Rejoyceing
Monday, October 10, 2005
I'm in the Caffe Nero at the end of Waterloo Bridge killing time before I pop next door to a lecture on James Joyce at Somerset House. (Disclaimer: I'm not uploading this immediately from my textpad because I refuse to pay the obscene mimumum charge - £5 - for the 20 minutes I'll be here.)
Ulysses was the first book I stole: a large format Penguin Modern Classics edition from 'Midland Educational' in Solihull.
I carried that book in various coat and jacket pockets for the next few years and, surprise, surprise, actually read it. And loved it. And looked to Joyce as my role model as a writer. Now, I think Joyce himself would be the first to agree that he was not an ideal role model for a teenager dreaming of being a writer. A teenager, what's more, who was already heading towards drink problems and had more than enough problems with self-esteem. Choosing Joyce as the measure for my writing was like playing with Lego and wondering why my houses didn't look like Versailles. I didn't have the tools.
Unfortunately, my fixation with Joyce lasted long enough to blight my early attempts at writing. Nothing I wrote could obviously match his peerless prose, his linguistic depths, or his intellectual rigour. This was long before I worked out - with the help of Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird) - that you were allowed first drafts that sucked. How many quick sketches did Leonardo go through before he was happy with the Mona Lisa?
Enough of that, I feel. Off to the lecture.
Ulysses was the first book I stole: a large format Penguin Modern Classics edition from 'Midland Educational' in Solihull.
I carried that book in various coat and jacket pockets for the next few years and, surprise, surprise, actually read it. And loved it. And looked to Joyce as my role model as a writer. Now, I think Joyce himself would be the first to agree that he was not an ideal role model for a teenager dreaming of being a writer. A teenager, what's more, who was already heading towards drink problems and had more than enough problems with self-esteem. Choosing Joyce as the measure for my writing was like playing with Lego and wondering why my houses didn't look like Versailles. I didn't have the tools.
Unfortunately, my fixation with Joyce lasted long enough to blight my early attempts at writing. Nothing I wrote could obviously match his peerless prose, his linguistic depths, or his intellectual rigour. This was long before I worked out - with the help of Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird) - that you were allowed first drafts that sucked. How many quick sketches did Leonardo go through before he was happy with the Mona Lisa?
Enough of that, I feel. Off to the lecture.
