I have had two things stuck in my head all day. Firstly the words 'Stately plump Buck Mulligan.' This is the opening few words from Ulysses, a novel by James Joyce a topic which has featured in a previous blog. It is without a doubt the best book I have ever read, and I hate it.
This might confuse some readers, in my head the terms 'best' and 'my favourite' don't usually constitute the same set of books/films/music etc. I think the Godfather's amazing, I love watching it and I could write a considerably long essay about how I think it's the best film I've ever seen. It doesn't come anywhere near my top five though. It just doesn't have the rewatchability of Die Hard or Sleepless in Seattle for me. (Also through that statement you can see my strange range of film tastes)
Ulysses is the book form of the Godfather for me, quite long, quite complicated and brilliant. It took James Joyce 20 years to write and it is taking up most of my time to read. It amazes me how a man can write a 900 page book where every single sentence means something. There is nothing incidental, nothing pointless in this book. And it is amazing.
It is driving me insane.
I mean pretentious much? Needless to say I will not be revisiting this book like I've revisited Harry Potter. No Harry Potter probably doesn't have as much 'literary value' but to hell with literary value I like being relaxed and Ulysses does not do that for me. To read something so confusing and so heavy (in terms of what is in it and just general grams) is really taking it out of me, and I look forward to Christmas so I can say goodbye to it. I can confine it to my shelf and look at it occasionally thinking 'yeah, I read that' and feel jolly well proud of myself.
But I don't think it'll end there. I have a feeling this book won't leave me. Like the Odyssey (the book which it is set around) which I have studied at GCSE, A-Level, and now apparently university level. As my friend Ryan said to me earlier, it's come back to haunt me in Modernist form. Worryingly I not only think that it won't leave me, but that I won't want to leave it. I love finding stuff out and learning things and here is a book that no one has ever found everything from. No one likes it, no one would take the fucking thing on holiday, but people read it, people have talked about it and taken it to pieces for exactly 90 years. I think if I ever get into lecturing, as is one of my dreams, I will be teaching a module on the bloody thing. Because I think it's important to literature, I just can't bloody stand it.
Most things I come across nowadays, I quietly think to myself 'this requires study'. I moan about it like no one else, but I love studying literature. I am in the process of applying for an MA in children's literature. I'm loving my dissertation and I'm taking on another personal study next semester. Which brings me to the second thing which has been stuck in my head all day. The Oasis lyric 'if there's a God won't he give another chancer, an hour to sing for his soul.'
If Ulysses has been contested for 90 years, nothing has been contested like God. I don't know what I think about religion. I won't say anything for or against it because I want to study it. I find modernism almost forces me to think about these things, doing an essay on Nietzsche and statements like 'God is dead' is what should be held accountable for this blog. I find it so interesting and I do believe in something afterwards. I can't get my head around the fact that I'll stop being me. However this blind belief in some form of afterlife does not necessarily support a belief in the almighty. I don't like organised religion, personally I don't like how you have to pick one (for the time it takes up). Why are there so many? Why does there have to be a right one? Are any of them right? I don't know, so I'll be looking into that. My lecturers; scholars and logical minds, go to church and believe. I like to know people's beliefs, I like to know why, so I'll look into it. I don't like being told what to believe, by either side, I like to make my own decisions, so one day I'll take a look at that.
Human beings seem to have a habit of writing on things and people looking at these things a thousand years later and thinking they must have significance. This may have been what happened with the guy who thought up religion on a cave wall or the side of a pyramid. And this may have happened with Ulysses. I would love to have a time machine, visit James Joyce and discover that Ulysses is actually a 900 page book about a man farting, pooing, picking his nose and masturbating his way through a day, eating kidneys, going to funerals and nothing else. And all the literary references and everything else that has been picked apart from it is purely incidental. Until then however...
Stately plump Buck Mulligan...for fuck's sake.
It is because of these thoughts that Ulysses has given me, and doing essays on things like 'God is dead' and an endless stream of modernism travelling my way, I joined a snooker club. It's free for students and it relaxes me. I think it's the clack of the balls? Probably weird but hey, I'm a weird guy. So if you'd like to join me for a game and a chat about Nietzsche or James Joyce, find me at assorted Riley's snooker clubs drinking Guinness and having a lovely relax.
