George Bernard Shaw: “to me it is all hideously real”

A famous letter from Shaw to publisher Sylvia Beach:

“To you possibly Ulysses may appeal as art; you are probably (you see I don’t know you) a young barbarian beglamoured by the excitements and enthusiasms that art stirs up in passionate material; but to me it is all hideously real: I have walked those streets and know those shops and have heard and taken part in those conversations. I escaped from them to England at the age of twenty; and forty years later have learnt from the books of Mr. Joyce that Dublin is still what it was, and young men are still drivelling in slackjawed blackguardism as they were in 1870. It is, however, some consolation to find that at last soembody has felt deeply enough about it to face the horror of writing it all down and using his literary genius to force people to face it. In Ireland they try to make a cat cleanly by rubbing its nose in its own filth. Mr. Joyce has tried the same treatment on the human subject. I hope it may prove successful.”

Wow.

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4 Responses to George Bernard Shaw: “to me it is all hideously real”

  1. David says:

    You see, all this is succedding to do this morning is to rub my own ignorance of literature, and it’s greats, in my face. GBS, wow, what a mind, what a soul, he had! Not to take away from the man of the hour whom I know nothing about.

  2. David says:

    Poetic genius there, spelling succeeding wrong in a post proclaiming my ignorance.

  3. red says:

    hahahaha!!

    I love how you think that Shaw is going to slam the book – at least I do – he calls her a “barbarian”, etc…. but then he flips it. He found it disturbing, because he had lived it. He had fled it, too – but he didn’t write about it. joyce did.

  4. Bernard says:

    Yes, it’s as if he thinks the effort somewhat futile and yet can’t but approve and be envious of the result.

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