o1mnikent

Steven G. Kellman has an interesting review of Declan Kiberd’s Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Ulysses is indeed a triumph of what Northrop Frye called “the low mimetic mode”; it elevates plebeian characters and banal actions to artistic consideration and, celebrating them, performs what Kiberd, in an aptly Catholic metaphor, calls “the sacrament of everyday life.” But his exhortation that “it is time to reconnect Ulysses to the everyday lives of real people” is not in itself enough to overcome the paradox that the novel is read not by “real people,” but only by students and scholars. Real men may or may not eat quiche, but the “real people” Kiberd seems to have in mind rarely, according to surveys by the National Endowment for the Arts, read any books, and when they do, the authors are more likely to be Stephen King, James Patterson, or Danielle Steel than James Joyce.

And:

…despite the admirable lucidity of his own style, devoid of preening jargon and turgid syntax, Kiberd’s erudite book—though issued by a trade publisher, W.W. Norton, and not a university press—is not likely to be read by the “real people” he sentimentalizes and patronizes.

Snap!

And later:

Disguised as praise, books that offer practical uses for literary classics are in fact acts of iconoclastic arrogance. Proclaiming their fealty to the ordinary, they are driven by impatience with—even contempt for—the actual experience of reading extraordinary works.

Exactly.