Stymied

Few of Joyce's books appear on the Irish school curriculum. His play "Exiles" has not been performed in Dublin for many years. His poetry is almost unknown in his homeland, and "Ulysses" is widely regarded in Ireland as an impenetrable and pretentious folly (which, in parts, it magnificently is). Joseph O'Conner for WSJ


The Hill County Farms case illustrates the loathsome underbelly of the American welfare state, that small pockets of our country are no better than dangerously disintegrated communities in Somalia. I do not care what your politics are. I do not care if I have raised more than a few eyebrows with the depth of my internalized scars. I do not care if Angelina Jolie forms a Tinseltown Exploratory Committee and wins all 50 states in a landslide in 2016, this horrifying instance of slavery is why I hate you, why, if you are of African ancestry and I have hurt your feelings, you have nothing to say to me, and why if you are a homosexual, I'd wire your mouth shut sooner than pay you a farthing in respect, and why, if you are white and suburban with your two children, what these men had to suffer is the fault of your despicable self-interest, and why, if you are a disability center consumer, you're deluding yourself. Next to the conditions these men endured my poverty is rich, but I have seen situations that do not leave much in the lack of imagination in terms of a crumbling existence that the least of ant colonies would not endure.

You see this story as an aberration. To me it's civilization's end, just beginning.

There are very few active Joyce forums online. I joined a Joyce serv akin  to the James list model  that hasn't seen a post since  2007, driven in my bid to find out to the degree possible how much  of James Joyce had read before 1922. Bloomsday makes me wrinkle my nose and avert my gaze, as if I had caught sight of my brother's dead hamster in the basement, drowned and floating. I do not really wish to read a fucking passage of Ulysses on June 16th. Charming Lance asked me if I would be well enough, if I wished to; no doubt I shall. The exercise and celebration is pointless.