A letter to the TLS about an obscure and experimental novel

From this week's TLS letters page.

Sir, – Apropos Justin Beplate’s essay on James Joyce (April 29): looking for a book to keep me busy over a weekend in my first year at the University of Cape Town in 1958, I found a fat green book among the novels of the Jagger Library, by someone I hadn’t then heard of. I read it through, not quite in one sitting, but in twenty-four hours. On Monday, I sought out Professor Guy Howarth to tell him I had found this marvellous novel, Ulysses, by an Irish writer called Joyce. Did he know it? Howarth was as always very kind: yes, he had heard of it – and he was glad I had enjoyed it. Thank goodness no one had told me it was difficult; and ever since then I have tried to persuade pupils to read Ulysses just like that, as fast as they can, sliding over anything they can’t at first understand, without worrying about any critical expositions; my hope is that some of them will have reacted as I did all those years ago: with delighted hilarity.

JONTY DRIVER
Apple Yard Cottage, Mill Lane, Northiam, East Sussex.