Why I *Don't* ❤️ James Joyce's "Ulysses"

The Books We ❤️ Club welcomes Eleanor Anstruther of The Literary Obsessive

I’ve never read James Joyce’s Ulysses, and because I am among the heathen hordes who find it impenetrable, statements that it is THE GREAT work of 20th century art have always left me with the impression that I am missing out. Yes, FOMO—one of the greatest marketing tricks of all time.

I’ve heard men describe it as a kind of literary alchemy—that it changes you, changes the way you think (into something presumably better than it was before, more like Joyce?) So it’s been sitting there in the back of my mind for many, many years as something I should tackle, make an effort, try harder.

The well-regarded Irish novelist, journalist, and broadcaster Frank Delaney’s “re: Joyce” podcast goes through Ulysses page by page in 368 episodes. He makes a very interesting claim in Episode 17 “Ideas and Sensations” (which is exactly the episode I stopped listening): that when Buck Mulligan pleads his innocence to Stephen Dedelus on the martello tower in the first ten pages by saying, “I remember only ideas and sensations,” Joyce is invoking the philosophy of John Locke that we can never remember facts accurately, that we can only have “ideas and sensations.”

THIS, Delaney argues,

“...may be the most important moment in Ulysses and one of the most significant moments in all considerations of writing … To take a massive world theme, a theme at the core of man's daily existence and core issue, and explicating it by putting it into the ordinary social intercourse of two human beings with no trumpets, no fanfares, just the common man at the heart of ordinary humanity, in all its kindness and unkindness—that's what makes Ulysses a great book.” (Emphasis his.)

I could listen to Frank Delaney all day—his voice and erudition are remarkable—but at that, I have to call a time out. THAT’S IT? Merely by invoking those two words, ideas and sensations, Joyce is somehow calling down upon his text the entire history of the discourse from Plato and Aristotle to John Locke?

That’s like saying I could mention Gandalf in a novel (and I do) and then go preening about with the power to defeat a balrog. This isn’t a game of literary Where’s Waldo? A writer can’t just drop a name or catchphrase and gather to himself the powers and accolades garnered by those other (all male) thinkers.

I begin to suspect that Joyce’s great allure for so many otherwise intelligent, well-read men like Frank Delaney, David Collard (author of Multiple Joyce), and Terence McKenna (of “mushrooms are aliens” fame)—who like to pronounce GREAT while bemoaning the state of modern education—is the feeling they are part of an august (if dying and increasingly irrelevant) club in which they get to pretend that the classical education of yesteryear is still accessible to the average man. (Emphasis mine.) As if it ever was.

But I only suspect—I don’t know. Perhaps someday I’ll listen to the rest of “re:Joyce,” actually read Ulysses, and laugh at myself.

I have never in my meanderings through Joycean studies discovered a woman who holds quite the same awe for Joyce as all these men. I suppose they must exist. But when I heard Eleanor Anstruther mention in a recent video how much she can’t stand Joyce, I had to hear more about it. And here we are. Exasperated.

I’m thrilled to present Eleanor’s take on JJ and Ulysses, and we hope you enjoy this counterpoint.

Cheers ~ MTF

p.s. Eleanor is teaching an Arvon masterclass March 14th. Click HERE for more details.

In this masterclass with novelist and Substack champion Eleanor Anstruther, you’ll explore the joy and freedom of publishing online. She’ll open the door to Substack as a resource in alliance with mainstream publishing, a place to build a sustained writing practice, connect with readers, find community and take advantage of the opportunity to be seen by industry professionals.

Join Eleanor as she guides you through the process of creating your own Substack publication, from identifying your DNA, writing your first post, sharing the fear of pressing “publish”, through to the technical aspects of this online publishing platform. This is where the party is. There are no gatekeepers. Come on in.

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We invite you to add your own reactions, insights, and ideas in the Comments for an impromptu book club session. Share your favorite quotes, characters, moments, and surprises in discussion with other passionate readers.

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NEXT TIME: “Why I ❤️ Samuel Beckett’s More Pricks Than Kicks” with

Jeffrey Streeter

of

English Republic of Letters

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Why I *Don’t* ❤️ James Joyce’s Ulysses

by

Eleanor Anstruther

of

The Literary Obsessive

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You know what they say, literary critics watch the battle from a hilltop and when it’s over, descend from their safe space and shoot the victors. It’s tough enough embarking on a book, let alone finishing one, let alone getting it out there. As Nick Hornby says, be kind. He also says, “If you have spleen to vent, and you feel you must vent it, save it for work that has already found its place in the world.”

I was invited to write this piece because Troy heard me venting spleen about Ulysses, a novel that’s more than found its place in the world. Joyce won the battle of writing it and the critics made him king. Further, no one’s going to be influenced by my two pence, I am a Lilliputian, arrow in hand. But before I get started I want to say a little about the art of reviewing and how to inhabit the space constructively.

When I read a book, I meet the artist in that sweet Venn diagram spot where my stuff overlaps theirs. Their art infects me. The virus of it shows up as pleasure or pain depending on my system; who I am, where I’ve been and what I’ve read before, and theirs; who they are, where they’ve been and what they’re saying consciously and subconsciously. To publicly state, This book is shit is to stand on a soap box at Speaker’s Corner and have a personal go at the artist, to put it all on their side of the Venn diagram, to say, This is nothing to do with me. But it is, because to publicly say, This book is shit is to say, It made me uncomfortable to such a degree I must create public fuss, throw the artist to the lions, personally attack them, anything to hide what my reaction to their work reveals about me.

To publicly denounce a work of art as categorically and objectively bad is to push away all intimation of its personal effect to smoke screen my issue by shooting the artist who revealed it. If you’ve nothing nice to say, don’t say it, and a scathing review says more about the reviewer than the reviewed. In the spirit of that, what I have to say about Ulysses says more about me than Joyce, but it also says something of the times.

Ulysses drives me mad. James Joyce drives me mad, in fact the whole circus of his beloved elevation makes me put on my sash and bolt myself to railings. Yes, right off the bat, I’m playing the feminist card. I’ve tried three times. I’ve launched myself at the weight of Ulysses, joined a read-along, set public goals, felt idiotic, thrown the book down, raged at the machine, felt stupid, blamed myself. Great minds love it. People whose voices I respect tell me to keep going, it will reveal itself. It is known throughout the world as a masterpiece and yet. It doesn’t just annoy me in a passive, Oh well kind of way. It makes me wild. It makes me want to go public, hold it up as an example of all that’s corrupt in this patriarchal construct, and all that is suspect in this inverted literary caste system of untouchables at the top. Kick the shit out of someone trying to make a start but don’t go near the greats, say not a word about how they ramble on, how it bored you to death, how you didn’t get it and are tired of pretending you did.

If Ulysses had been written by Jasmine Joyce do you think it would have reached such heights? Not in a million years. It wouldn’t have made it out the door. One peep at the manuscript, one audacious attempt to reveal it and Jasmine would have been carted off to Bedlam before she could say Molly Bloom was a badly constructed pastiche of what Joyce believed a woman to be. Jasmine Joyce would never have written it for two good reasons. One, she was too busy mopping the floor, and two, she had better things to say.

Ulysses is the ramblings of a drunkard, the offbeat, unedited, diatribe of a man let loose with his pen and his tankard in a pub where the loudest most audacious voice wins. Yes, I understand it’s a parallel of The Odyssey, and can I point out that we didn’t need it telling twice. The fact that it is an emblem of its age and not in a good way. If it were a statue, I would reposition it in the museum of How Things Used To Be, a horrifying glimpse into the past, glad it’s over.

I love that nothing really happens, I love that everything takes place in one day. I even sometimes love the language, the flights of pure linguistic fancy that pick you up and threaten to drop you. But imagine if it had been reread by Joyce sober, Joyce with his editing hat on, Joyce conscious that he had something great if only he was willing to take the time to make it so. That might have been something I did want to read.

Joyce says of the work,

The pity is ... the public will demand and find a moral in my book—or worse they may take it in some more serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it. ... In Ulysses I have recorded, simultaneously, what a man says, sees, thinks, and what such seeing, thinking, saying does, to what you Freudians call the subconscious.

There, we have it. Women were already tired of hearing what men thought way back in 1922. Imagine how we feel now. On that explanation, Ulysses as the stream of Joyce’s consciousness by way of Molly, Leopold and Stephen only strengthens the sense that enough has been had. I feel it now watching the news, men banging on with their opinions. We get it. You don’t know what you’re doing. It’s time to move over.

You might think from this that I am gender obsessed. The truth is I dream of a world where gender is as uninteresting as the socks you put on this morning, and we play to our strengths without falling for the idea that a certain set of skills makes you better than your neighbour. I want books that reflect that, books that break new ground. Ulysses is tired. James Joyce is exhausted. Let’s let them go.

I had this row with my beloved the other day, I can’t remember how we got there, but I made the bold statement that men don’t make good leaders. They’re brilliant at other stuff, but as head of the team, no. He took umbrage. He assumed, wrongly, that embedded in my statement was the belief that leaders are better than the led, which just about sums up why men are rubbish at it. Did you know, patriarchal conditioning aside, that women don’t view the world in terms of hierarchies? Don’t panic, this is wending its way back to Ulysses, you haven’t by accident found yourself in a Greenham Common thicket, I am going to make a point about why reading Ulysses, understanding it, nodding your appreciation at a cocktail party is unnecessary. I just need to say one more thing about men.

I want to know how you feel, what drives you, where it hurts and who hurt you. I want you to speak of love and loss and all that you’re yet to learn. I want to hear you say what you don’t know yet, where the blurred edges are, how confused and lonely you get and then I want to see you doing something about it. Not in a waging war on another country way, bombing the shit out of children and murdering your neighbour, I want to see you deal with it in an immediate sense of the people whose names you know.

I can think of at least a dozen men here on this platform whose work is doing exactly that, exploring the underbelly of their case, examining the raw and turning it into art. Their work, in post after post is more meaningful by a country mile than the alcoholic ramblings of a writer who never meant his work to be taken seriously. Yet seriously it was taken, and so the finger of blame for Ulysses becoming universally celebrated, swings from Joyce to the society in which Joyce lived. You know where I’m going with this, so let’s go there.

There are plenty of female critics who love this novel but this is a patriarchal society, brainwashing is real and the truth of both those statements is no better exemplified than by the lauding of seven hundred and thirty-two pages of the kind of banging on women have had to put up with for millennia.

Ulysses is the disembodied male voice at its worst, a perfect example of the kind of time wasting drivel that gets us as a society nowhere. If you enjoy it, fine, but I have better things to do. If you hold it up as an important voice, no. As an emblem of an era, interesting for the comment its celebration makes about the century, absolutely, but let’s put it next to the statue of Edward Colston and be done with it. The fact that it is celebrated is the most notable thing about it.

You don’t have to read Ulysses. If you want an epic novel of culturally vital genius read Praiseworthy. Alexis Wright achieves what perhaps James Joyce set out to do, certainly what critics claim he does. Praiseworthy shimmers on a level attainable only to the ancestors in the dust haze heat of Australia. It’s not necessary to read it as you would a Le Carré, don’t pick it apart, don’t try to do anything at all with your intellectual brain; give yourself to it, let it wash over you as does the sea, let it carry you as Aboriginal Sovereignty is carried, drawn out, picked up, carried back. Let it work its magic on a system that needs this depth and height to wake it up to all that is forceful and unseen.

Alexis Wright is saying something important with her lineage and with her soul; her voice is the voice of multitudes, the air you cannot breathe, the waters that are rising, the title that is lost, the land that is mined, the language that is stolen, the heritage that is burnt. It is a book that will change your life. It is a novel that rewards the courage and time it takes to read it. And yes, it was written by a woman.

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