Desperate urbanists

摘要

I have often wondered what James Joyce would have made of television. Certainly he was fascinated by the movies. Radio too -he went on at length, in Finnegan's Wake, about a 'tolvtubular daildialler, as modern as tomorrow afternoon and in appearance up to the minute,... with a vitaltone speaker.' But he didn't get to see the emergence of the television drama series, and that's a pity, because Ulysses is clearly the progenitor of shows like Desperate Housewives. Joyce wastes no time in introducing his stars - 'stately, plump Buck Mulligan', the intellectual Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom in search of a kidney for breakfast, and Molly Bloom turning over sleepily in her bed. Then he brings them together repeatedly, in various combinations, in episodes set at iconic locations throughout Dublin. This gives him plenty of space to explore their evolving relationships and to provide a compelling portrait of the turn-of-the-century Irish capital. It maps on to the Odyssey, of course, and it would also map on to a season of weekly television shows. You can imagine the author pitching the concept of Desperate Hibernians to a producer.