Prospero | Deciphering James Joyce

Happy Bloomsday!

Anthony Gardner speaks to Frank Delaney, a man on a mission to popularise James Joyce

By More Intelligent Life

FRANK DELANEY is a man who enjoys a challenge. A year ago he set out to explain one of the most daunting books in the English language—James Joyce's "Ulysses"—line by line on the internet. Fifty-two podcasts later, he has reached the end of Chapter One. "Some chapters are five times as long," he observes, "and the book gets more complicated as it progresses, so it could take another 30 years." That would bring Delaney to the age of 99. He thinks he will probably not move on to "Finnegans Wake".

Delaney—an Irish broadcaster and author based in New York—admits that as a young man he found "Ulysses" unreadable. But as the centenary of Joyce's birth approached in 1982, he felt increasingly embarrassed by his failure to get through it. "I began to read it aloud, and it started to make sense—because it's not a novel, it's a prose poem." He went on to write a bestselling book about Joyce's Dublin, after which Joyce became "a resident guest in my mind". He has now read "Ulysses" six times.

With his rich Irish intonation and palpable enthusiasm, he makes an ideal guide. The book, he declares, is one of the pleasures of life: "a vast, entertaining, funny, absorbing, exciting, complex, immensely enjoyable novel. A book to get lost in." It is also a book to listen to: "Joyce was a singer—he had a beautiful tenor voice—so he understood writing for the ear. In 'Ulysses' you can hear how he slips from one thought to another, which is fascinating."

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