Madam, - I am amused by Kevin Myers's remarks (An Irishman's Diary, February 11th) echoing those of Roddy Doyle to the effect that Joyce's Ulysses might have done with a good editor, and so forth. Roddy Doyle made his remarks to a New York audience present to hear a discussion of Joyce's work. In a rather Joycean turn of phrase, he described reading three pages of Finnegans Wake as a "tragic waste of time", according to one Sunday newspaper.
I'm one of those boring, uncool fogies who has read and enjoyed Ulysses twice, enjoyed somewhat less Joyce's poetry and his single play, and read as often as I can his Dubliners. I can't help but wonder why we are so anxious to dumb down our literature, to turn potential readers away from the works of Joyce; or, why, indeed, we are so ready to praise "chick-lit" as some sort of Irish accomplishment.
Listening to the Joe Duffy Show recently, I do believe I heard your very own literary editor, Caroline Walsh, describe the advent of "chick-lit" on the Irish literary scene as "exciting". I think a dizzy spell swept over me about then.
Now this sort of thing is, of course, the real tragedy: that we should be compelled to any degree to describe blatantly commercial rubbish as having anything to do with real literature; and as if to prove how cool we are, to mock the work of Joyce.
If we come to believe that Joyce is not worth reading, never mind celebrating, then we cannot complain when our children have no knowledge of literature, no desire to read, no critical abilities, or when they ape the dress, language and culture of other countries and think it cool to be illiterate.
Wilde will be next, of course, then Beckett - or perhaps the French will save us here - then Kavanagh, Clarke. Then Doyle, Myers. . . Only the "chick-lits" will survive, safe in the knowledge that they write for a world that knows the real thing when it sees it. - Yours, etc.,
FRED JOHNSTON, Circular Road, Galway.