They don't make names like that anymore. Here's what the noble haiku sent:
Until the latter part of the 20th Century, he remained "anathema to the Irish establishment", according to Ireland's best known Joycean scholar.
"They saw Joyce as someone who was anti-Irish; who was profligate; who ran away with a chambermaid; who wrote dirty books," Senator David Norris explained.
Stop right there! I never knew he indulged in the ignoble art of chambermaiding, something I once semi-dabbled in myself in southern Italy.
Also Graham Parker tried it for real, as did, I believe, DSK:
"It's only in recent years Joyce has become so popular... partly through the revenue that's generated for tourism. Nothing so disinfects a reputation as the clink of money in the till."
Senator Norris has been involved in promoting Joyce's work for decades and helped set up Dublin's James Joyce Centre in 1996. In the 1960s, he identified a crumbling Georgian townhouse as the real-life setting of the author's best-known short story, The Dead.
Well isn't that lovely. Senator David Norris:
Makes a change from a goat or a nine-year-old bride I suppose. UK taxpayer money well spent? Not.
My encounter with a chambermaid is going to disappoint I'm afraid ... it was neither consummated, nor runaway-y, nor anything, she drove me around for awhile, showing me the sights.
That's not her by the way, just a facsimile. So, back to Joyce and his writing:
“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”
“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”
Sheer poetry. Interesting people, the Irish. Highly susceptible to being British-ed, to potato famines and to that endless cycle of sectarian violence they so love to share with the world.
Nora-Barnacle - did she stick with him?
ReplyDeleteWiki: This began a relationship that continued for thirty-seven years until Joyce died.
DeleteShe stuck like a limpet.
DeleteThink both did to a point.
DeleteWhat UK taxpayer money?
ReplyDelete