There they are above and left - James Joyce and Mark Zuckerberg - which one would you rather be?
I have always liked to write and this little outlet allows me to vent my avocation without getting into too much trouble; I am admonished now and again, mainly by my brother, for using Americanisms and American spellings but I plead not guilty; The Guitar Center is spelled like that because it is a company who spell it that way. I know he didn't pull me up on that one but he has on others in the past.
So what am I on about here? Well nothing to do with the above; I was thinking that apart from writing I like reading; my last novel is on all the various media available to it: audio book, electronic book and paperback. I suppose it could have been in hard back but I didn't get that kind of a deal.
My latest is up on Amazon's Kindle and this week I am starting to record the audio version and I hope that Audible take it.
The first one sold better as an electronic book than anything else with a few selling on Smashwords but the majority to Kindle. Personally I haven't tried any of the electronic books as a reader but I have tried audio books.
Audio books are an acquired taste; if you like the book at bedtime on Radio 4 in the UK the audio book is for you. Personally, when I read, I like to see the punctuation and it's hard to see that when someone is reading it to you. The great thing about reading James Joyce is that you can see where genius Jim puts his semi-colons, his full colons and when he uses commas for parenthesis. In Ulysses, for example, he doesn't use inverted commas for speech; he uses a dash and then a comma before 'he said' for example and it's interesting to see where he puts an exclamation mark.
So it's hard, sometimes, to know whether the book has been written well or not when you are listening to a reader. So I tend to listen to biographies and read the novels.
Sometimes you only want information from books and I have been reading the hard back version of The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and to be honest I don't care how well it was written. It was well written, by the way, but it is a heavy book and I don't mean the subject; it must weigh a good few pounds from its 800 pages so I am having a break from it and reading Dubliners again by James Joyce.
In Dubliners he used inverted commas for speech (quotation marks in American) and it's very hard to believe why it wasn't published in Ireland; it was turned down by George Roberts of the publishers Maunsel – Joyce certainly had a go at him in Gas From a Burner his famous poem. He wasn't a great poet, even though some of his poetry is beautiful, but he certainly gets to the point in the aforementioned poem.
George Roberts was a red headed Scot from Ulster; Joyce mentions a Belfast man in one of the stories in a derogatory manner so you never know; that might have been the reason.
Another line in the poem:
I printed the great John Milicent Synge
Who soars above on an angel's wing
In the playboy shift that he pinched as swag
From Maunsel's manager's travelling-bag.
Well I don't know what he knew about John Millington Synge but he is saying something about him there; suggesting he is effeminate?
Synge's most famous play was The Playboy of the Western World and when the word shift was used in it, there was a riot at the Abbey Theatre. Shift!!!! What would they say if they used the language they use these days?
Of course they would accept it - eventually.
But I didn't start to write this to write about Jimmy Joyce; I just kind of drifted into it; I wanted to say I like reading and writing and also talking to people and I like to talk as opposed to texting – there we are I knew it; no such word! The same as texted.
I suppose there will be one day but I should have said I like talking as opposed to sending texts!
Yesterday Facebook added something else. A way to keep the history of all your e-mails in the same place – at your facebook page, of course.
In ten years time all the history of every e-mail you have ever sent will be there with the guy who owns facebook; Mark Zuckerberg.
It will be the most comprehensive list of information ever and facebook, in competition with Google, are trying to get it all into another place - your mobile phone; and I am wondering . . . where is it going to end?
The more sophisticated it all gets the less exciting I am about it; I check my e-mails on my computer when I log on; I don't want Instant Messenger, I don't want a text to let me know when I get an e-mail and I don't really want my friends and relations to know when I'm on line – am I the only one?
Here's the poem from a literal time – it has a good rhythm and Billy Walsh, by the way, was the Lord Mayor of Dublin.
Gas From a Burner
by James Joyce (1912)
Ladies and gents, you are here assembled
To hear why earth and heaven trembled
Because of the black and sinister arts
Of an Irish writer in foreign parts.
He sent me a book ten years ago.
I read it a hundred times or so,
Backwards and forwards, down and up,
Through both the ends of a telescope.
I printed it all to the very last word
But by the mercy of the Lord
The darkness of my mind was rent
And I saw the writer's foul intent.
But I owe a duty to Ireland:
I held her honour in my hand,
This lovely land that always sent
Her writers and artists to banishment
And in a spirit of Irish fun
Betrayed her own leaders, one by one.
'Twas Irish humour, wet and dry,
Flung quicklime into Parnell's eye;
'Tis Irish brains that save from doom
The leaky barge of the Bishop of Rome
For everyone knows the Pope can't belch
Without the consent of Billy Walsh.
O Ireland my first and only love
Where Christ and Caesar are hand and glove!
O lovely land where the shamrock grows!
(Allow me, ladies, to blow my nose)
To show you for strictures I don't care a button
I printed the poems of Mountainy Mutton
And a play he wrote (you've read it I'm sure)
Where they talk of 'bastard', 'bugger' and 'whore'
And a play on the Word and Holy Paul
And some woman's legs that I can't recall
Written by Moore, a genuine gent
That lives on his property's ten per cent:
I printed mystical books in dozens:
I printed the table-book of Cousins
Though (asking your pardon) as for the verse
'Twould give you a heartburn on your arse:
I printed folklore from North and South
By Gregory of the Golden Mouth:
I printed poets, sad, silly and solemn:
I printed Patrick What-do-you-Colm:
I printed the great John Milicent Synge
Who soars above on an angel's wing
In the playboy shift that he pinched as swag
From Maunsel's manager's travelling-bag.
But I draw the line at that bloody fellow
That was over here dressed in Austrian yellow,
Spouting Italian by the hour
To O'Leary Curtis and John Wyse Power
And writing of Dublin, dirty and dear,
In a manner no blackamoor printer could bear.
Shite and onions! Do you think I'll print
The name of the Wellington Monument,
Sydney Parade and Sandymount tram,
Downes's cakeshop and Williams's jam?
I'm damned if I do-- I'm damned to blazes!
Talk about Irish Names of Places!
It's a wonder to me, upon my soul,
He forgot to mention Curly's Hole.
No, ladies, my press shall have no share in
So gross a libel on Stepmother Erin.
I pity the poor-- that's why I took
A red-headed Scotchman to keep my book.
Poor sister Scotland! Her doom is fell;
She cannot find any more Stuarts to sell.
My conscience is fine as Chinese silk:
My heart is as soft as buttermilk.
Colm can tell you I made a rebate
Of one hundred pounds on the estimate
I gave him for his Irish Review.
I love my country-- by herrings I do!
I wish you could see what tears I weep
When I think of the emigrant train and ship.
That's why I publish far and wide
My quite illegible railway guide,
In the porch of my printing institute
The poor and deserving prostitute
Plays every night at catch-as-catch-can
With her tight-breeched British artilleryman
And the foreigner learns the gift of the gab
From the drunken draggletail Dublin drab.
Who was it said: Resist not evil?
I'll burn that book, so help me devil.
I'll sing a psalm as I watch it burn
And the ashes I'll keep in a one-handled urn.
I'll penance do with farts and groans
Kneeling upon my marrowbones.
This very next lent I will unbare
My penitent buttocks to the air
And sobbing beside my printing press
My awful sin I will confess.
My Irish foreman from Bannockburn
Shall dip his right hand in the urn
And sign crisscross with reverent thumb
Memento homo upon my bum.
