James Joyce

Usually when I cover a news conference, I am imprisoned within the hotel, running to get this interview, or check out that fact. I miss all the sights of the host city. However, this time after doing all my preliminary work, setting up, I had about three hours free to explore Dublin. The best way with limited time is a bus tour. It was a hop-on-hop-off. I didn’t want to do the Guinness brewery or Trinity college, but aimed for the Writer’s Museum.

A few years back my daughter had found one in Edinburgh. However when I did my hop-off, I discovered the James Joyce Centre was only a 300 meters away.

Now, I loved his Dubliners. And I loved The Artist as a Young Man, but I have never been able to get through Ulysses. Periodically I have picked it up, vowing this time, I won’t give up. Equally periodically I give up. At one time I thought it was a question of maturity, but since I am at a point where I am mature and the next step is senility, I am not sure that will work.

I enjoyed the displays of his books, the photos including him and Sylvia Beach in front of Shakespeare and Company. I had stood in the exact same spot earlier in the month feeling very Hemingwayish. The next time I am in Paris and go there, I will have to feel Joyceish.

Because I was hungry I stopped at the café with its dark dusty rose walls above cream wainscoting. The walls had Wedgewood type circles at regular intervals with circular paintings of couples dressed in late 17^th century clothing in the centers.

On each of the 12 circle marble tables stood glasses of waters with carnations in everything from early buds to full blooms, but I also noticed that in each glass one of the flowers had turned brown. I wondered if that was a symbol for all the failed attempts to read Ulysses.