“Either that Wallpaper goes or I do” – The Famous Last Words of Authors

"Take away those pillows.  I shall need them no more.” – Lewis Carroll before death.

As the famous Irish writer Oscar Wilde lay dying of meningitis on 30 November 1900 in a dingy Parisan hotel which he had been forcefully exiled to by the greater good of society, he is famously said to have remarked, “Either that Wallpaper goes or I do.”  It’s a great story and gives us the image of a still defiantly witty Wilde that we long for but is impossible to verify.

It is not the only story of the dying words of famous writers however.  There are many.
Welsh poet Dylan Thomas is quoted as saying, “I’ve just had 18 straight whiskeys.  I think that’s the record,” before dying.  Gonzo journalism inventor Hunter S Thompson wrote the final words, “Relax.  It won’t hurt,” before he tragically shot himself in the head.

In 1904 Anton Chekhov was dying from tuberculosis.  His doctor administered morphine and gave the Russian author a glass of champagne.  He drained it, said, “It’s a long time since I’ve drunk champagne,” and slipped quietly into death.

When Alexander Popes doctor attempted to calm him before death by telling him that he looked well, Pope snapped, “Here I am, dying of a hundred good symptoms.”  Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen had a similar view of his doctors positive diagnosis.  When told he was going to be fine Ibsen replied, “On the contrary.”

 Irish writer Frank O Connor was equally dismissive of those around him at the end when he told them bluntly, “I hope you don’t expect me to entertain you.”  Franz Kafka told a doctor who was unwilling to give him a lethal dose of morphine, “Kill me! Or you are a murderer.”  HG Wells had a much different outlook shouting at those around him, “Go away, I’m alright.”

James Joyce, perhaps realising that his work was being hijacked by pretentious yuppies asked, “Does no one understand me?” before death.  Equally as sad are the final words of Charlotte Bronte, who said the following to her husband of nine months, “Oh I’m not going to die am I?  He won’t separate us.  We’ve been so happy.”

When asked to renounce the devil on his deathbed, Voltaire remarked, “Now, now my good man.  This is no time for making enemies.”  Brendan Behan was also quick witted in the face of death when he thanked a nun who had attended him by saying, “Thank you sister.  May you be the mother of a bishop.”

Russian supremo Leo Tolstoy stood firm behind his convictions at the time of death.  When asked to return to the Orthodox Church which had excommunicated him, Tolstoy said, “Even in the valley of shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”

The dog ate Steinbecks lost novel

Eddie the Escort, one time honest Giglo and compulsive liar, used to tell me that his dog once ate his homework and that this single incident was the foundation of the urban myth.  He also told me that he circumnavigated the globe in a hot air balloon that he built out of old sheets and superglue.

Eddie stories are often unbelievable but none as fantastical as the saga of Toby, John Steinbecks dog, who once ate a half finished novel belonging to his famous author master.  The novel, entitled ‘Something that happened’, was completely destroyed by the Irish Setter and must rank as one of the great lost documents of 20th century literature.
Steinbeck was fairly calm about the whole situation, telling his agent, "I was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically.”

Steinbeck estimated that over two months of his work had been lost but immediately got to work rewriting the book as a novella with a new title – Of Mice and Men.  It was published in 1937 and became the authors first critical success, regarded today as a masterpiece and still taught in schools around the world as an example of fine literature.

It was the book that made John Steinbeck an internationally recognised writer and also courted, and continues to gain, controversy over allegations of vulgarity and offensive racist language.  The plot focuses on two migrant field workers on a Californian plantation during the Great Depression and a terrible incident that they are involved in.  George Milton, a streetwise man and his mentally challenge but strong friend, Lenny Small, are the two displaced workers with a dream of one day settling down on their own piece of land.

Perhaps Toby the dog changed the whole face of American literature the night he ate John Steinbecks lost novel.

Great Novels: A Confederacy of Dunces

"Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me?”

A lazy, pretentious intellectual with an alcoholic mother who wants to have him sectioned and a Jewish beatnik minx who is constantly trying to outdo him, as the hero of a classic novel?  Described by writer Walker Percy, who helped get the novel published, the protagonist is a "slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one".

A Confederacy of Dunces is the one of only two novels from American author John Kennedy Toole, published posthumously eleven years after his suicide.  It became a cult classic, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981  and is now regarded as a modern American Masterpiece.

Years after I first read Dunces, I met the Cyclist, a chubby Lothario who loved duelling, married women and riding his BMX.  Maybe it was his grandiose vocabulary or his antiquated dress style that made me forever more connect Dunces protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly, with the Cyclist.

I told the Cyclist about all this one Summers morning while he was relaxing outside my shop after visiting some bored housewives in Bridgetown.  “I can’t read the blasted book without picturing you as Ignatius Reilly now,” I told him.

He just laughed.  “I’m not at all surprised my dear compeer.  Many a book has been inspired by my adventures and romantic entanglements.”

“You mean sleeping with middle aged women while their husbands are at work and then making your escape on a battered bicycle?”

“Exactly.  Ignatius Reilly is probably just a thinly veiled impersonation of my own good self.”

“I think Toole wrote it before you were born.”

“A poor vindication,” the Cyclist sneered and got back to eating a multi pack of marsbars which he had stolen from his latest conquests cupboard.

John Kennedy Toole failed to get published during his lifetime and, following the rejection of A Confederacy of Dunces by Simon & Schuster, he abandoned writing and set off in his car on a trip around the country.  Suffering from paranoia and depression due in part to his literary failures, he committed suicide by gassing himself in his car at the age of 31.  Only through the efforts of his mother and writer Walker Percy did A Confederacy of Dunces finally get published.

Dunces takes it’s name from a Jonathan Swift quote, "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."  Incidentally, the Cyclist has the same quote printed in gold lettering on the seven identical pairs of Chinese replica Polo boxer shorts that he owns.

It’s protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly, is a well education but lazy dreamer, penning his Magnus Opus on writing pads that he keeps hidden under his bed, living with his mother in 1960s New Orleans.  His misadventures with a selection of colourful characters, attempts to stay out of the mental institution and get meaningful employment makes up the plot of this comedic novel.

“Canned food is a perversion,” Ignatius said. “I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul.”

Dunces is now an honoured part of New Orleans culture due to the brilliant descriptions of the city and use of local dialect in the novel.  A bronze statue of Ignatius Reilly now stands proudly in the city which Toole turned into a character in his novel.
As well as making the city come alive, he also managed to give life to some marvellous  comic creations like Santa Battaglia, an grandmother with an intense dislike for Ignatius who wants him sectioned; Claude Robichaux, an old man constantly vigilante for communist infiltrators; and Lana Lee, a pornographic model.

“Sounds a tad far fetched to me,” the Cyclist tells me, as he helps himself to my lunch, stopping only to give me a look of distain at the lack of abundant fillings in my sandwiches before he devours them, “Characters like that do not exist in the real world.”

Thelma Kennedy Tooles persistence and belief in her son’s legacy finally succeeded in getting A Confederacy of Dunces published, but the grieving mother was working off a carbon copy of the original novel.  To this day the original manuscript remains lost.  Many believe that Toole destroyed the novel in a fit of depression but there is a chance it is still out there, making it one of the most valuable lost manuscripts in modern American literature.

“Between notes, he had contemplated means of destroying Myrna Minkoff but had reached no satisfactory conclusion. His most promising scheme had involved getting a book on munitions from the library, constructing a bomb, and mailing it in plain paper to Myrna. Then he remembered that his library card had been revoked.”

A Confederacy of Dunces is a novel that was ahead of its time, brazenly defying conventional plotlines and the standard three act structure.  Maybe that’s why famous editor Robert Gottlieb, who was responsible for getting Catch 22 into print, rejected the novel, suggesting that the writer had talent but the novel lacked a motive.  Gottlieb said, “that with all its wonderfulness, the book – even better plotted (and still better plottable) – does not have a reason; it’s a brilliant exercise in invention, but unlike CATCH [22] and MOTHER’S KISSES and V and the others, it isn’t really about anything. And that’s something no one can do anything about.”

Unknowingly Gottliebs rejection, combined with existing mental health issues, set John Kennedy Toole on the road to an early self inflicted death.  A Confederacy of Dunces remains as an everlasting monument to his lost genius.

The Cyclist wrapped his matching purple scarf, gloves and beret, and his full length woolen coat around his ample body and mounted his BMX.  “Maybe I’ll read that book someday compeer,” he cried, gesticulating wildly, “Or better still I’ll author my own biography.”  He scratched himself suddenly, “By the way, do you have any books on STDs?”

I shook my head sadly and the Cyclist rode off, very slowly, into the sunset.

Reading Irvine Welsh

“I was anti-everything and everyone. I didn't want people around me. This aversion was not some big crippling anxiety; merely a mature recognition of my own psychological vulnerability and my lack of suitability as a companion. Thoughts jostled for space in my crowded brain as i struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life.”

Irvine Welsh is the working class hero of modern British fiction.  The former heroin junky and punk musician shot to fame with his gritty debut novel, Trainspotting, in 1993.  Since then he has published a further ten novels, four books of short stories, nine screenplays and two theatre pieces, without ever losing his tough realism and anti establishment viewpoint, prompting critic Robert Morace to describe him as ‘a cultural phenomenon’.

Despite being born into a relatively poor household, being dyslexic and developing a serious heroin addiction, Irvine Welsh rose to prominence, becoming the voice of an angry generation.

Welsh was born in the Leith area of Edinburgh in 1958 to a dock worker father and waitress mother.  Much of his childhood was spent in the social housing schemes of Muirhouse.  After completing a City and Guilds course in electrical engineering, Welsh worked as a tv repairman by day and played guitar for punk bands, Pubic Lice and Stairway 13, by night.  It was during this period that he became addicted to heroin.

“People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid.”  - Trainspotting

After getting clean and married, Welsh took a job as a training officer for Edinburgh City Councils Housing Department.  He used his position as head of training to pay himself to do an MBA at Heriot Watt University.  In between working for the council and studying in the University Library, Welsh wrote what would become the cult classic Trainspotting.

Set in mid 1980s Edinburgh, Trainspotting follows the lives of numerous characters through interconnected first person narrative short stories.  The main characters are Mark Renton, Simon ‘Sick Boy’ Williamson and Spud Murphy, three heroin junkies; Davie Mitchell, a straight acting everyman capable of holding down a job while circulating through the same murky depths as his friends; and the psychotically iconic Franco Begbie.  Dealing with heroin addiction, lack of employment and opportunities for younger people and loss of cultural and national identity, Trainspotting is an absolute classic, made even more memorable due to Danny Boyles 1996 movie adaptation.

It was released to shock and outrage in some circles and great acclaim in others; Time Out called it "funny, unflinchingly abrasive, authentic and inventive", Rebel Inc said “Deserves to sell more copies than the bible”and The Sunday Times called Welsh "the best thing that has happened to British writing for decades".

Responding to criticism of the radical nature of the narrative, Welsh said, ‘I don’t have any literary heroes at all […] I don’t take references from other writers, but from lyrics, from videos and soap operas and stuff.  I try and keep as far away from “the classics” […] as possible.’

Welsh would return directly to the characters of Trainspotting in three further novels, Porno (2002), Skagboys (2012) and The Blade Artist (2016).  It can be argued that all of Welshs books and stories are based in one universe, with characters regularly appearing as bit players in other novels.  ‘The Acid House’ and ‘Ecstasy’ are based around hard drug lifestyles in the estates of Edinburgh that Welsh described in Trainspotting.  ‘Marabou Stork Nightmares’ features an appearance from Francis Begbie while Juice Terry, who would later star in Porno, made his debut in ‘Glue’.

In 1998, Welsh published ‘Filth’ which was his first foray into crime fiction, be it only really a framing device for a much darker story.  Once again we are in Trainspottings universe as Begbie, Sickboy and Spud are all mentioned during the course of the novel.  Filth saw the creation of one of Welshs darkest characters, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, a scheming cruel misanthropist who is willing to do anything to win his games. It also introduced a brilliant literary device in the form of an articulate tapeworm.

One of Filths secondary characters, Ray Lennox, would star in the 2005 ‘Crime’ which may have been Welshs attempt at testing the waters of thriller writing and moving into Ian Rankin territory.  The novel was set in Florida, a location Welsh would return to in the 2014 ‘The Sex lives of Siamese Twins.’  The 2015 novel, A Decent Ride, returned to Edinburgh through the familiar eyes of Juice Terry, now a taxi driver.

Welsh is known for having his characters speak in Edinburgh dialect transcribing sentences phonetically, a break away from other Scottish authors at the time.  This can make the books difficult for new readers but the intense storytelling, grand humour and fully drawn characters make sure you hold in there.

“Even as I'm shoveling up my hooter, I realize the sad truth. Coke bores me, It bores us all. We're jaded cunts, in a scene we hate, a city we hate, pretending that we're at the center of the universe, trashing ourselves with crap drugs to stave off the feeling that real life is happening somewhere else, aware that all we're doing is feeding that paranoia and disenchantment, yet somehow we're too apathetic to stop. Cause, sadly, there's nothing else of interest to stop for.” Porno

Welsh has created some of the most disturbing and multi layered characters in modern literature.  Mark Renton, the sensitive and intelligent junky.  Franco Begbie, a damaged psychopath haunted by his petty criminal ancestors.  Boab, a lazy young man who gets sacked from his job, thrown out of his house, dumped by his girlfriend, dropped by his football team and turned into a fly by a vengeful god in a single day.

His characters are part of the post Thatcher working class, redundant of employment, opportunities or long-term goals.  They spend their abundant spare time involved in schemes, toxic relationships and hardcore drugs.  Irvine Welshs universe is a nihilistic dystopia which accurately reflects life for millions of young people in the post recession world, making him perhaps even more relevant today than when he burst onto the scene in 1993.

“We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. We develop all those long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality of our lives in different ways, without really extending our body of worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn’t all totally pointless.”

Enid Blyton: Guardian of our children’s morals?

"Writing for children is an art in itself, and a most interesting one.”

Enid Mary Blyton was one of the world’s most prolific writers of children’s fiction, authoring over 600 kids books and selling over 600 million copies to date.  None for writing in three distinct styles; adventure, boarding school and magical fantasy, Blyton’s books have been translated into 90 languages.

Despite the enduring popularity of her works, Blyton has been accused of fostering sexism, racism, xenophobia and elitism in her books.  This criticism has led to several revisions of her classic tales over the years including the substituting of goblins for gollywogs in Noddy, removal of spankings in the Malory towers series and dropping of references to George’s short hair making her look like a boy in the Famous Five series.  Recently, locals protested at the possibility of holding a Blyton festival in her home town because of the various outraged stereotypes expressed in her stories.

But surely Enid Blyton, the self described guardian of our children’s morals would not set out intentionally to upset her beloved legions of fans?

Enid Blyton was born in 1897 and wrote her 600 books between 1922 and 1968.  The opinions she conveyed through her characters were not unusual or radically conservative for a middle class lady living during this period.  In fact, it would be hard to find cold malice in Blyton’s descriptions when viewing her words and ideas as symptoms of her time rather than a particular political view.

If we are to lambaste Blyton for this then we must also re-examine our relationship with some other classic authors.  HP Lovecraft and Joseph Conrad appear racist to us.  Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Charlotte Bronte and dozens of other classic writers could be labelled sexist.  So is it right to judge Enid Blyton on the prevalent attitudes of her age while ignoring the utterly wonderful stories she created during four frantic decades of work?

My great aunt Rita Gulhooley is a closet racist.  I mean she’s blatantly xenophobic and we lock her in the closet when decent company calls to visit.  I asked her what she thought of Enid Blyton.

“That brazen hussey?  I hate the ground she walks on.”

“Because of her controversial and sometimes inappropriate characters and situations?”

“No, because she’s a fecking protestant!”

Maybe we should judge Enid Blyton on what she does well – Right interesting and enduring children’s fiction.  Blyton published her first book in 1922, a book of Poetry called ‘Child Whispers’.  Her early work was more poetry than anything else but soon Blyton turned her arm to writing children’s stories, releasing what many believe to be her greatest work in 1926, The Enid Blyton book of Brownies.  The story of three naughty brownies: Hop, Skip and Jump, who are tricked by Witch Green-eyes into helping her to kidnap the Princess Peronel and are then banished from Fairyland until they find their 'Goodness', became an instant hit with children and cemented Blyton as a favourite author with kids across the world.

In 1934 Blyton began her Old Thatch series following the adventures of Brer Rabbit.  This was followed in 1937 with the start of successful Wishing Chair series and the beginning of the Secret Series in 1938 and the Amelia Jane and Faraway Tree series in 1939.  Her habit of writing ten thousand words a day helped Blyton pump books out at an incredible rate.

The Naughtiest Girl series began in 1940 with The Naughtiest Girl in School.  The four book series was set at a progressive boarding school in England and followed the adventures of Elizabeth Allen, a very spoiled girl who is determined to behave so badly that she will be expelled from Whyteleafe School.  In many ways this book created a new formula for Blyton which would be recreated in the Malory Towers and St Clare's series and even influenced the more successful Famous Five and Secret Seven series.  Six further books were added to this series by Anne Digby sixty years later.

The Adventurous Four and the St Clare’s series were both launched in 1941.  The Adventurous Four revolves around twins Jill and Mary, their elder brother Tom and their fisher friend Andy.  Set in Scotland during World War 2, these stories certainly seem like a prototype for the famous five.

The Famous Five series debuted the following year.  Blyton’s most popular set of stories feature the adventures of a group of young children – Julian, Dick, Anne and Georgina (George) – and George's dog Timmy.  Blyton wrote twenty one books in this series, from ‘Five on Treasure Island’ in 1942 to ‘Five are together again’ in 1963.  By the end of 1953 more than six million copies had been sold. Today, more than two million copies of the books are sold each year, making them one of the biggest-selling series for children ever written, with sales totalling over a hundred million.

The Malory Towers series was birthed in 1946 with ‘First Term at Malory Towers’.  The series follows the protagonist, Darrell Rivers on her adventures and experiences in boarding school over the course of six novels with six more being added by Pamela Cox in 2009.  The girls' boarding school was based on Benenden School that Blyton's daughter attended.

The Secret Seven series was added to Blyton’s incredible stable in 1949 with the release of ‘The Secret Seven’.  The Secret Seven Society consists of Peter (the society's head), Janet (Peter's Sister), Jack, Barbara, George, Pam and Colin.  The seven would appear in seven short stories and fifteen novels, but would always be in the shadow of the more successful Famous Five.

It was also in 1949 that Blyton created one of her most iconic characters, Noddy.  Noddy was created by a woodcarver but ran away when he created a wooden Lion.  Running through the woods scared he met a friendly Brownie called Big Ears who took him to live in the magical Toyland.  Incredible this simple premise became a huge hit with children, spawning twenty four books, nine tv series and a theatre production.

Enid Blyton viewed herself as the moral guardian of her legions of child readers but at times her attempts to be altruistic through her readers seemed off, such as when she suggested (very politically incorrect) that children should help other children and animals but not adults.  “[children] are not interested in helping adults; indeed, they think that adults themselves should tackle adult needs. But they are intensely interested in animals and other children and feel compassion for the blind boys and girls, and for the spastics who are unable to walk or talk.”

Despite her now being viewed as an overtly conservative author, Blyton was known to enjoy playing tennis in the nude, something that was apparently common among the middle class English of the time.

In 1963, Blyton wrapped up her Famous Five and Secret Seven series.  Unknown to anyone outside her closest circle, the profiling author was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and from this time until her death would write only short pieces.  She died at the Greenways Nursing Home, Hampstead, North London, on 28 November 1968, aged 71.

Part of the revisionism concerning Blyton may lay with her daughter Imogen’s autobiography where she described her mother as "arrogant, insecure, pretentious, very skilled at putting difficult or unpleasant things out of her mind, and without a trace of maternal instinct. As a child, I viewed her as a rather strict authority. As an adult I pitied her."  This was a view not shared by her sister however.

Today Blyton’s stories still capture children’s imaginations and, half a century after her death, she’s still outselling JK Rowling and Roald Dahl.  Her books have been made available in 3,544 translations.  In 2008 the Costa Book Award named Blyton the nation’s best-loved author in a poll of 2000 adults.

Maybe Enid Blyton was a victim of her own success in the end.  She once wrote, “Hatred is so much easier to win than love - and so much harder to get rid of.”  In the end, that might be the most accurate epitaph to one of Children’s Literatures greatest heroes.

Great Novels: Catch 22

“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”

Catch 22 is a brilliantly funny satirical novel by Joseph Heller based loosely on his experiences as a bombardier during World War II while expressing the anti war and anti establishment sentiments born out of the later Korean war.  He began writing the novel in 1953 while working as a copywriter in New York.  An extract was published alongside a segment of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in a magazine as Catch-18 in 1955.

This was one of many initial titles for the unfinished work.  Others were Catch 11 (Dropped because of the release of Oceans 11), Catch 17 (Rejected because of the similarities with Stalag 17) and Catch 14 (Refused by the publishers because they didn’t think 14 was a very funny number.)

Catch 22 was finally released in 1961.  It wasn’t an immediate best seller but became a cult classic later, partially due to growing anti war sentiment caused by the Vietnam War and the threat of nuclear war.  It also became a hit in universities across the world as it seemed to perfectly express the anti establishment voice of a new generation.  There was no doubt that Heller intended Catch 22 to be revolutionary.

“There was a terrible sameness about books being published and I almost stopped reading as well as writing,” Heller said on one occasion.  But then something happened.  He told one British journalist that “conversations with two friends … influenced me. Each of them had been wounded in the war, one of them very seriously The first one told some very funny stories about his war experiences, but the second one was unable to understand how any humour could be associated with the horror of war. They didn’t know each other and I tried to explain the first one’s point of view to the second. He recognized that traditionally there had been lots of graveyard humour, but he could not reconcile it with what he had seen of war. It was after that discussion that the opening of Catch 22 and many incidents in it came to me.”

The Story

It’s the second half of the second world war and an American Airforce bombardier named Yossarian is in his bases hospital with a pain in his liver that’s not quite jaundice.  This first chapter sets the tone of the book as we see the bureaucratic insanity of life in the war through Yossarians situation.  If he has jaundice, he'll be sent home.  If he doesn’t have jaundice he’ll be sent back on combat missions in what he perceives to be certain death.  As he is in between, he sits in a limbo position.

Yossarian comes to realise one of the fundamental laws of life in the war – Catch 22.  If a pilot is insane, they’ll be deemed unfit to fight and sent home.  Only the truly insane want to fight though and it’s the sane, like Yossarian, who through self preservation will attempt to prove themselves insane to escape the horrors of war.

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to, but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.” (p. 56, ch. 5)

The novel is notable for its dark humour, the description of the same event by multiple characters through their point of view and out of sequence storytelling.  It draws some of its funniest moments from paradox such as, “The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them." (p. 413) and “Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he’s in his office." (p. 116) and  "The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with."

Heller also managed to create a bizarrely funny stable of supporting characters including ultra capitalist First Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, the bases mess officer who builds up an incredible trade network during the novel; Hungry Joe, a pervert soldier masquerading as a Life magazine photographer; Lieutenant Nately, an idealistic young officer from a good family who falls in love with an uninterested whore and Yossarians best friend Dunbar.

Despite the laugh out loud humour there is a tragic undertone running deep throughout the novel.  This is a story of the madness and inhumanity of war, and despite the farce, it manages to deliver its punch.

Fifty seven years after its publication, Catch 22s legacy lives on.  The Modern Library ranked it as the 7th (by review panel) and 12th (by public) greatest English-language novel of the 20th century.  The Observer and TIME each listed Catch 22 as one of the 100 greatest novels of all time.  The Big Read by the BBC ranked Catch 22 as number 11 on a web poll of the UK's best-loved book.  The Telegraph listed the opening lines of the novel as one of the thirty best ever written.

Howard Jacobson, in his 2004 introduction to the Vintage Classics publication, wrote that the novel was "positioned teasingly ... between literature and literature's opposites – between Shakespeare and Rabelais and Dickens and Dostoevsky and Gogol and Céline and the Absurdists and of course Kafka on the one hand, and on the other vaudeville and slapstick and Bilko and Abbott and Costello and Tom and Jerry and the Goons.”

Reading James Joyce

“Your battles inspired me - Not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.”

I once had a bank manager in Red Books who spent ten minutes examining a copy of Ulysses before placing it back on its shelves and saying that he didn’t feel capable of reading Joyce.  This is unfortunately a common reaction and isn’t helped by certain neo-yuppies that have hijacked the legacy of Joyce and have worked hard to reinvent him as the proto metrosexual dandy of Dublin.

Let’s be clear.  James Joyce was a genius.  He was also an argumentative, contrary drunkard with more than a mild interest in masturbation, watersports and rather bizarrely, farts.  The man was human and not the Saint of peacocks or an early candidate for Doctor Who that some of the bloomsday crowd have tried to portray him as having been.

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882.  Though born into the middle class, Joyce would struggle with financial and domestic uncertainness in his early years caused mainly by his alcoholic father.  He was a bright boy and excelled in school but his true turning point would begin in 1904.

On the 7th of January 1904 Joyce submitted an essay on aesthetics to a liberal magazine called Dana.  His work, The Portrait of an Artist, was promptly rejected.  This rejection was something that Joyce would become accustomed to throughout his life.  On his 22nd birthday he decided to rewrite Portrait as a novel called ‘Stephen Hero.’

In the early months of 1904 Joyce met a chambermaid from Galway called Nora Barnacle.  On the 16th of June they walked out together for the first time.  Joyce would later immortalise this date as the setting of his seminal novel ‘Ulysses’ and the date is now celebrated every year around the world as Bloomsday.

Nora Barnacle would soon realise that James Joyce was not the darling that future revisionists would try to paint him as.  He was a heavy drinker prone to fist fights, which he usually came out on the wrong side of due to his light frame and drunken state.  He narrowly survived being shot by a student colleague in Martello Tower during a binge.

Nora and Joyce left Dublin, probably for these very reasons.  He began his self imposed exile in Zurich but would live in over 30 different addresses across Europe during the rest of his life as he ran from boredom, bills and failure.

The Rabbit Flood is a Joycean scholar who regularly visits our shop.  “Jim Joyce wrote some great letters,” he tells me, “Real dirty wans boy.  Every time he went away and left yer wan Nora Barny, he’d send her a filthy letter home.  About spanking and farting and all sorts.  One tough baby.”

In fact there’s no doubt that Joyce loved Nora deeply and that there relationship was less than conventional as can be seen from this extract from one of their letters, “My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter."  

Strangely enough the Bloomsday committee rarely mention that when they’re dressing up on the 16th of June!

Joyce managed to get his first book of Poetry published in 1904 with the release of ‘The Holy Office’, followed by ‘Chamber music’ in 1907 and ‘Gas from a burner’ in 1912.
In 1909 he returned to Dublin to help open Ireland’s first cinema, the doomed Volta Cinematograph.  He also planned on publishing a book of short stories which he had finished in 1906 called Dubliners.  He made contact with Dublin publisher George Roberts but after three years of arguments and disputes, their relationship ended in 1912 during Joyce’s last visit to Ireland.

It would be two more years before ‘Dubliners’ was finally published.  The book contained fifteen short stories based on the lives of wealthier Dublin citizens in the early years of the 20th century.  The overwhelming focus in each story is on a moment of epiphany or illumination for a character.

‘Portrait of an Artist as a young man’ was published in 1916.  A rewrite of ‘Stephen Hero’ which in itself was a rewrite of the original Portrait, Joyce produced a classic coming of age novel which, along with Dubliners, is probably the best entry point to Joyce.  Despite introducing literary techniques which he would champion like the stream of consciousness and interior monologue, Portrait is a far easier read than his future epics.

Joyce also produced his only play during the first world war.  ‘Exiles’ was started in 1914 and completed in 1918.  It rifted off of ‘The Dead’, the final story in ‘Dubliners’.

It was also during this first world war period that Joyce was engaged in writing his most ambitious novel to date, a book which would truly change literature and give Joyce a permanent place in literary history.  In 1914 he began ‘Ulysses’.  Originally he had planned to include a story called Ulysses as the sixteenth story in Dubliners.  Instead it became Joyce’s Magnum Opus.  Famous poet Ezra Pound managed to get the novel serialised in the American publication, the little review, in 1918.  This would eventually lead to the editors being prosecuted for publishing obscenity in 1921 and a ban on Ulysses in the states until 1933.

“They had to ban the book sure,” the Rabbit Flood enlightens me, “It was non stop sex.  Makes 50 shades of grey look like a fecking Maeve Binchy book.  Lads tugging and peeping.  And loads of farting stuff too.”

Due to the controversy surrounding the book, Joyce struggled to find a publisher.  Eventually it fell to Sylvia Beach, owner of the famous ‘Shakespeare & Company’ bookshop in Paris, to publish ‘Ulysses in 1922.  The novel was banned in American, the UK and Ireland.
Set in a single day – June 16th 1904, ‘Ulysses’ sets the characters and incidents of Homers Odyssey in Dublin.  The eighteen chapters each amount to roughly one hour of the day Joyce first took Nora out.

“Eighteen hours of smut,” The Rabbit Flood reminisces warmly, “It was beautiful boy.”
Joyce began his next novel in 1923.  Due to the incredible magnitude of the project, Joyce’s personal despair (Both his daughter and daughter-in-law were sectioned due to mental health problems) and continued alcoholism and moving, ‘Finnegans Wake’ would not be completed until 1939.  Samuel Beckett assisted Joyce, who’s eyesight was failing, to finish the epic.

The novel received mix reviews due to its advanced nature including multilingual puns that would require the reader to be skilled in multiple languages as well as pocessing the intelligence to understand the pun to truly get the book.  Terence McKenna would say that, “(Finnegans Wake is) about as close to LSD on the page as you can get.”  Philip K Dick wrote, “I’m going to prove that Finnegans Wake is an information pool based on computer memory systems that didn’t exist until centuries after James Joyce’s era; that Joyce was plugged into a cosmic consciousness from which he derived the inspiration for his entire corpus of work.”

“I was a little disappointed to be honest boy, not enough nudity,” the Rabbit Flood says.
On the 11th of January 1941 Joyce underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer.  He fell into a coma and died the following day.  Three years later ‘Stephen Hero’, the novel Joyce had tried to burn after it’s rewrite, was published as a wave of goodwill for the controversial writer spread.

Many creators would name James Joyce as their influence including Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Flann O' Brien, Salman Rushdie, John Updike, Philip K Dick, Joseph Campbell and Robert Anton Wilson but infamous occultist Aleister Crowley may have put it best  when he said, “I am convinced personally that Mr. Joyce is a genius all the world will have to recognize.”

History of Books

The oldest books currently sitting in my bookshop are a three volume set of beautifully hardbound German texts from 1801.  There’s something fascinating about holding those books and wondering just how they made it from pre unification Germany, across revolutionary Europe into a bookshop in Bridgetown, and trying to determine how many owners they had along the way.

One of our regular customers is a retired male escort who moonlights selling cheap Chinese ‘adult pleasure toys’ on Facebook.  He’s also a bit of an amateur historian but somehow convinced himself that books were invented in England.  Books go way back.  Before England.  Before Europe.

“Here, Shakespeare invented literature, didn’t he,” he tells me in that rhetorical question that’s really a statement way he likes to talk, “Sure the fuzzy wuzzies were drawing on the sides of pyramids with ducks blood but that don’t count, does it!”

The retired male escort sex toy entrepreneur  historian is also a bit of a racist.  For narrative ease we'll call him Eddie.  Eddie the Escort.

It’s difficult to know where literature began.  No doubt works of antiquity have been lost with the collapses of early civilisations, wars of conquests and the disastrous destruction of the Library of Alexandria.  Most experts agree that, with the evidence currently available to us,  literature began with the Epic of Gilgamesh, which probably predates 2,000 BC.  Gilgamesh is essentially the story of a global cataclysmic flood.  Think like a Roland Emmerich blockbuster in papyrus scroll format.

Shortly after this, around 1,800 BC, we get the Egyptian Book of the Dead.  It’s thought that the earliest parts of the Torah were written down about 1,000 BC.  Indian sruti texts and the Hindu epics probably came even before this.

“Sure that’s all religious stuff,” Eddie the Escort cries, “Here, for all you know, they could be true stories, ya blasted heeden.  Literature is all made up so that’s not literature, is it!”

The Chinese Classic of Poetry or Shijing is a collection of 305 anonymous poems compiled between the 11th and 7th century BC.  The age of Classical Antiquity is said to have began with Homers creation of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the 8th century BC.  This, the emergence of great thinkers in a growing civilisation and the construction of the Library of Alexandria made Ancient Greece the first true powerhouse of Literature.

Aeschylus was arguably the world’s first playwright defining dialogue and interaction between characters, creating drama in the process.  Sophocles invented irony as a literary technique in his play ‘Oedipus Rex'.  Euripedes used his writings to challenge social norms while Plato’s dialogues saw philosophical ideas enter literature.  Aristophanes created the model for comedy.

“Here, those Greeks had too much time on their hands, didn’t they,” Eddie the Escort tells me, “Towel wearing curs.”

The Romans followed in Ancient Greeces footsteps.  Virgils Aeneid copied Homers Iliad while Ovids Metamorphosis explored the Greek myths in detail.  Ovid also introduced the stream of consciousness, later used so gracefully by James Joyce, into literature.  Horace introduced Satire and Juvenal honed it into a weapon.  For the first time, the pen became mightier than the sword.

“Here, I heard the Romans spent most of their time in public baths slapping each other’s bare arses with warm towels.  Dirty feckers.”

After the fall of Rome, the Dark Ages descended and literature faced extermination.  Incredibly it endured, partially through to the actions of various religious orders and monastic settlements.

The Hagiographies or ‘Lives of the Saints’ were popular early medieval texts.  Geoffrey of Monmouth also wrote popular pseudo histories about Arthur and Merlin during this period.  Beowulf and the Norse Sagas were produced, Dantes Divine Comedy and Chaucers Canterbury Tales.  Islamic literature also bloomed with the creation of the Arabian Nights.

“All that stuff was propaganda though, wasn’t it.  Here, it was the religions and little fat kings mad on syphilis that forced scribes to create those stories.  You’ve told me nothing to convince me Shakespeare didn’t invent literature.”

 Well we’re getting to big Willy.  In the 15th century Johannes Gutenberg invented the first proper printing press.  No longer would books have to be copied by scribes.  The expense of Literature and the limited number of literate people in the world was about to change rapidly.

William Caxton was the first English printed.  Among his big hits were Le Morte d'Arthur and the Canterbury Tales.  William Shakespeare also burst onto the scene at this time and is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s preeminent dramatist.  He was not, however, the father of Literature.

“Here, that’s your opinion like, nothing else,” Eddie the Escort squeals.

Edmund Spenser released ‘The Faerie Queene’ in 1590.  A Spaniard called Miguel de Cervantes wrote ‘Don Quixote’ during this time and it is now recognised by many as being the world’s first novel.  Early novelists include Daniel Defoe, born in 1660, and Jonathan Swift, born in 1667.  The 17th century also saw the rise of metaphysical poets like John Donne, expanding the written word to a new level.
The Age of Enlightenment was ushered in during the 18th century through the works of people like Voltaire, Kant, Rousseau, Goethe and Adam Smith.

The 19th century saw the rise of speculative fiction beginning with the Dane Hans Christian Anderson and developed further by Alexander Dumas, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Carroll and HG Wells.  The 19th century was also a golden age of the novel with writers like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, The Brontes, Leo Tolstoy, Emile Zola, George Eliot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Herman Melville and Jack London all coming to prominence.

The 20th century is generally divided up into two great periods of Literature, the modernist period (1900 – 1940) and the post modernist period (1960 – 1990).  Early proponents of the modernist movement were Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, George Bernard Shaw and DH Lawrence.  James Joyce was a somewhat dissident of the movement creating the epic Ulysses after World War 1 and finding it banned in many nations including Ireland.

Among the post modernists are William Burroughs, Flann O' Brien, Jorge Luis Borges, Muriel Spark, Joseph Heller, Anthony Burgress, Vladmir Nabakov, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith, Haruki Murakami and Douglas Coupland.

The 20th century also saw the true birth of genre fiction, from Arthur Conan Doyle’s mysteries morphing into the modern thriller explosion to the growth of speculative fiction and the birth of sci-fi through writers like Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Philip K Dick and Ursula Le Guin.

In five and a half thousand years we’ve gone from papyrus scrolls to print on demand and ebooks but literature still keeps developing, mutating where necessary to stay relevant and at the centre of the cultural zeitgeist.

Eddie the Escort just looks at me and yawns.  A long, extended, two fingers up yawn.  “Do you sell DVDs?” he asks at last.

The importance of second hand bookshops

"It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.”
Agatha Christie, The Clocks

American novelist Karen Kingsbury once wrote, “Maybe I'll open a bookstore.  New and used books - so everyone has a chance to see the world through the pages of a story.”  I run a bookshop out of a converted shed in the small rural village of Bridgetown in South Wexford.  When I started telling people I planned on opening a shop that would primarily sell second hand books, with a smaller selection of new and antiquarian titles, they would generally respond in one of the following ways;

“What? Sorry, I thought for a minute you said you were going to open a fecking bookshop.” (Followed by laughter)

“A Bookshop? Are ya cracked or what?”

“Right.  Have you been at the meth?”

There’s a general reason for these reactions.  Most people believe that small independent bookshops are a dying species.  In the age of Amazon, Kindles, Tesco book deals, chain bookstores full of thrillers and chiclit and charity shops selling hundreds of copies of 50 shades for 50 cent, are bookshops like me facing extinction?

“You’re pissing against the wind,” A passerby told me one day, “Sure even the readers don’t want books anymore!”

The last Independent Bookshop in Cork City will close this year.  Liam Ruiseals bookshop is shutting down after more than a century serving the people of Cork.  Con Collins of Collins press was interviewed about the closure.  He said, “Every bookshop that closes means less exposure for books, and it means the opportunity for impulse buys are less.  Discoverability is the buzzword these days.  People need to know that these books exist.”

How many times have you gone into a bookstore and accidentally discovered a book or writer who could capture your imagination or impact across your whole life?  These opportunities will disappear with every bookstore like Liam Ruiseals that falls.

Bookselling has existed since at least 300 years before Christ.  The creation of the Library of Alexandria at this time and the popularising of reading and learning by characters such as Plato and Aristotle led to a boom in the trading of books.  Towards the end of the Roman Republic, a trend for personal libraries led to a similar growth in book dealing.

Islamic cities such as Damascus and Baghdad saw a high trade in books.   The spread of Christianity also contributed to the growth of bookselling as demand grew for the gospels and missals.

Johannes Gutenberg invented the world’s first commercial printer in the 15th century revolutionising the volume, variety and demand for books.  At the time one Parisan Bookshop owner claimed that Gutenbergs invention would destroy the book trade and meant the end of the bookshop.  He promptly closed up his shop for good.

In the 16th century, The Bouquinistes of Paris appeared on the banks of the Seine selling second hand and antiquarian books from their stalls and using the ancient emblem of a lizard staring at a sword to identify themselves.  Napoleon later saw the importance and potential danger of bookshops, introducing a license for booksellers and forcing successful applicants to swear an oath to the regime.

Napoleon was right to worry.  Bookshops became places for free thinkers, societal dissidents and dreamers to loiter in, talk and spread ideas.  Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company on the Rue de l'odieon in Paris was a legendary meeting place of the great thinkers and outcasts of the day, from Ernest Hemingway to Enza Pound to Scott Fitzgerald.  Beach even published the first edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses and stood by him when it was banned in his own country.

The original Shakespeare and Company closed in 1941 after they refused to serve an officer of the occupying Nazi forces.  A new shop bearing the name was opened by American George Whitman in 1951 and quickly attracted literary refugees like Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Henry Miller, James Baldwin and Sebastian Barry.

In 1953 Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco.  Notable library eccentrics and geniuses like Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Jack Kerouac frequented the store which became a birthplace for ideas and stories.  Ferlinghetti almost went to prison for printing Ginsbergs “Howl” when no one else would touch it for fear of obscenity charges.
But that was then.

Last year a century old bookshop in Barcelona was bulldozed away and replaced by a McDonald’s.

In 2005 there were over 4,000 bookshops in the UK.  Within a decade that number had fallen to 987.

Twenty years ago Amazon sold their first book online.  Since then the kindle has become a household item and Book chainstores like Easons, who undercut many independent bookstores into oblivion back in the 80s, have strained to stay relevant by introducing onsite cafes, Wi-Fi Hotspots and putting huge pressure on publishers to only print their niche favourites, blockbuster thrillers and summer chiclit.  In today’s world of accountants measuring a bookshelves potential value and chainstore financed book reviewers, it’s unlikely that the likes of Hemingway, Dickens, Austen, Woolf or Behan would even find a publisher if starting out now.

Today, classic literature and readers favourites from Shakespeare to Enid Blyton to Kurt Vonnegut belong in either the disappearing independent bookshops or charity shops, some of whom, through no fault of their staff or patrons, lack the skill, time and interest to preserve these books.  Dumps and recycling plants across the country are being inundated with tonnes of books from the charity sector, often including rare gems.  That is why it is now so difficult to source old paperback westerns or out of print local interest books or long lost kids favourites.  Its why children aren’t reading Treasure Island or the Secret Garden and Leaving Cert students are forced to pay €16 for a copy of Animal Farm.

Independent bookshops, outflanked by the obscene amounts of money behind the likes of Amazon and chainstores, written off by most people, are the only places that can preserve, gather and put these books into the hands of readers.  If they disappear, then reading will follow in a generation.

But they won’t disappear.

Amazon, for all the power of their online selling, have recently opened their first bricks and mortar shop in New York.  Independent bookshops are becoming more innovative in their efforts to survive.  In Hay-on-wye in Wales a group of booksellers have succeeded in turning a small rural town into a world renown “town of books" becoming a tourist hotspot and reviving the local economy in the process.  A “Town of Books” Festival is now held every year in Graignamanagh, complete with public readings and literary cosplay.

Above all, young people are turning back to paper books.  In 2017 sales of printed books increased by 8% while ebook sales dropped 17%.  This was led by under 18s.  A 2013 survey by the youth research agency Voxburnerfound found that 62% of 16 to 24 year olds preferred print books to ebooks.  Only 4% of children’s books are sold in digital format thesedays.

Throughout history, independent bookshops have faced extinction and survived.  The inquisition in Spain saw booksellers imprisoned and their books destroyed.  Franco, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and the American government all practised book burning in an effort to stifle opposition.  Being a book seller in those times meant imprisonment and death.  Still the bookshops survived.

“You won’t make any money selling auld books,” a curious customer once told me.

 Maybe he was right.  Afterall, the South African philosopher and writer Mokokoma Mokhonoana says, “Profitable bookstores sell books. Unprofitable book sellers store books.” 

It’s a depressing thought that keeps me awake at night.  Maybe I’d be better selling turnips.  Little bright orange plastic toxic turnips imported cheaply from China.  Then I remember A. Edward Newtons ‘The Amenities of Book Collecting and Kindred Affections.’

“My depth of purse is not so great
Nor yet my bibliophilic greed,
That merely buying doth elate:
The books I buy I like to read:
Still e'en when dawdling in a mead,
Beneath a cloudless summer sky,
By bank of Thames, or Tyne, or Tweed,
The books I read — I like to buy.”

As long as readers want to buy physical books, they’ll be a need for second hand bookshops.