Uggggghhhh. Sometimes I don’t know why I do it to myself, choosing books like this to read (or at least why I don’t quit when I’m not enjoying it). I think its that I always suspect the book is going to get better, especially ‘classic’ books, because otherwise why would someone still be putting it on some ‘100 books to read’ list (including a scratch off poster of important novels that I am very keen to scratch off entries on)?
Two years ago I read Joyces’ Ulysses and I didn’t really enjoy it, so probably not a surprise that I also didn’t love this. Maybe I’m the low-brow wine connoisseur who really just wants a nice $15 bottle of Chilean Sauv Blanc to drink on the patio and doesn’t appreciate the barnyard funk of a fancy Napa pinot? I find Joyce’s books really hard to follow (I am often wikipedia’ing to find out what just happened) and, if I’m being honest, not particularly insightful or interesting.
Take this novel: the story is a bildungsroman for a young man, Stephen Dedalus, growing up in Dublin. The most famous line I think is the first (it was passingly familiar to me): “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.” This is Dedalus’ writing of his childhood, and one of the things that critics love is that Joyce’s writing becomes more sophisticated as Dedalus grows older.
Kind of like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, there isn’t much for plot. The biggest ‘events’, if you can even call them that, are that a) Dedalus’ father makes some bad business deals so the family status declines and Dedalus has to go to day school rather than boarding school and b) Dedalus flirts with the idea of joining the priesthood but ultimately decides that once he’s done highschool he needs to leave Ireland and go to England to become a writer. In between there are small episodes where he makes friends, gets in spots of trouble with those friends and almost has a romance, but they are so cryptically written that I had to google to figure out what the what Joyce was trying to say. Given the choice between A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and this, I would 100% choose A Tree, every time.