Samuel Johnson, in one of his great aperçus, responded to some pettifogging critic with the phrase: "A fly may sting a horse, but the horse will still be a horse, and the fly no more than a fly." That sentence sprang to mind the minute I read that Paolo Coelho had decided to take James Joyce to task. In an interview in Folha de S Paolo (one wonders if he chose that outlet for any particular reason) the self-proclaimed "literature wizard" contends: "Today, writers want to impress other writers." He then names the culprit: "One of the books that caused great harm was James Joyce's Ulysses, which is pure style. There is nothing there. Stripped down, Ulysses is a twit."
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