The Joyce industry is very much an institution over here as you might expect; Portrait of the Artist is a regular feature on the Leaving Cert curriculum but Ulysses is probably the most widely unread national epic in history which is such a shame because despite its difficulty it contains the most authentic rendering of the Dublin brogue ever put into print. Its gratifying to learn that much of the slang and street expressions in circulation today; "crawthumper" "spondoolicks"...