Eye - 07 September 2012
From delightful discoveries to an attender's first time in Meeting
Delightful discovery
Eye’s literary challenge prompted Gerard Benson to write in with word of a warm, sympathetic portrait of a Quaker librarian in James Joyce’s Ulysses.
‘He’s quite a minor character but, like many of Joyce’s minor characters, beautifully drawn. He’s bald with large ears and moves as if he’s dancing. He says at one point: “All sides of life should be represented”. The author adds: “He smiled on all sides equally.” At another point he says of the quaker librarian (never a capital Q) “…he talked with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most honest broadbrim”. He’s a truly delightful character.’
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