For a lot of people Ulysses rubs the wrong way — it is impenetrable, almost impossible to read without Gifford’s guidance or summaries and analysis from literary websites, it doesn’t read like a real novel and more like a mad gibberish, it is a work of an incomprehensible but arrogant man. All these accusations may be true to an extent, but what Ulysses is not, is to give two pennies about these accusations. And it is pointless to defend it. Like I mentioned in another post, the relationship between the reader and a work of art is a personal one — who gives what the next punter thinks or literary critic?
But we do anyway. We chase up the latest reviews from the critics, some of us. We want to know what they think and to compare our emotions of this work to those of another, somebody who had done this for a long time maybe, and to match our opinions. This results in a collective score which affects whether we are going to love or hate the work of fiction that we spent our time (and money) on. Our relationship with books and movies, and other people’s opinions have fast become a love triangle with push and pull from all sides.
The book or movie is affected by audience screenings and tests, the audience demands more of everything — more blood, more love, more sex, more intelligence from the work, the critics and key opinion leaders want the attention of both, and devours said attention. I don’t think it is a healthy relationship, perhaps toxic. The best works of fiction that I enjoy the most are not influenced by the general opinion of the public, but for the sake of creation, even personal creation.
Henry Miller is ruthless with his work, Kerouac kept on experimenting and the more personal he made his work the more I enjoyed it, Woolf turned the form of the novel upside down and made for unbelievable reading. There were little financial incentives for these creations, it was driven more from the necessity of creation than the necessity of finance and lauded opinions.
But there has been a trend over the last decade, and I cannot remember the first time that I noticed the trend, but movie posters and book covers are advertising real estate for often ambiguous reviews — latching on the number of stars and one word superlatives like “Superb” or “Fantastic” often followed by exclamation marks. And to be fair — at first glance the stars and reviews give it an air of legitimacy. We’re a sucker for these — I’m a sucker for these.
When you’re trying to find something that is not run-off-the-mill, because that’s not your kind of thing, you need to rely on other people’s opinions. Your time and my time are premium and we don’t want to spend hours on a movie or a book we don’t like for no particular purpose. In marketing, testimonials are key, and publishers know this. Sites such as Goodreads and IMDb are infested by those who can shift the numbers. Some reviews are sponsored with a free book, and surprisingly, the reviews take kindly to the book.
I don’t understand why some books in Goodreads are rated highly and others are not. Trash I despise such as the Maze Runner is rated above 4, while other books that has stood the test of time fared more often than not below this mark. It seems absurd to me, especially when I read some of the reviews of other users to find things that I may have missed about the book, or if they have another point of view that is different to mine — the parallax and the seven sided flower in the Waves come to mind. Ulysses, being a divisive book, is rated at 3.73 at the time of writing, and this is why ratings are just plain irrelevant, because I loved Ulysses. Yet I don’t see this rating as an insult, it just doesn’t matter.
So how do we know what to read then, if it’s not because of other people’s opinions, or if it belongs in a list, or the blurb just plain draws you in? Are we missing out on a masterpiece written by an author nobody had ever heard of because this book exists in a backlog of a publisher’s to read pile, and it is not something well-marketed like Paris Hilton’s cooking show? There was a time when I would pick up a book plainly out of its reputation, not because it belongs to a list. Having said that, Ulysses belongs to a list (actually many lists), and I am glad to have read it. I am not sure if I would have picked it up otherwise. Whether we should follow book lists merit its own argument I think. After years of reading and trying to defeat lists, my position to this is still grey.
If we know exactly what we want to read, then it will all be simple. This is easier for non-fiction work than it is for fiction work. I want to learn about management — there’s warehouses of these; I want to read about existentialism — plenty of philos who will oblige you, especially the Frenchies who must think about this stuff A LOT; I want to learn how to cook Carribean cuisine — plenty of these around, just ask for Ainsley. But how do I select novels that I know that I’d like? Does it come back then to others’ opinions? The more I think about it, the more I think how the opinion of others shape my book selection. But I’m not sure if this is a bad thing after all, because I have to admit that in many cases, it helps.
Once, I read less with purpose. In my younger days I want to be more humanitarian and I want to understand better the people who need help, and so I was mad for reading and finding African literature. The Heinemann African Writers Series was formative in my early reading. I wanted to understand women better, and even though reading books won’t help immensely, I started reading more books written by women writers. I wanted the sense of freedom of youth and travel — and I couldn’t get away from Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller. Throw in a bit of Burroughs there somewhere. There was a purpose of what I read, but overtime my reading patterns have become more arbitrary, the range wider but the focus lost.
But I am glad that I picked up Ulysses because my relationship with reading is really a transposition of my relationship with language. What language does and what it can do. How far can language takes us, and how far we can take language. Finding layers of messages and meanings in sentences beyond what you read the first time — these are the pleasures of reading. Reading Ulysses makes me want to write again — not Google Map reviews or book reviews even though I will continue to write these. But reflections and perhaps shortly, fiction because there is no shortage of things to try to make sense of.
And I will continue to read books of all sizes, intended for different audiences regardless, because it gives me an indication of what readers like to read. And because I am plainly addicted to reading, as finishing any given book gives me a sense of accomplishment. Every book is a scalp, a hurdle and some minor way, an achievement. Every book is an education, and thus a privilege — even the bad ones.
