And off with him and out trying to walk straight. Boosed at five o’clock. Night he was near being lagged only Paddy Leonard knew the bobby, 14A. Blind to the world up in a shebeen in Bride street after closing time, fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking porter out of teacups. And calling himself a Frenchy for the shawls, Joseph Manuo, and talking against the Catholic religion, and he serving mass in Adam and Eve’s when he was young with his eyes shut, who wrote the new testament, and the old testament, and hugging and smugging. And the two shawls killed with the laughing, picking his pockets, the bloody fool and he spilling the porter all over the bed and the two shawls screeching laughing at one another. HOW IS YOUR TESTAMENT? HAVE YOU GOT AN OLD TESTAMENT? Only Paddy was passing there, I tell you what. Then see him of a Sunday with his little concubine of a wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle of the chapel with her patent boots on her, no less, and her violets, nice as pie, doing the little lady. Jack Mooney’s sister. And the old prostitute of a mother procuring rooms to street couples. Gob, Jack made him toe the line. Told him if he didn’t patch up the pot, Jesus, he’d kick the shite out of him.

From “Ulysses” by James Joyce

Joyce tells it like it is. ¨Fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking porter out of teacups … the bloody fool and he spilling the porter all over the bed and the two shawls screeching laughing at one another. HOW IS YOUR TESTAMENT? HAVE YOU GOT AN OLD TESTAMENT?¨

I can understand why Ulysses was a forbidden book in America for a while—the irreverent language, improprieties, sexual innuendos, and plain obscene words. I like it, but it is an abstract book difficult to read because of frequent neologisms and the use of words from English dialects.  It contains passages with harsh criticisms of the Catholic Church and a crude portrait of Irish society.  Joyce belongs to the bygone days when learned people showed off their encyclopedic knowledge, and erudition was more valuable than money.  James Joyce is one of the greatest exponents of that era.