Ulysses. World’s Greatest Work of Fiction?Really?
October 4th 2006 07:28
One-eyed Jimmy
Consistently, when surveyed, literary academics and publishers name the largest novel of James Joyce as the world’s finest example of fiction in the English language. Is this position justified and why is it so?
James Joyce was a very strange man, strange enough to suggest something genetic. Taking this naturalist position, who is surprised to find that his daughter had schizophrenia, a madness that was to plague his latter days. He was himself a copraphilliac and his letters to his wife Nora Barnacle make a weirdish read. Joyce’s father predestined the demonic wit of the son when, in noting her name, he commented to James that she would never leave him.
Reading his earlier works, a progression is evident until this apotheosis of a writer of fiction is reached. Joyce had a way of encapturing and evoking places in his language. An example of this is Trieste, the Eastern Italian polyglot port where he lived for so long and which Joyce called “Tarry Easty.”
Joyce is also a lesson in a fact that aspiring authors seldom address until their fruitless careers fizzle out in dribblehood. A successful work of fiction is a luck of lotto proportions. The best is unread, the worst is a best seller. Joyce had to pay to publish his works. Ulysses became an exception which lead to the cover of Time magazine and enshrined him in a Shakespearean grotto with Dickens, Chaucer, Becket and, on his better days Wilde.
Bean as Odysseus
Ulysses is Odysseus, the great sailor king whose idea it was to plant the Trojan Horse in Priam’s garden. The Greeks believe that the story of man is a futile struggle against the capricious gods. This leads to Odysseus taking ten years to make it home from Troy to find a house full of suitors trying to secure his kingdom. In true Greek fashion they have to be slaughtered. That is not the end of it for Odysseus who also has a tragic end, just like his boss Agamemnon who gets home in time to be axed to death by his wife and her suitor. The original story is by Homer who was probably a seventh century before Christ Greek committee, rather than one man. No one is sure. It is not troubling that Joyce should use the inspiration of another literary work to write Ulysses. After all Shakespeare did this with all of his plays bar none. The womb of inspiration has had many previous offspring.
The modern Ulysses is the odyssey of Harold Bloom in one day around the streets of Dublin remembered in autistic clarity by Joyce. The amateur, who is most of us, can only come at this work a piece at a time. Some fortunate ones read it in a consecutive series of sittings, though I have never met such a person.
As good as Dickens
It is worth the effort to take it on a section at a time and mull over it. Such a part is the memorable feast of kidneys enjoyed by Bloom one morning for breakfast. There is hardly a dish of words like it, equaled in my view by Dickens who describes Monsiegnor taking his chocolate as observed by the callous Marquis St Evremond before he runs over a child in his carriage.
Titus
Ulysses is a Marianas trench of work which leaves you pondering the depths, from floating above, just as you do Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s most horrific play. The fortunate who see Anthony Hopkins portrayal of this in the great movie by Julie Taymor are left to wonder at the literary imagination of geniuses, people surely from another planet. The Ulysses planet is well worth the exploration. Sensible people acquire a copy and take a dip from time to time using whatever academic resources are available to them to come to grips with it.
Is it the greatest work of fiction ever written? It is hard to beat for those who read a lot. No sensible person should ever be caught naked of it in her library. I exhort you to think what an elevated space you could be in to be able to join that debate about that place in the literary pantheon.
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