As a Bloomsday Baby, I Take Offense

A lot of bloggers have picked up on Roddy Doyle's dismissal of Ulysses (scroll down a bit, it's there), which he says "could have done with a good editor." He also told celebrants at a Joyce birthday event, "I only read three pages of Finnegans Wake and it was a tragic waste of time." And in an outburst which surely has Harold Bloom muttering "talk about your anxiety of influence":

If you're a writer in Dublin and you write a snatch of dialogue, everyone thinks you lifted it from Joyce. The whole idea that he owns language as it is spoken in Dublin is a nonsense. He didn't invent the Dublin accent. It's as if you're encroaching on his area or it's a given that he's on your shoulder. It gets on my nerves.

And what does Joyce scholar and Bloomsday centennial organizer David Norris think Joyce would think of the kerfuffle?

He would love it. He would do his best to stir it up as hard as he could, make sure he was the centre of attention, then he would find some method of extracting money out of it.