Everyday People

I've been meaning to say something further about Declan Kiberd's book on the greatest novel of the twentieth century (well, at least until I reread Proust and change my mind again) Ulysses and Us - The Art of Everyday Living, since finishing it a couple of weeks back, so now I will, partly prompted by Don Paterson's thoughts on the need for criticism based on the sheer human joy of lit. Kiberd's tome comes close, and to judge by some of the quotations from reviewers plastered over the paperback edition, and the garish yellow and orange cover featuring the hot blond reading Joyce's masterpiece, you'd think he'd pulled it off. But not quite, I'm afraid. There's too much here that gets bogged down in the usual critical apparatus. Not that that isn't worth reading for its insights. There are plenty of those in the traditional sense and as a sort of Joyce scholar myself I enjoyed them. But as an ordinary bloke I wish the prof had been a tad braver and really gone for the common man approach big time.

His thesis is pretty simple: Joyce had the wisdom to come to understand that the ordinary, everyday muddling-through that we all have to put up with, because it's all we've got, is a source of great joy and sanity that should be celebrated. His novel should be read for its capacity to help us endure rather than as great art as it recognises there's more than a little that's iffy about the whole notion of great art. The humour of the novel, and its tears, (and how often do these come almost as a single unit?) are not happy accidents but central to why we need to read Ulysses.

Out of the great mess of life we get this great mess of a novel. Rejoyce. (This last bit isn't Kiberd, it's me getting suitably carried away.)