Ulysses Diary

It is to the censors' great credit that they understood enough of Ulysses to ban it. They would probably have banned it a bit more if they had understood it better. I don't remember it being anywhere near as lewd when first I read it, or sat in front of it, over 40 years ago.

It is for the best if writers write for themselves, what they want to, rather than betray themselves by aiming at a readership. It is also for the best that we treat a writer and their work as separate things and not conflate them or I don't know what we'd make of James Joyce. Clogged up with Bloom's impotence, the ingrained rituals of the church, the paralysis brought forward from the Portrait, it is often not a gorgeous book but it is clever beyond most of our knowing and not all of us have the lifetime to spare to devote to it, Finnegans Wake notwithstanding. If this is a tour round the inner workings of Joyce's mindset we need either to retrospectively worry for him or, possibly instead, accept that, no, this is the squalour and seaminess that is somewhere in all of us brought to the surface with its high-flown writing only sometimes raising us above the depths of our actual strangenesses.

One thing, among any number, that I have enjoyed about his indulgence of himself has been his lists of names, e.g. 'the fashionable international world' at a society wedding, including  Miss Priscilla Elderflower, Miss  Rachel Cedarfrond and Mrs Helen Vinegadding. It's a stage further on from the lists of politicians in Bleak House in which Dickens compiled rhyming dictionary entries. It's an idiosyncracy I have become prone to while playing chess, making up ridiculous names while waiting for my opponent's move. I thought it meant I was mad but now that Joyce does it, I'm a genius, too, or only as mad as he was.

I don't think I'm ever going to be able to say I like Ulysses better than Proust. Too many pages go by where one doesn't want to have to check the guide to find out what's going on, whether it's currently real or something in Bloom's head or where a linguistic joke is taking its reference point from. But that's not to say it isn't tremendous or that Finnegans Wake won't be a winter project but since there is a book explaining just the first page of the Wake, I don't know if any guide will be enough to make a bit of sense of it.

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While it might never seem the proper way to listen to music, I recorded Handel's oratorio, Susanna, from the wireless and heard it that way and have last night's repeat of Saul to look forward to but one would rather have the disc in hand and the reassurance that one isn't just hearing the music but have invested in it to the extent of having it on the shelf as part of one's 'collection'. That's not a problem younger generations will have but buying records was important to us. So, it was a great pleasure to pick these gamba sonatas played by Stephen Isserlis from that shelf and rediscover it once, twice and three times. Stephen Isserlis is on my short list of favourite musicians, not for musicianship because how would I know, but for being a great bloke. I won't be doing a Top 6 of those, though, because there are far more than six and I'd have to leave too many out. However, while the music on the album sells itself, its main selling point is that the sheer enjoyment of playing is brilliantly evident and that alone makes it a contender for the later stages of the Best Disc in the House event that I hope I'm never short enough of other things to do to do. 

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And, before complaining, I'd like to pay tribute to two further things. The first is not only Ronnie O'Sullivan's miraculous steal of the semi-final in the last three frames v. Mark Selby that John Parrott described as 'like an out-of-body experience'. The final was a non-event due to either player being apparently unable to put it together at any given time but witnessing that semi-final (I understand the other was good, too) and John's words, that exceeded the drearily workmanlike football people's, was sport raised to the sublime.

Secondly, the horses have started to get it right with the weekend double being landed again with something in hand. It's almost tempting to start up the Racetrack Wiseguy feature again but we mustn't tempt fate with misplaced braggadoccio. It's a long way back, regaining big losses in small, unadventurous amounts.

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But why, oh why, oh why do the pages of the telly guide always have to have pictures of people aiming guns at us. I wouldn't mind but it was Helen Mirren this week. Surely she's better than that. Films, it would seem (I don't know, I don't watch them) are either about people threatening to shoot, or shooting, other people or just staring grimly. Whatever happened to that charming boy, Freddie Batholomew.

Is it such an easy win for the film industry to put guns in films because the audience will be thrilled by the tension it creates. Surely, one gets used to it as a poetry reader who has been told that poetry will surprise them and 'make it new' can't still be expected to be surprised by page 60 when surprise has become 'the new normal'.

Oh, yes, and journalists have found a new phrase. One of them said something was 'a perfect storm' and so now they all say everything is. With Trump, Boris and so many other countries collapsing under right-wing governments, yes, I suppose it is but the minor inconvenience caused is that consumers of journalism have to wait for the perfect storm of reporters reporting everything as a 'perfect storm' to blow through.

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But, more positively, I was indebted to my nephew who also had a go at such an event, for the link to Joe Skipper's recent 12 Hour ride,

 

This is what I used to do, 25 years ago, but not quite to this extent. I did the same time as Joe but was over 100 miles behind him at the end. Much of it is familiar but not the technical detail, the choice equipment and the 28 mph.