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ByLalit Mohan
Jul 05, 2007 12:29 AM IST

How exactly are books rated for ‘greatness’? If it is fiction, it must tell a good story, and say it well. Ulysses, despite its iconoclasm, does neither, writes Lalit Mohan.

A newsmagazine recently asked some authors to list books they find unreadable. One of them named James Joyce’s Ulysses, the 783-page ‘classic’. I, too, have tried thrice to plough through it but never managed to get past page 36.

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How exactly are books rated for ‘greatness’? If it is fiction, it must tell a good story, and say it well. Ulysses, despite its iconoclasm, does neither.

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In the Modern Library edition that I have, what was of greater interest was a New York court’s judgment on it. The book had been banned in the United States on grounds of obscenity. The court lifted the ban and the case is considered a legal landmark.

Judge John M Woolsey, in his order of December 6, 1933, says: “Although it contains many words considered dirty, I have not found anything that I consider dirty for dirt’s sake. Each word of the book contributes like a mosaic to the detail of the picture.”

He, however, admits: “Ulysses is not an easy book to read or understand.” The book has a 45-page-long passage, which doesn’t have a single punctuation mark or a paragraph break. And it has no ‘story’ to speak of.

The best way to tell a story remains what the King of Hearts said in Alice in Wonderland: “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end.”

Therefore even if a few highbrow individuals proclaim a book a ‘masterpiece’, it does not necessarily make it so.

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