Blog Dis
That monolithic bastard of a book
2024-04-23
I keep a faded excerpt cut out from the Ottawa Citizen newspaper in the year 2000 because it lists the Top 100 English novels of the 20th Century. I had big, lofty ideals to devour each book on this list, a collection of input received from the top Ivy League schools in the United Kingdom and North America. However, I'm sorry to admit that I've only read twelve on this very big list. These are not light fiction tales or cartoons or children's books. Indeed not. These books are the big, fat daddies and mommies that have changed the world for the better, apparently.
You should know, firstly, that I don't believe books change the world. Rather, I've always believed that books change the people who affect change in the world. But that's another argument for another day. Today, I want to talk about the very top of the list, the numero uno hancho book that's captivated the literary world since first being published in 1922 and this is James Joyce's Ulysses—what I call 'that monolithic bastard of a book'. I recall in the article (I regret now having not held hold onto the full clipping) the Dean of Eaton College in England had talked with admiration about how Joyce gave so much to the literary community. The Dean was asked have you actually read Ulysses and if you have, what did you think of it? The Dean thus replied with all seriousness, "... Ulysses is incomprehensible..." 🤣.
My copy of Ulysses had been re-published by Flamingo Modern Classics using a reasonable size font, totalling 933 pages. I had been reading this monolithic bastard of a book for three years!!!! And after all that time, I had only made it to page 403 and after all these pages, I still didn't have a friggen clue what was going on or who was doing what to whom or why. I accept that Joyce is regarded as a great writer. But his meandering stream of consciousness-style is maddening and completely confusing. The question is then, why did I believe that I had the intellectual capacity to persist? Even while selling my series of novels at a literary event, I had engaged two recently graduated English Lit students who spoke glowingly about the book's brilliance and how it had changed their lives. I felt compelled to challenge them, though I held back, but this didn't stop me from privately thinking, "Snobs!! You didn't read this book on your own. You were taught how to read it, how to penetrate it; otherwise you wouldn't have finished it, which is the reason why it was included in your English Lit studies.
Back in 2001, I traveled to Scotland and Ireland for one month and had an absolute blast, drinking fine ale each day and cavorting with the locals. I loved the Emerald Isle especially because of my family link to County Cork and also because it was my second visit to Ireland. While there, I spent four days in Dublin walking around the city by myself.
On my second day, I went to the James Joyce centre to view his old house which has been fully restored and is now kept as a heritage centre for visitors. It's an innocuous looking house but filled with interesting stuff, making it a fascinating stop to explore. If you permit yourself to experience the weird and wonderful, the weird and wonderful will surely find you. Moments before I left the house, after spending the entire morning looking at all the photos and memorabilia, I began talking with an elderly man who had the most delightful Irish brogue. He was a kindly gentleman. We got to talking about Ulysses and I asked him does the Republic of Ireland have the original manuscript, to which he replied to confirm only chapters, but not the whole novel. Apparently, the original manuscript was sold to a collector in New York in the late 1940s and in 2001, one chapter from the great book came up for auction and sold for a staggering $12 million dollars. I asked the nice man his name and he told me Kenneth Monaghan. Then, I went on my merry way. Later that evening as I sipped ale and ate fish and chips in a very old noisy pub, with slightly soused older men offering to chat me up, I ran across an article from the Irish Times stating that the Dublin Writers' Festival was set to begin and that the host was none other than the nephew of James Joyce, Mr. Kenneth Monaghan. Only me! I'd been talking to the nephew of one of the greatest writers of English literature and didn't even know it. I had a good laugh that night in the pub. Like I said, only me.
So, here's the top ten list of the greatest English books of all-time:
1. Ulysses by James Joyce
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
6. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
8. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
9. Son and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
10. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Maybe some day in a far off land when almond butter grows in jars on trees and chocolate sprouts up from rose bushes, I'll write a great piece of English literature that will make the Best 100 List of some tight-ass Dean of an Ivy League college and they'll applaud my brilliance and I'll laugh my a** off because no one will be able to understand just what the heck I was going on about. Maybe some day...
And if after you've read this blog you're asking yourself, "Well did she finally finish that monolithic bastard of a book?" The answer is no. I had set it aside, and decided to allow this impenetrable ditty some time to breathe on its own, hoping that osmosis by virtue of my proximity to the book would somehow seep into my psyche, and I would comprehend its complexity while I slept. Fat chance. While enjoying some red wine with friends, one asked if they could borrow my copy, promising upside down and sideways that they'd return it, only for me to never see it again.
I hope to bump into this individual one day and when I do, my first question will be, "Well did ya finish it?"
You should know, firstly, that I don't believe books change the world. Rather, I've always believed that books change the people who affect change in the world. But that's another argument for another day. Today, I want to talk about the very top of the list, the numero uno hancho book that's captivated the literary world since first being published in 1922 and this is James Joyce's Ulysses—what I call 'that monolithic bastard of a book'. I recall in the article (I regret now having not held hold onto the full clipping) the Dean of Eaton College in England had talked with admiration about how Joyce gave so much to the literary community. The Dean was asked have you actually read Ulysses and if you have, what did you think of it? The Dean thus replied with all seriousness, "... Ulysses is incomprehensible..." 🤣.
My copy of Ulysses had been re-published by Flamingo Modern Classics using a reasonable size font, totalling 933 pages. I had been reading this monolithic bastard of a book for three years!!!! And after all that time, I had only made it to page 403 and after all these pages, I still didn't have a friggen clue what was going on or who was doing what to whom or why. I accept that Joyce is regarded as a great writer. But his meandering stream of consciousness-style is maddening and completely confusing. The question is then, why did I believe that I had the intellectual capacity to persist? Even while selling my series of novels at a literary event, I had engaged two recently graduated English Lit students who spoke glowingly about the book's brilliance and how it had changed their lives. I felt compelled to challenge them, though I held back, but this didn't stop me from privately thinking, "Snobs!! You didn't read this book on your own. You were taught how to read it, how to penetrate it; otherwise you wouldn't have finished it, which is the reason why it was included in your English Lit studies.
Back in 2001, I traveled to Scotland and Ireland for one month and had an absolute blast, drinking fine ale each day and cavorting with the locals. I loved the Emerald Isle especially because of my family link to County Cork and also because it was my second visit to Ireland. While there, I spent four days in Dublin walking around the city by myself.
On my second day, I went to the James Joyce centre to view his old house which has been fully restored and is now kept as a heritage centre for visitors. It's an innocuous looking house but filled with interesting stuff, making it a fascinating stop to explore. If you permit yourself to experience the weird and wonderful, the weird and wonderful will surely find you. Moments before I left the house, after spending the entire morning looking at all the photos and memorabilia, I began talking with an elderly man who had the most delightful Irish brogue. He was a kindly gentleman. We got to talking about Ulysses and I asked him does the Republic of Ireland have the original manuscript, to which he replied to confirm only chapters, but not the whole novel. Apparently, the original manuscript was sold to a collector in New York in the late 1940s and in 2001, one chapter from the great book came up for auction and sold for a staggering $12 million dollars. I asked the nice man his name and he told me Kenneth Monaghan. Then, I went on my merry way. Later that evening as I sipped ale and ate fish and chips in a very old noisy pub, with slightly soused older men offering to chat me up, I ran across an article from the Irish Times stating that the Dublin Writers' Festival was set to begin and that the host was none other than the nephew of James Joyce, Mr. Kenneth Monaghan. Only me! I'd been talking to the nephew of one of the greatest writers of English literature and didn't even know it. I had a good laugh that night in the pub. Like I said, only me.
So, here's the top ten list of the greatest English books of all-time:
1. Ulysses by James Joyce
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
6. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
8. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
9. Son and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
10. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Maybe some day in a far off land when almond butter grows in jars on trees and chocolate sprouts up from rose bushes, I'll write a great piece of English literature that will make the Best 100 List of some tight-ass Dean of an Ivy League college and they'll applaud my brilliance and I'll laugh my a** off because no one will be able to understand just what the heck I was going on about. Maybe some day...
And if after you've read this blog you're asking yourself, "Well did she finally finish that monolithic bastard of a book?" The answer is no. I had set it aside, and decided to allow this impenetrable ditty some time to breathe on its own, hoping that osmosis by virtue of my proximity to the book would somehow seep into my psyche, and I would comprehend its complexity while I slept. Fat chance. While enjoying some red wine with friends, one asked if they could borrow my copy, promising upside down and sideways that they'd return it, only for me to never see it again.
I hope to bump into this individual one day and when I do, my first question will be, "Well did ya finish it?"
