Last year, I had the horrific task of having to read James Joyce's short story The Dead. My lecturer - similar to Ian McEwan - called it 'the best short story ever written' and 'a great piece of literature'. She said, in her exasperation at the 'grandness' of the story that 'if you don't like then you have no taste.' I do like to think I have taste - a required one I will admit - but taste nonetheless and I found it boring and bad. James Joyce is also a required taste but his story held no meaning and did nothing to me. Good literature is like being attacked - you get taken by surprise, gripped tightly and held for a long time then, when it's over, you get thrown away. You stagger back, out of breath, confused and then you think about it, over and over again. The Dead - similar to a book I tried reading the other day called Tell Me No Secrets - and I threw it aside because it was so bad - resulted in my discarding it when it was finished and shrugging my shoulders.
Some people may say I missed the point, that this is a narrow-minded thing to do but we know what's good, we know what's bad and The Dead is most certainly bad and James Joyce, in my opinion, is not a very interesting writer at all.
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