Joyce, Ulysses and Doyle

Madam, - Although Colum McCann bravely defended Roddy Doyle from the "tabloid attacks" regarding his comments on James Joyce …

Madam, - Although Colum McCann bravely defended Roddy Doyle from the "tabloid attacks" regarding his comments on James Joyce and Ulysses being taken out of context (Opinion, February 12th), yet Doyle's parochial settings and lack of life experience make it difficult to exonerate him from the charge of "downsizing" one of the great literary writers of the 20th century.

Unlike Joyce, who led a semi-nomadic existence in Trieste, Zurich and Paris, Doyle has led a safe life and has rarely ventured far from the Kilbarrack/Bayside milieu of his novels. Joyce spoke Italian and French and even mastered Norwegian to read the works of Ibsen. He was probably fluent in more than a dozen tongues.

Doyle, apart from the token "cúpla focal" of Gaelic, has lived all his life in the pseudo-Anglicised environment of a world which has more in common with East Enders than the Connemara Gaeltacht; more in common with Nick Hornsby and soccer hooligans than with Flann O'Brien and the sharp witticisms of the lost generation of the 1940s. His simple, monosyllabic literary style may appeal to the mind of a 10-year-old child but has little to offer an adult mind honed on the works of classical writers.

Doyle, like many Irish writers living in Ireland today, has benefited from the Celtic Tiger boom. Like beggars on horseback, parading their scanty talent for all to see, they are often shocked when outsiders cry "The emperor has no clothes". And in Doyle's case, after the massive flop of A Star Called Henry, he has been exposed as a writer without real, lasting talent who peevishly tries to knock Joyce from his hard-won international pedestal. - Yours, etc.,

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