What Did James Joyce Mean When He Wrote Ulysses Anyway ?
close friends on whether his true intentions on writing Ulysses would ever be fully understood. People would read the book because it had been banned, they might apprectiate it as an important contribution to literature, but the true nature of the work might be lost. His sense of humor would never be grasped. His wit and use of the art of the pun would be lost in the cynical nature of a world that had grown to take itself way to seriously. Joyce had told the greatest literary joke in history, but the sound of the echo of this man clapping had been lost to the tone of deaf ears. James Joyce would later tell an old friend in a cafe in Paris about these reserves. Djuna Barnes remembers a conversation that she had with Joyce at the Cafe of the Deux Magots in Paris. He told her of his reserves and concerns. “The pity is the public will demand and find a moral in my book—or worse they may take it in some more serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious li
