Joyce’s ‘dirty book’ honoured
FOR Aileen Cater-Steel, her introduction to James Joyce’s iconic tome Ulysses happened when she was child overhearing her father describe it as a “dirty book”.
The description stuck in her young mind but it wasn’t until she moved to Dublin in 2002 that Mrs Cater-Steel gave the book the attention it required.
“It was wet and cold and dark, so it made it easy to read, because I was there where the story was set,” she said.
Mrs Cater-Steel said her father’s summing up of the tale was accurate, in part because Joyce captured wildly vivid descriptions of the most intimate of activities.
“Like enjoying going to the toilet, lying in the bathtub and then the final chapter is one long soliloquy from (one of the characters) Molly and she is talking about how she was seduced and enjoyed it,” she said.
The Darling Downs Irish Club celebrates the book each year as it marks its Bloomsday festivities.
Key among them is a reading of select passages at the James Joyce Chair in Railway Street.
This year the club added a writing competition to the celebrations.
Mrs Cater-Steel said the ideas came from St Ursula’s College student Emily Murray who told a club member how much she enjoyed the book, at a Lions Club meeting.
The Darling Downs Irish Club put a call-out to every high school in the region, along with several writers’ groups, asking students and members to reflect on their introduction to Ulysses.
Emily was the only entrant in the school section of the inaugural James Joyce Writing Competition so naturally she won it, while Mrs Cater-Steel took out the adult prize.
She said Ulysses was ahead of its time.
“It was called a dirty book because people were not supposed to be writing about or reading that sort of stuff,” Mrs Cater-Steel said.
“It is also a very complex book, because Joyce makes words as he goes along.
“It took me a few months to finish.”