n The Media, there has been a great deal of ink spilled over the matter of “the left-liberal divide.” What, exactly, is the difference between a “leftist” and a “liberal”? To what extent are these groups ideologically, as opposed to aesthetically, distinct? How far can they trust each other? Are they implacable foes with fundamentally irreconcilable worldviews? Do they have enough shared goals to make political collaboration feasible? Although I can’t presume to answer all of these weighty questions, I can state that Leftists and the Liberals do have at least one area of transatlantic common ground, and that is this: being publicly railroaded for talking too much about Ulysses.
Liberal darling and overgrown Student Council President Pete Buttigieg is, of course, the most notorious Ulysses fan on the modern political stage, having repeatedly commented on his fondness for the novel and put it on his official list of Favorite Books. When asked about Ulysses by an Esquire interviewer, Buttigieg described it as an “extremely relevant” book: “it is a difficult text, but its subject matter couldn’t be more democratic. It’s about a guy going about his day for one day. … You’re in this guy’s head, and you’re kind of seeing life through his eyes, and at the end through his wife’s eyes. That’s how politics ought to be, too.” (Boy, politics would be a rough business if seen through the eyes of candidates’ wives! Relatedly, Beto O’Rourke has also occasionally claimed to be a fan of Ulysses.) The reaction on social media was polarizing: Buttigieg was enthusiastically commended by a number of fans who were excited by the prospect of having an “erudite” president in the White House, and dragged by an equivalent number of people questioning whether Buttigieg, or indeed any other human being, has actually read Ulysses. “No person on earth has ever read Ulysses,” wrote one internet commentator. “James Joyce probably gave it a quick skim.” Others rolled their eyes at Buttigieg’s affinity for “difficult” white male authors, and demanded to know if he had ever read a book by a woman.
But lest you run away with the idea that talking up Ulysses is solely the provenance of Rhodes Scholar resume-padders, the rumpled, jumper-wearing leftist Jeremy Corbyn also recently spoke publically about his love of Joyce’s novel. In 2019, just before Bloomsday (the unofficial Joyce “holiday” on June 16, chosen because all the action of Ulysses takes place on June 16, 1904), Corbyn told a Guardian reporter that Ulysses was his favorite novel, recalling that “like many people, at first he found the book ‘incomprehensible’. But then ‘you stop trying to focus on the narrative and start just enjoying the vignettes.’” Like Buttigieg, Corbyn highlighted the book’s down-to-earth quality as a kind of political virtue: “Joyce references and richly describes what’s happening in the street. So somebody is holding forth about a big political issue and then the refuse cart goes by. Whenever there is a big political issue on, I walk around the streets in my area … Politicians should never forget that people have lives to lead and they often have dreams they don’t talk about.” Corbyn then suggested that ordinary people should try to read and enjoy Ulysses, and not feel intimidated by the book’s reputation: “Read a little bit at a time and think about it and then move on, but don’t beat yourself up if you don’t understand it.” As Jacobin catalogued in an article entitled “Ulysses Truthers Are the Latest Threat to Corbyn,” these remarks inspired a slew of attacks from right-wingers and centrists questioning whether Corbyn had “really read” Ulysses, hinting that Corbyn—who did not attend Oxford or Cambridge, nor ultimately finish his college degree at all—couldn’t possibly have done so.