Public Advisory

Mentioning Ulysses in the previous entry reminded me: whenever the novel comes up on the internet, there's invariably some dude who'll say something to the effect of "what's so hard about it?  It's just the story of a man walking around wondering if his wife's cheating on him.  Anyone can read it!"  To which I say: STOP THAT.  It's stupid, and you bleeding well know it's stupid.  Since when does the subject matter of a book determine its difficulty level?  Since never, is when.  The fact is, Ulysses is a difficult book--less so with familiarity, of course, but that's true of anything--and you're not helping anyone by pretending that new readers should have no trouble with it.  If anything, you're just going to discourage them when they realize it ain't so.  So come on, people.  Cut this nonsense out.