The Dartmouth Observer |
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Commentary on politics, history, culture, and literature by two Dartmouth graduates and their buddies
WHO WE ARE Chien Wen Kung graduated from Dartmouth College in 2004 and majored in History and English. He is currently a civil servant in Singapore. Someday, he hopes to pursue a PhD in History. John Stevenson graduated from Dartmouth College in 2005 with a BA in Government and War and Peace Studies. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He hopes to pursue a career in teaching and research. Kwame A. Holmes did not graduate from Dartmouth. However, after graduating from Florida A+M University in 2003, he began a doctorate in history at the University of Illinois--Urbana Champaign. Having moved to Chicago to write a dissertation on Black-Gay-Urban life in Washington D.C., he attached himself to the leg of John Stevenson and is thrilled to sporadically blog on the Dartmouth Observer. Feel free to email him comments, criticisms, spelling/grammar suggestions. BLOGS/WEBSITES WE READ The American Scene Arts & Letters Daily Agenda Gap Stephen Bainbridge Jack Balkin Becker and Posner Belgravia Dispatch Black Prof The Corner Demosthenes Daniel Drezner Five Rupees Free Dartmouth Galley Slaves Instapundit Mickey Kaus The Little Green Blog Left2Right Joe Malchow Josh Marshall OxBlog Bradford Plumer Political Theory Daily Info Andrew Samwick Right Reason Andrew Seal Andrew Sullivan Supreme Court Blog Tapped Tech Central Station UChicago Law Faculty Blog Volokh Conspiracy Washington Monthly Winds of Change Matthew Yglesias ARCHIVES BOOKS WE'RE READING CW's Books John's Books STUFF Site Feed    |
Friday, February 13, 2004
James Joyce: Overrated? Treason! Irish writer Roddy Doyle, of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha fame, recently upset a lot of people when he called James Joyce's Ulysses -- widely regarded as the best novel of the 20th century -- "overrated, overlong, and unmoving." He doesn't even think Joyce is the best Irish writer, preferring to bestow that accolade on -- not Swift, Beckett, Yeats -- but on Jennifer Johnston (whom Laura wrote her senior thesis on!). Now I haven't read Doyle's celebrated book (which has outsold Ulysses on Amazon.co.uk), but having spent one term reading Ulysses, I can tell you that is is not "overrated, overlong, and unmoving." If Ulysses is long, then so too is the Divine Comedy, and there are too many Canterbury Tales, and In Search of Lost Time...well, let's not even get into Proust. I suspect Doyle's antipathy may have something to do with the anxiety of influence that great writers generate in their successors. Whether he likes it or not, Doyle probably owes more to Joyce than he thinks. But again, I should probably read his book first. More eloquent apologia for Joyce and Ulysses come by way of John Sutherland and John Mullan. |