Ordinary Gweilo

The Irish writer Roddy Doyle has caused a certain amount of controversy in Ireland by criticising James Joyce.

I have to say I’m with him on this one! When I studied English at ‘A’ level, we weren’t given a very attractive selection of books – there was the obligatory Dickens (Bleak House) and Shakespeare (Coriolanus!), Milton’s Paradise Lost, and James Joyce (Portrait of the Artist). I found Dickens rather hard work, and I don’t think I’ve ever quite understand the point of epic poems, but the biggest challenge was James Joyce. Fortunately, ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a relatively short work, but if I had been reading it for pleasure I have no doubt that I’d have given it up after a few pages.

Eventually, after reading it several times, and having parts of it explained, it did begin to make some sense, but I have never picked it up since, and the idea of starting on his longer works is distinctly unappealing. I read books to be entertained, informed and enlightened, but so-called great works of literature hold little appeal if it is a hard slog to get through them. I have certainly enjoyed some critically acclaimed books, such as Umberto Eco’s “Name of the Rose” and “Foucault’s Pendulum”, and I was a fan of Graham Swift before he won the Booker Prize, but equally I have (somewhere) a number of books I bought because they won the Booker Prize, but which I never managed to finish.

According to The Guardian:

James Joyce reading groups in [Dublin] are oversubscribed, despite the fact that one group took seven and a half years to get through Finnegans Wake. These groups are particularly popular with retired “ordinary Dubliners” , who say they didn’t have time for the almost 1,000-page novel before drawing their pension.

I think I’ll stick to reading books for enjoyment, and that means Roddy Doyle and not James Joyce!