Hanna Fahl: Can James Joyce be the right man to quote in order to defeat Donald Trump?

Every man who lazily follow american politics at a distance have been able to note something interesting the last time: the irish author James Joyce's nearly 100-year-old novel ”Ulysses” has suddenly gained a prominent role in the election campaign. Both the (semi-)young male (semi-)hip trainees to become the democratic presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, and Beto O’Rourke, throwing himself over every chance to talk about how much they love ”Ulysses”.

Buttigieg, 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is the son of a litteraturprofessor and James Joyce scholars and namndroppar Joyce in at least every other interview. ”’Ulysses’ is about ordinary life, you may take part of this man's life and the things he cares about and why,” he tells New York Magazine. ”That's the way politics ought to be”, he develops in Esquire. ”The reason that politics matters is that it affects us in everyday life.”

O'rourke, 46 years old with a past that tonårshacker under the alias of Psychedelic Warlord, is on its side so Joycefrälst that he named his son after the book. Little Ulysses siblings called also Molly (probably after the main character Leopold Bloom's wife) and Henry (possibly Henry Flower, Leopold pseudonym).

The young democrats ' older competitor, Joe Biden, is also taking part in the informal competition about who loves James Joyce the most. Last year, exclaimed he, ”When I die, Delaware will be written on my heart!” in a speech; a paraphrase of Joyce's famous statement about his hometown of Dublin.

”Stephen wets!”, points out, for example, I proudly on page 62, in the paragraph that describes how the water flows in the ”long lassoes from the Cock lake”.

own dusty paperback edition of ”Ulysses”. No, I don't read about it, it is 933 pages long, who do you think I am, a man with infinite time who do not have busy to have time to see catch up with ”Star trek: Discovery” on Netflix? However I browse through it and try to decipher the youthful ambitious the notes I made in the margin in order to impress the professor who taught literature at the University of British Columbia in the late 1990s.

It is not profound notes, it is not. ”Stephen is urinating!”, points out, for example, I proudly on page 62, in the paragraph that describes how the water flows in the ”long lassoes from the Cock lake”. I have also apparently tried to help James Joyce along the way (”why not spalta up the book in a practical and clear way!”) by itself divide the book in neatly rödpennenumrerade chapter. I seem to have taken me on ”Ulysses” about a pragmatic politician takes on the world: determined to tame even the wildest pages.

u.s. democrats new skrytaccessoar is a mystery, but somewhere in the background is, of course, a willingness to position itself as opposed to the apparently illiterata Donald Trump (magazine of the Vulture puts it in his analysis: It is as difficult to penetrate ”Ulysses” to get into Harvard). One can also guess that the protagonist of the novel based on Homer's ”the Odyssey”, is an irresistible hjältesaga to identify with for a (semi-)ambitious young politicians who boldly embarks on valrörelsens stormy seas to voluntarily save modern democracy.

James Joyce has simply become for american politicians what Astrid Lindgren is Swedish, with the little difference that the u.s. democrats want to be associated with the literary modernism brick to the innovative praktverk, for the most part, written in flowing long-winded internal monologue, while the Swedish politicians regardless of their party affiliation at any time identify themselves with a obstinate and irritating child with braids. I am, honestly, not sure which is the worst.

Read more texts by Hanna Fahl, for example, if the 20-årsjubilerande the movie ”The matrix”.