Eye - 07 September 2012

From delightful discoveries to an attender's first time in Meeting

by Eye 7th September 2012

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.’