The definition of futility

Stupidity or futility? Sometimes they're the same thing - but not synonyms. Maybe just cousins so far removed that the only have one gene in common anymore: ginger hair or astigmatism or bad taste in men. They never meet (in the dictionary) but they are unwittingly reunited here. Not by me.

No, they are being reunited by the most powerful book in English literature.

It's also long, but definitely not the longest. Agaat and Song of Fire and Ice, even in Kindle form, were weights that strained my thumb and index finger. Crime and Punishment literally bruised the web between those two fingers. Google is indecisive (personification intended, because none of us are responsible for our statements here, right) about the longest novels, and they all hurdle the 1 000 page mark as if this were the Olympics. On the podium are Proust, Ayn Rand, Tolstoy and David Foster Wallace. I genuinely think they haven't accounted for Ms Marlene van Niekerk.

Now I'm purposefully stringing you along, because I anticipate your doubt, your accusations of hubris, your dire prophesies, and your own stories about stupidity and futility.

Suspense cut like a ribbon around a statue: I am about to read all 4 000 pages of In Search of Lost Time by Michel Proust. Nah, not really. Ribbon still intact. The title is deceptive (I'm thinking dinosaurs here), but apparently a lot of nothing happens except a brief affair, perhaps unconsummated.

Now, really, scissors in hand and no glue. Ulysses by Joyce. Ribbon is taken up by wind and blown into the crowd. James Joyce. He deserves that Bond-esque calling card.

I received this copy for my birthday and tried twice to read it. The first time, I confess, I understood nothing, except something about milk, a dog, and two poorer and wealthier college boys who are friends. I wanted to believe in this book. I want the anecdotal character of the man to be alive in his books. I believe in the Modernists, with an indefinable emotion best represented in the cave of Passage to India.

I am a Modernist born with Post-modern baggage.

The second time the milk, the dog and the relationship between the boys stood out. But more than that: I discovered a whole new way of using language. Scoff - I have done it myself. Don't justify the scoffing with Portrait of an Artist - I did too. But Ulysses...

I am trying to find you an example of the best of his prose, but it can't be extracted without being meaningless or trite. The story may jump in some places and delay in others, but every sentence is inseparable from the next. The sentences are short but tight: a design lecturer once told me that the best design is not the one with the most elements, but the one from which you have removed every element except the ones you need. That's Joyce. If he doesn't need a verb, preposition and so on, he doesn't use it.

So why did I stop re-reading? Joyce's may not be the longest book, but it is a weight even for the reader. By 90 pages I was exhausted. The denseness of the prose is its genius, but also the thing that turns the reader away, clutching the ribbon. Based on my last attempt, I think each chapter needs to be re-read to be understood on even the most superficial level of plot.

Ribbon blown away, like a plaster ripped off.

You have noticed the title again and are wondering whether I am prophesying my own failure. (After all I predicted your scoffing.) You know the saying: Stupidity is failing, and then using the same methods and expecting a different outcome. Or is it futility? Stupidity, futility - they're more closely related than their birth certificates indicate.

Because maybe the more you beat at a brick wall, the bricks begin to crack and crumble. Maybe one brick loosens enough for you to pull out, and your fingers toughen and once you've weakened the base, the rest crumbles too. It may take longer to pull down the Great Wall of China than it took to build. But did the job need to be done any faster? And I'm guessing that when builders had only completed a thousandth of the wall, someone commented about the job's futility.

This analogy, I realise now, describes the writer's efforts more than mine. Many people thought he was a profiteer and others tolerated him. I can compile some nasty reviews based on Portrait myself. But he trusted his instincts and wrote prose that would not change the needle on a balance scale. I suppose it's a bit like knowing there is treasure on the other side of the wall and that there is only one way to get there. Well, there are always more options, but reading Sparknotes defeats the object of the exercise.