Blue Book

Why James Joyce's Ulysses Sucks

by

Mark Dennison

Because I said so. Okay, no, not really, not because I said so. Let me first say that James Joyce was probably one of the smartest men who ever lived, with a genius and vocabulary that rivaled William Shakespeare's. And he wrote what was probably the greatest novel of the twentieth century, if not of all time, Ulysses. His influence is felt palpably in all of English literature, especially in regards to prose, since it appeared in the early part of the twentieth century, and I doubt very much that it will ever abate.

However, Ulysses is an unoriginal, pretentious, boring novel. Yes, the merits I list in the above paragraph are true - if you are a writer or an academic. It is perfect masturbatory material for serious writers and academicians who write for each other and only read those things written for them. But for the average layperson, who is looking to put his hands around, and his eyes in front of, a good story to enrich his life and pass some quality time, Ulysses is nothing but a waste of a few good twigs.

Ulysses is structured on the template of Homer's Odyssey. Well, that's very original. I suppose that its taking place over a 24 hour period rather than 24 sections of an epic poem is somewhat original. If you are 5 years old. The Odyssey was written over 2,000 years ago and is still enjoyed today by millions of readers. Note to Joyce: we do not need a re-hashed Odyssey. We need a story that originates from your imagination, from that great brain that rests inside your myopic skull! Hey, I have an idea: I will write a novel based on Hamlet and sell that to people. Oh, wait a minute, nobody wants to read Hamlet again, even if it is one of the best tragedies of the Western World. We already have it, no need for anybody to steal it and make it worse.

But Ulysses is great because of its word-play, its use of stream-of-consciousness, its inventive dialogue, its allusions to past great works of literature, its use of symbols as based on The Odyssey, Mark. Not really. All of this is unnecessary window-dressing on an otherwise boring - no, wait, BORING! - story. A writer doesn't need word-play, stream-of-consciousness, inventive dialogue, allusions, and symbols to write a great story. No, what he needs is an enthralling beginning, middle, and ending; complex characters; conflicts and crises; and the ability to choose words that tell his story and no one else's. Anything else is overcompensation for a story so thin that skeletons call it anorexic.

Ulysses is boring. I alluded - ha, look, I'm James Joyce, I made an allusion! - earlier to this aspect of Ulysses' total failure as a novel, which is probably the hardest point to show and justify. But then again, it's Ulysses - no, it's not hard. It takes place over the course of one day in Dublin. A guy goes to a funeral, jerks off on a beach, gets drunk, goes to a brothel, meets up with a young guy he doesn't even hit on, pisses in the yard with said guy, then goes to bed, only to have his story taken over by his shrill, sorry, cuckolded wife. And it takes over 700 pages for all this to happen. Wow. Great stuff, huh? Maybe if you are a corpse. But like Judge Woolsey famously said of Ulysses in the obscenity trial regarding it, "...it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring." Well, thank God (who doesn't exist, by the way; I have looked for Him and found only his Husk, which I kicked to ashes and blew into the wind), that I'm not Irish - I would have died from boredom upon being born (or hatched, as my dear mother would say).

In conclusion, Ulysses is the greatest novel ever written. I sincerely believe that. But I would suggest that no one worth his salt read it so that it remains so.