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Title: An exercise...
Review: Richard Ellman in his biography of the famous Dublin-born sponge, points out that Joyce was once asked why he was taking 12 years to write what would become Ulysses. Joyce was living in Europe, hitting up friends, relatives, and would be patrons for money as he masturbated away his talent right in front of the poor, half-wit woman he married. "Because," he answered, "I can't think of anything else to do." That about sums up why this book in truth is an eruption of verbal flatulence, a screech in the literary void by a man who was not capable of doing what lesser writers could: compose a plot. There are scenes, passages and conversations from Ulysses that are truly brilliant--but that's all one can say about it. The tragedy is that a man of such talent, who would have secured a place in literary history if he had never written another word after "The Dead", felt obliged to labor his way through this doorstop of a novel, when he could have produced something so much better.
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