I’ve been reading Ulysses again recently. As part of the applications I’m submitting to PhD programs in English Literature this winter, I have to produce a sample of scholarly material to demonstrate my analytical ability. Writing about Ulysses was a safe choice for me because you rarely meet anyone, even in academia, who has studied the novel enough to be able to refute any argument you could make about the novel without putting in some research.
In fact, I rarely meet anyone who’s read the novel period. Joyce’s wife didn’t even read it. So, it seemed like the appropriate piece for the inaugural edition of Blackbeard’s Review of Books No One Wants to Read. But since this is my first post, there are a few things I think I should establish up front (Warning: post may extend beyond accepted aesthetics of the medium). First, I don’t read much contemporary fiction, and neither should you.
It’s really not worth your time. Several years ago I attended a panel discussion in Boston during which the topic of contemporary European Literature came up. One panel member lamented the fact that no European author publishing today will be read in fifty years, to which another panel member (a former professor of mine) replied, “No, it’s much worse than that. In fifty years they’ll be reading Kundera.” You can insert almost any contemporary author’s name in that joke and it will still work. The second thing you should know is that I’m a fiction writer, or as I like to say, a professional liar.
See, for me to succeed I have to invent stories that are entirely believable not just to one person but to everyone, so in effect I spend my time perfecting psychotically elaborate lies. Why am I telling you this? Well, I want to plant a seed of doubt in your mind about the truth behind everything I write in this space. For example, that story about the panel discussion in the previous paragraph, it didn’t really happen. The opening about applying to PhD programs, on the other hand, is completely true. Why would I do this? I don’t know. It just feels right to me. Now to the business at hand. Ulysses is one of my favorite novels. I’ve read it three times completely through and spent countless other hours studying specific episodes for one project or another. That being said, my honest recommendation is that you should never read it, ever. I’m serious. Don’t even try. Ulysses is like a technical manual for fiction and is not meant to be read by normal people. Having no background in physics, you wouldn’t buy a textbook on quantum mechanics, right? Well, Ulysses is like a book about quantum mechanics wrapped in a book about Collateralized Debt Obligations at the bottom of a bin of used autobiographies written by former professional football players.
I know what you’re thinking: “Black Beard, if we have no way of ever wrapping our minds around a novel such as this, then why have you devoted even a minute of your valuable time to telling us about it.” My answer is twofold. First, for its innovation and uniqueness, I love the novel. Second, the effect it had on the direction of Post-Modernism, will be something I touch on from time to time in this space. Ulysses (to borrow an idea from Garrison Keiller) is the Typhoid Mary of literature in the second half of the 20th Century.
With his emphasis on breaking down conventional literary forms and the utilization of an opaque and disconnected plot, Joyce has provided the writers who sought inspiration in his work just enough rope to hang themselves. So many of the traits of contemporary fiction that I will lament in future postings—satirical treatment of subject, disregard for conventional forms and styles, disjointed narratives—can be traced to misguided attempts at emulating Joyce. And that, if you’re still reading, is why I consider, Ulysses the most important novel of the past century.
