: the name's Malone, Tony Malone, licenced to make exceedingly weak puns...

25 - 'Ulysses' by James Joyce

"La, la, la, la, la, Ulysses,
I've found a new way, I've found a new way"

Thank you Franz Ferdinand for releasing this song, in Australia at least, while I was struggling through this book. Very, very annoying to have that line stuck in my head all the time.

However, whether they were writing about Joyce's epic work or not, the Scottish popsters have a point; 'Ulysses' is unlike anything you've read before (or that anyone has written since). In eighteen chapters spread over 933 pages, the writer tells the tale of an ordinary man's meanderings through Dublin on the 16th of June, 1904. While this may sound fairly straightforward, it is, in fact, one of the most complex and tightly designed pieces of writing ever published.

The eighteen chapters are not random; the whole novel is underpinned by the classic myth of Ulysses, or Odysseus, and each of the sections corresponds to a stage in the wanderings of the legendary Greek hero. Joyce wanted to contrast the idea of the hero with his everyman, Leopold Bloom, to protest against the dominance of violence and aggression, both in life generally and during the First World War. Bloom, a rather effeminate (or perhaps not overly masculine) Jew, wanders the streets of Dublin from house to funeral, from pub to beach, from brothel to deserted streets and back home again. On his travels, he meets up with Stephen Dedalus, the central character of Joyce's earlier, semi-autobiographical, novel, 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', and the meeting of the two minds drives much of the later part of the book.

This meeting is also part of the original Odyssean myth: Bloom (Ulysses) is on a spiritual search for a son after his own died in childhood while Stephen (Telemachus) wishes for the parental guidance he does not find with his present, but absent, father. The theme of absent fathers is further discussed when Stephen elaborates on his ideas on 'Hamlet' (a vivid discussion ensues as to who Hamlet and his father are based on - is Hamlet Shakespeare himself or his son?). At the end of the book, the two have met and talked and seem to have made plans for future dealings; it is doubtful though whether either has really found what he is looking for.

Bloom is a very different type of person to the one you would expect to be roaming the streets of Dublin, and this is exactly what Joyce was trying to create, an ordinary man who is slightly out of the ordinary. His lack of understanding with many of the other men populating the pages of the book can be put down to his background (or the fact that he doesn't get blind drunk before noon...), but it is also something to do with his personality and his preference for the company of women. He abhors violence and is eager to live and let live (to the extent of not being overly concerned about his wife's infidelity). So, unlike the real Ulysses? Well, yes: he doesn't slaughter all of his wife's suitors. On the other hand, Ulysses, as can be forgotten, was also a man of peace and did his utmost to avoid being dragged off to Troy to fight in a war over a woman (just like Bloom!).

I usually write about themes in the novel at this point, but I'm not really going to here, simply because there are just too many ideas criss-crossing to get them all down in one post (I do not intend to make this a lecture series). One I found interesting though was the topic of colonialism, and the attitude of the oppressed to the oppressors. In my previous read, 'A Passage to India', E.M. Forster sketched the attitude of the Indians to the rule of the English, and there are many similarities in the natives' rather passive dislike of the invaders in Joyce's Dublin. The writer found the traditional Irish mythology of the famed Celtic defender Cuchulainn to be a bad basis on which to found a plea for independence and preferred the more cerebral Greek legend to form the skeleton of his story. Like the Indians, the Irish (well, most of them..) had very little time to wait for freedom from the Union Jack.

So much for symbolism and myth. As a linguist, the main interest for me in 'Ulysses' is the use of the language itself, which is, of course, the thing which makes it so hard to read. Having recently discovered Lawrence, Woolf and Boell, this seems to be my time for stream-of-conciousness writers; 'Ulysses' contains the mother of all stream-of-conciousness sections with Molly Bloom's 62-page, eight-sentence rambling monologue rounding off the book. However, it is Stephen's shorter, but seemingly more incoherent, talk early in the book which I found almost impossible to read. Joyce creates these patches of interior speech by starting and stopping thoughts and interrupting them with new ones and cutting the sentences short and not really stopping the flow because as you know that's how we think and speak not in standard sentences yes if you think about it writing is but no I mean (OK, I'll stop there; I think you get the point!).

Another inventive use of language is related to the use of different genres throughout the book, culminating in the scene at the midwife's house where events are relayed in different writing genres, progressing from ancient sagas to modern (for the time) slang. Each genre adds a different slant to the proceedings and uses a different type of language, something which most native speakers are unconciously aware of but could not actively analyse. In my tertiary studies, I have had to work with genres, and the ability to decode and, eventually, reproduce different text types is one of the key aims of a non-native learner of English (in fact, it could be argued that all speakers of English require some education in the different accepted styles of writing required in different spheres of life).

A third area of language use is the coining of new words and manipulation of word order and sentence structure. Joyce plays with word order to disrupt the rhythm of the text (and, thus, the reader's sense of comfort) and constantly introduces vocabulary which can be found nowhere else (or is so rare that it would be used nowhere else). As well as creating new adjectives and combining words to combine meanings, he has Bloom invent ways for animals and inanimate objects to communicate (apparently machines go 'sllt'). Although Joycean coinages may not have caught on as Shakespeare's did (he was another big maker-upper of words), it still shows a vast intellect - and courage...

Alright, yes, it's a classic, brilliant, etc. etc., but is it any good? Should anyone in their right mind actually read this monstrosity of a house brick masquerading as literature?

Yes. But the case for the prosecution...

1) It is a bit long and unneccessary at times.

Having read the extensive introduction in my edition and several commentaries, I realise that the bulk of the book is tightly woven onto the stem of the original Homerian tale; but are you really sure that it couldn't have been cut here and there?

2) It's a bit crude, unnecessarily so at times.

I'm sure it was all necessary to drive home his point (no double-entendre intended or implied). However, the language did go over the top, and some of the characterisation bordered on the stereotypical (and would have been described as such if produced by, say, Dickens).

3) Clever word play, at times too clever for its own good.

No argument here.

4) The portrayal of women is not balanced.

True, few of the women come across as appealing and realistic. Then again, neither do most of the male characters either.

5) You need to do a lot of reading just to be qualified to open the book.

Yes. A good grounding in Greek mythology (especially Ulysses, naturally), a fair command of Latin, some experience in French and German and a strong interest in Philosophy seem to be pre-requisites for tackling this monster (reading 'Dubliners' and 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' first is also recommended, if not compulsory).

The introduction of my edition comments that you do not read 'Ulysses'; it reads you. Very true. After reading it, you feel exhausted and a little confused. After reading what other people say about it, you're even more confused. This is the type of book which you read again and again, if only to try to understand it more (or if you have serious masochistic tendencies). I'd like to finally get around to reading the original Ulysses legend, which may help me to understand the modern myth a bit more, but that will have to wait a bit. My head hurts now, and I'd like Franz Ferdinand to finally bloody shut up.