Game, set and match — to Linux

The IT infrastructure for this year’s Wimbledon tennis tournament will be powered by Linux.

Ulysses for dummies

There’s a lot of begrudgery around. Roddy Doyle, for example, has some fatuous views about Ulysses — “over-long, over-rated and un-moving”. (Which neatly summarises my view of Mr Doyle’s extensive oeuvre, by the way.) There’s also a lot of comment on the lines of “it’s such a long and difficult book, isn’t it?” To ease the plight of the intellectually challenged, the BBC has a Cheat’s Guide to the novel and solicits vox-pop views. (Sample: “Man goes for a walk around Dublin. Nothing happens — David Mosley, Newport Pagnell.) But it’s saved by appending Stephen Fry’s riposte:

“Lord help us all. ‘Pretentious drivel’, ‘better off with a good walk rather than reading dusty books’. What possible hope is there for a country which with such self-righteous philistinism scorns its own treasures? Ulysses is the greatest novel of the twentieth century. It is is wise, warm, witty, affirmative and beautiful. it is less pretentious than a baked bean. Read it. read it out loud to yourself. It won’t bite. It wasn’t written either to shock or to impress. Only pretentious barbarians believe artists set out shock: and how these philistines delight in revealing how unshocked they are. Those who attack it are afraid of it and rather than look foolish they prefer to heckle what they don’t understand. Ignore all this childish, fear-filled criticism, Ulysses will be read when everything you see and touch around you has crumbled into dust. Stephen Fry, London, UK”

Bloomsday Blog

The Guardian‘s Fiachra Gibbons has been following in Leopold’s footsteps and blogging all the while. The verdict? Lovely idea and a brave effort but a bit strained. Difficult to be funny to order. It’s the kind of thing that’s more cut out for an audio blog, I think. It must be difficult to attend to one’s surroundings while pecking at a laptop.

Bloomsday 100

It’s Bloomsday+100. My esteemed fellow-countrymen — cheerful descendants of all those who excoriated, despised and censored James Joyce — have now appropriated him for the booming Irish heritage industry. Nice piece by Andrew O’Hagan in last Sunday’s Observer about all this.

My friend Sean O’Mordha, a film-maker who created the best film about Joyce ever made (and deservedly won an Emmy for it), has sent me a Bloomsday present — a copy of John McCourt’s James Joyce: a passionate exile — which has some wonderful photographs. It’s also beautifully written — light and serious at the same time. And it vividly evokes the personality of the exasperating genius we celebrate today. I particularly like this picture:

It’s Michael Farrell’s portrait of Joyce. It was, writes Mr McCourt, “inspired by the story of fellow Irish artist Patrick Tuohy who, while painting Joyce’s portrait, started talking about the soul of the artist only to be interrupted by his sitter: ‘Get the poet’s soul out of your mind’, said Joyce, ‘and see that you paint my cravat properly'”.