How to Write Like James Joyce (and other stuff)

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16 June 2011

Bloomsday. The very mention of the name makes my scrotum tighter than a Cavan man’s wallet. Every June 16, we denizens of Sandycove have to endure the pretentious diddification of the Chardonnay-swigging classes as they swan around Joyce’s Martello tower in faux Edwardian boaters, bonnets and boas.

If there’s one thing that’s certain about ‘Ulysses’, it’s that the majority of Bloomsday revellers at Sandycove have never read it. They still, however, heroically persist in pretending to understand it. Armed with a note-page of Googled phrases, they stroll about starting debates about Stephen Dedalus “as Philosophy’s Superman” with reference to “Hegelian Ratiocinations” – and then run off before they have to explain what that means.

For years, my old man led the Bloomsday charge down the hill from Glenageary to Fitzies pub in Sandycove. He had an ad hoc approach to the sartorial aspect of the day. I remember him wearing a purple striped jacket over his favourite grey ‘parallel’ pants. I think the ‘jacket’ was a short dressing gown he had been given as a Christmas present, but never worn. It might have been my mother’s. Either way, he looked like a deck chair with legs.

There was a cravat, I think, too – plumped up like stately Buck Mulligan. Cravats: who dreamed up cravats? They were too small to be a scarf and too big (even by 70s standards) to be a tie. Cravats remind me of those BBC suburban dinner party dramas of the 1970s. The ones where the cravat-wearing host is happily playing charades with his guests, unaware that his moustachioed best friend is rogering his missus under a pile of coats in the spare bedroom. Cravats, to my post-punk mind shriek: “Wanker!!”

“Dad, you look like a wanker. Please don’t go out dressed like that.”

“It’s Joycean.”

“You look more like Joyce Grenfell.”

“Who?”

“Joyce Grenfell. From the St Trinian’s films. She used to dress in drag too.”

“Bugger off.”

And so he would set off on his little flannel legs, straw hat perched at a rakish angle. In my warped memory, the hat may have been a trilby I got in Corfu. There might have been a sticker on the side saying ‘Cor-phew! What a scorcher!’ I’m not sure. I like to think it did, though.

I suppose dad enjoyed himself, and there’s a lot to be said for that. It’s nice to see people having fun, even if they are really, really, annoying. It’s especially nice to see our Village Madman, having fun terrifying them with his Bruce Lee impressions outside Finnegan’s later in the day.

So, in the spirit of  ‘can’t beat them, can’t legally beat them up’, I’ve delved into my miscellanist past to present a few lesser known Joycean facts for your perusal.

They conclude with my patented guide to writing like James Joyce, liberated from my seminal Little Buke of Dublin of a few years back.

Here you go:

» In 2004 a dirty letter from Joyce to his wife Nora Barnacle was sold for a record $445,000. If it was in French, it might have made more (and I could have made a pun out of it).

» In 2005, the Joyces’ famous love life got the broadway musical treatment. ‘Himself and Nora’ starts with James being born.  This prompted one unimpressed critic to ask: “Can a muscular, squared-jawed, impossibly handsome, quintessentially Broadway actor, Matt Bogart, nude and curled in a foetal position, really be James Joyce [as a new-born baby]?” If so, pity his poor mother and her  strettttch maaarks.

» Joyce’s poetry collection, Chamber Music, is named after the sound of urine tinkling into a chamber pot. (It’s in the key of Pee Minor.)

» Joyce had a fear of dogs after being attacked by one when he was five. Whatever about growling dogs, his grave is so close to the Zurich Zoo that the latter’s lions can actually be heard from his graveside.

» Denny’s sausages are mentioned in Ulysses when Leopold Bloom is in Dlugacz’s butcher’s waiting to buy a kidney. Donor cards weren’t in operation back then.

» In 2004 Joyce’s grandson, Stephen warned the National Library that a planned display of his grandfather’s manuscripts violated his copyright. The Seanad had to pass an emergency amendment in order to thwart him. Well, at least it gave Ivor Callelly something to do.

» The ReJoyce 100 festival culminated with the Biggest Breakfast ever served (in peacetime) in the capital city. In total 10,000 baguettes stuffed with 40,000 sausages, rashers and slices of black and white pudding were served to the hungry masses on O’Connell Street. There’s a rude old Dublin joke about Molly Malone and “it’d be like throwing a sausage up O’Connell Street” that we won’t be telling here. What she would have done with 10,000 sausages is anyone’s guess.

» Joyce was a gifted tenor and once entered a competition against the legendary John McCormack.

» Joyce and McCormack are the only two Irish tenors to have Dublin bridges named after them, the former on the Liffey, the latter on the Tolka.

» Joyce’s portrait appeared on the old £10 note. This made him a tenor on a tenner, so-to-speak.

» Mel Brooks’ movie, The Producers (1968), features Gene Wilder as a character called Leo Bloom. In the 2005 remake, the opening scene is set on June 16.

» Joyce’s birthday (2 February) falls on Groundhog Day. Joyce’s birthday (2 February) falls on Groundhog Day.

Joyce may have been a genius but anybody can write like him if they follow a few simple rules. Here they are from The Little Buke of Dublin – or How To Be A Real Dub:

Remember:

1) Never use punctuation oh no

2) Never mind the quality feel the length (Ulysses is pretty damn long, missus)

3) Never be afraid to be crude

4) Never make sense

So now, we must find a topic to write about. For the sake of brevity we will choose getting off the Number 8 bus to buy some chips in Borza’s, of Dalkey.

There should be an element of dramatic tension in this, so we will imbue our hero with the quality of indecisiveness as he struggles with ineluctable modality and what to have for his tea. Thus:

THE LOTUS EATERS

(After Ulysses)

Bull-fart of sighing. Not this stop the omnibus settles down exhaling deeply.

Shhhhhhhh.

Omnibus. Omnibus. Deus Omnibus vobiscum leder hosen terminus.

“Gerrup ourra dat we’re at de terminus”.

The voice subsides. Parting of clouds, straightening of lashes, struggling through parted doors Francie alights and walks crookedly to Borza’s.

And let our crooked chips, amen.

“Next?” Stately plump Angelino, in rolled-up sleeves, wipes a droplet of sweat from his brow, leaving a snail trail of oil across his forehead.

Smoked cod and a large single large of largeness and larger still.

No, heart change.

Bunburger and a single yes a pat of burger dewy beads of juicy juiciness rain down beneath a canopy of sodden cheese and break on bed of snot green lettuce leaf. Those buns so tight yes

“D’you want salt and vinegar wid your chips?”

No.

No, wait.

Wait yes. Yes!

Yes

Yes

I will

Wait Yes!

Oh Yes!!!

I WILL!!!!

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