Happy Bloom Day

So I finally read Ulysses.

By which I mean I read Ulysses so you don't have to. Seven hundred pages of thoroughly wasted time. 

I'd heard that Leopold Bloom was one of the most well-drawn characters in literature. Personally I found him entirely unbelievable. He speaks in cryptic crossword clues and doesn't have any answers. If we're taking modern references to Troy, I found Achilleus in The Enemy a way better drawn and far more believable character. "Heroes are usually dicks" indeed.

Now I was all ready for it to be incomprehensible, clever-clever bobbins - I'd heard that one of the "chapters" was musical and opened with Joyce "tuning up". Bring on the pretentious.

The main thing I knew about Ulysses was that it was a modernisation of the Odyssey set in 24 hours. That sounded brilliant. Much like Joyce, I've loved the story of the Odyssey since I were a whippersnapper (although unlike Joyce I read the Tony Robinson version, rather than the Charles Lamb) so I'd been looking forward to reading it, just waiting until I was grown up enough for all the modernist self-indulgence.

Given this, I had kind of assumed that there would be a plot. But there didn't seem to be. The whole thing was like one of those filler episodes on a long form TV show, where they spend the whole episode doing exposition just to get the episode count up. Only for the length of a box set (I'm aware I've just described the last series of The Walking Dead). I wanted a cyclops in Temple Bar and a whirlpool in the Liffey; I got a man eating a cheese sandwich and talking about Hamlet.

I'm half tempted to write the novel I wanted to read: Diss and his mates going out to a club - maybe to see a DJ called Troy - stop in a one-eyed cannibal's kebab shop after the club then take ages to get home, as they have to go via the underworld and pass a hydra and turn into pigs. Might need a bit of fine tuning but I'm sure I can work it out.

Inevitably I won't bother. I'd also be very surprised if I got round to trying Finnigans Wake.