FAAAAARRK!!!

I promised myself I wouldn’t be one of those cranky middle-aged “the world’s going to hell” type bloggers, but this is too much. Let’s see what you think...

                For years I’ve put off reading Joyce’s Ulysses, intimidated by the master’s masterpiece. I finally pulled it down this week. Saturday, in fact. That is, Saturday, 16th June: Bloom’s Day; the day during which the entire novel is set. What’s more, it was a Bloom’s Day upon which fans the world over celebrated as the book’s copyright expired, all of this unknown to me until I turned on the news that night. Now, I’ll admit that’s not a story of earth-shattering importance, but it is a fairly amusing example of what Jung called synchronicity – a set of acausally connected events; a meaningful coincidence, beyond statistical probability of, but still technically, chance.

                I told this same story this evening to an acquaintance who, just this month, completed a master’s degree in humanities. I was met with a long, puzzled stare, and then: “so, what? You want to steal the copyright?”

                I drink my coffee within walking distance of three of the nation’s leading universities. Uni students often end up working in cafés, so I get to hear an awful lot of this kind of shit. You’d be surprised (or, maybe not). The most frequent complaint is the workload. Not, you understand, from the foreign students, the ones working two casual jobs while trying to squeeze food and sleep between course-work; It’s the twenty-three or –four year olds, living at home with their parents, doing two shifts a week, and always stressed about their latest assignment. “Oh my god,” they’ll say, “how am I ever going to write five thousand words?” Here’s a suggestion: put the fucking tequila bottle down, stop stumbling around hung-over three days out of every seven, and WRITE THE DAMN THING.

                My problem (one of them) is I write too much. I haven’t posted a blog in three weeks because I’m having difficulty keeping them under three thousand words and, as I was informed tonight (guess who) that’s probably too long. What would these people do with Mr Joyce? God only knows.

                Allow me to leave you, in the interest of brevity, with a piece of modern genius. David M. Bader published a beautiful, funny little book a few years ago which has been a prized possession in hard-cover, and has recently made it into Penguin’s orange paperbacks; it’s called Haiku U – 100 Great Books in 17 Syllables. I haven’t committed Ulysses to memory, but here’s Finnegan’s Wake:

                                Riverrun on and

                                          By Jaisus s’dense! Bien alors,

                                                    Scribbledehobble.

                Short enough, I’ll grant you, for the generation of morons we’re unleashing on the future; but I wonder, would they get it? I’m off to pound my forehead with a hammer ‘till it all makes more sense.