“At the Museum” by Adam Carlton

 

It’s Saturday afternoon and here I am, in the centre of town, at the Museum of the Resurrection of Literary Giants, usually called the Murelig. I took the bus in, I don’t do that very often; I could have cycled but there’s been a spate of bike-stealing recently: it just isn’t worth it.

I’m surrounded by passersby, all done up against the cold. It’s a regular wintry November with grey clouds scudding overhead. People are bustling past, headed off to the shops or for a welcome cup of coffee. No-one seems very interested in partaking of culture today.

I walk in. 

I’m fourteen years old and I’ve decided it’s time to consider my career. I know this is overdue. My grandfather told me that he knew he wanted to be a physicist when he was ten. He used to tell visiting relatives, “When I grow up I want to study physics, I want to be a physician.” They dutifully laughed at this mistake - understandable in one so young. Of course my grandpa knew the difference perfectly well - at that time he was pondering special relativity - but he liked to tease.

I was thinking of the military. It’s an exciting life and these days the drones do most of the risky stuff I believe. And people look up to you. On the other hand, the few girls I’ve talked to don’t seem to think much of men in uniform. They seem to be more favourable to artists and writers. So it’s possible that I should aim to be a literary giant.

I’m here to pick up a few hints.

The entrance has retained its Haussmannian feel, what the British call Victorian. It’s spacious with stone slab flooring, white marble stairs in front of me lead up to the first floor and there’s a roof high above me with skylights (looking like a mosaic of small leaded panes).

Let me look at the signs. Here on the ground floor we have twentieth century literary heroes; upstairs it’s more contemporary.

I have a bunch of questions and I want to start with James Joyce, who wrote ‘Ulysses’. 

OK, I see how it works. The place is divided into small rooms. You enter and select who you want to talk to.

I turn left and enter a smaller side hall through an arch. There are cubicles along the wall facing me. Most have a green light shining above their entryway; just a few have a red light. It doesn’t take a genius.

I veer left again and select the most left hand cubicle with its dim green glow, pushing the door open. As I enter soft uplighters come on and I see a recliner facing a low table. Should have bought a coffee, I think.

I sit in the recliner and kind of relax and spread out. It’s very comfortable. From the darkness opposite an androgynous figure appears - some kind of three dimensional hologram movie projection thing, I tell myself - and in a carefully neutral voice asks me who I’d like to speak with.

“James Joyce, the noted Irish novelist and writer of “Dubliners” and “Ulysses” amongst several other masterpieces,” I announce, proud of my literary competence.

The avatar takes my details: name, age, interests, details and then fades out 

Blackness slowly gives way to speckles, and out of the white noise the familiar face of the noted Irish novelist appears. He’s looking straight at me with an expression of reassuring intellectual arrogance.

Me: Good afternoon Mr Joyce. Are you ready to answer my questions?

Joyce: I’m more than ready, lad. Ask your first question, and mind yourself—it’s not often you’ll get answers like these.

Me: You struggled to get "Dubliners" published. But when I looked at the stories they all seemed rather samey and small town, and if you are the narrator then all the adults around you were either put-upon or unsavoury creeps. You might have had more success writing thrillers, why didn't you?

Joyce: Ah, sure, you’ve hit upon the small town, haven’t you? Dubliners is small, like Dublin itself, but don’t confuse the smallness of the setting with the size of the soul behind it. You see, it’s not about the grand gestures or dashing deeds. I was peeling back the skin of life, showing the paralysis that crept into every corner of the city, the stifling of every heart and soul by a Church and state so suffocating it made a thriller look like a fairytale.

As for thrillers—what’s that but a bit of blood and excitement? Easy money, perhaps, but no truth to it. And truth, even the ugly kind you don’t like to see, is what makes art. Would you prefer your world wrapped in a nice little package of lies, lad?

Me: No, I think great writers write the truth and I want to be a great writer. But in “Ulysses” you went out of your way to be either cryptically obscure - all that Homeric analogy stuff - or have your characters, especially Molly Bloom, say the most disgusting things. Even I think they're disgusting. Do you have to be disgusting to be a great writer?

Joyce: Ah, you’ve got some pluck, I’ll give you that. But you’re mistaking disgust for honesty. There’s a difference, you see. Ulysses—and Molly, in particular—isn’t about being shocking for the sake of it. What’s so disgusting, lad? The fact that she thinks what she thinks? Feels what she feels? You’d rather I prettied it up, maybe? Kept it tucked away behind lace curtains like the rest of Dublin?

Great writers don’t serve up polite dinners of thoughts for the faint-hearted. I showed people as they are—flawed, base, carnal, yes, but alive. Flesh and blood, sweat and dreams. And Molly? She’s the most alive of them all, the one voice at the end of that whole convoluted journey that’s real, not dressed up in academic robes or hiding behind masks.

As for the Homeric stuff—it’s not for you to solve like a puzzle in a newspaper. It’s there to show the depth of a man’s mind, even an ordinary man like Bloom. His day is an odyssey, just as grand as any Greek hero’s might be, though maybe a bit more… modern.

If you want to be a great writer, you need to stop worrying about being disgusting. Worry about being true. You follow me, lad?

Me: But did it work? Did all that great writing get the girls? I sort of get the impression that Molly Bloom is really your partner, Nora Barnacle. Did you ever think that she had the most ridiculous name in all of literary history? No offence meant, Mr Joyce.

Joyce: Ah, now we’re getting to the heart of it, aren’t we? The young lad wants to know if words win the women. Well, let me tell you, Nora Barnacle—ridiculous name or no—was more than any Molly I could conjure up on the page. And don’t think for a second I didn’t know it! Her name, a bit of a joke maybe to your ears, but to me it was perfect. Nora, sure-footed as a barnacle, sticking to me through all the madness, the poverty, the wandering through Europe. Ridiculous? No. Divine, I’d say.

As for whether the writing got me the girls—lad, I wasn’t sitting there scribbling out Ulysses to woo anyone. If I’d wanted to court a girl, I’d have written her a letter—and I did, by the way, but that’s a different story, one your tender years don’t need to be burdened with just yet.

Nora was my muse, my partner, the one who anchored me. But she was no Molly. Nora was far more stubborn, more practical, more quick with her tongue than any fictional woman I could invent. And she wasn’t waiting for any writer to come and ‘win’ her—she chose me, as much as I chose her. You don’t win women like that with great writing, lad. You win them by standing up to life, warts and all, just like you do with words.

But you remember this: behind every great writer there’s more than a few ridiculous names, ridiculous people, ridiculous truths. And they’re what keep the ink flowing. So, no offence taken—ridiculous or not, she was mine, and that’s more than any character can say.

---

Well, that was thought-provoking for sure. Drat! How easy it is to fall into the Irish vernacular. I bid my goodbyes and Mr Joyce fades back into history. I ask avatar-lady, who has reappeared, if I can talk to Karl Marx next.

“I’m afraid you can’t speak to Dr Marx here. He’s nineteenth century. That’s the basement,” she says - and vanishes.

I have no idea why you have to change floors for different centuries. Back outside I re-read the information board. Oh, wait, it says it here in the small print.

“The Museum is a spatial database of literary talent. As you navigate the floors your situated spatial awareness represents a metaphor for the sedimentation of time”

OK, I suppose you need a simile to explain a metaphor then. I go downstairs to the basement.

---

Re-cubicled, I ask to speak to Karl Marx.

Me: Dr Marx, I understand that you were trained as a philosopher and later educated yourself as an economist. I haven't read much of your stuff but I did read the Communist Manifesto. Very stirring writing, sir. The impression I got was that in the entire history of humanity no-one has ever been happy - because of class oppression and/or poverty. That only under bountiful communism will people be happy. There's something about species-being too which I didn't quite get. So is that true? And was there ever a time when you were happy?

Marx: Ah, young man, you’re quick to point out the miseries of history, but you’ve misunderstood me if you think I’ve ever said no-one was ever happy. There have always been moments—individuals, fleeting pockets of joy, even under the worst conditions. But happiness in the full, collective sense? No, that’s never been possible under the rule of class oppression.

Look at it this way: history is the history of class struggles. From the earliest societies, there’s always been the oppressor and the oppressed, each standing in direct opposition. As long as one class controls the means of production, they control the happiness, the freedom, the very lives of those who must sell their labour-power just to survive. You can find joy in small things, but real human flourishing—what I call species-being—is only possible when we are truly free, when our labour isn’t a means of survival, but an expression of our creative, social nature.

And no, bountiful communism isn’t about handing everyone luxury on a plate. It’s about ending alienation, the separation of people from their work, their community, their very essence. When the conditions of production are shared, when each contributes according to their ability and receives according to their needs, only then will the human species—our species-being—realise its potential.

Now, as for me—whether I was happy? I am not the subject here, but since you ask: I had joys, of course. My family, my work, even the comradeship of Engels. But don’t imagine I was some dreamer waiting for a perfect world. I lived in a hard reality, struggling against poverty myself, plagued by illness and personal losses. If I found happiness, it was in the struggle itself, in the knowledge that I was fighting for something greater than my own small, fleeting comforts.

So, young man, don’t be distracted by the thought of happiness as a personal prize to be won. Think bigger—think about what’s possible when the chains of class are finally broken. That’s where real happiness lies.

Me: Not sure I got all that, but nevermind. I want to be a famous writer and have the respect of my contemporaries, particularly young women if I'm being honest - as writers should be. Anti-capitalist revolution seems to have gone off the boil over the last century, so I'm wondering if you have any specific advice for me. Don't say 'go and be a politician or a revolutionary agitator' - that's not what I had in mind.

Marx: Ah, so fame and the admiration of women, eh? A fine ambition for a young lad, though I suspect you’re chasing shadows. You want to be a famous writer? Then let me tell you, fame—especially among your contemporaries—is fleeting, and it’s often the hollowest form of recognition. The bourgeois society we live in will chew you up and spit you out, and it won’t care whether you wrote a masterpiece or a trashy novel. The market rules, and writers—like everything else—become commodities to be consumed.

But you don’t want to hear that, do you? You want a practical answer, something more suited to your aspirations. Alright then, here’s my advice: if you’re serious about writing, about making something that lasts beyond the fleeting whims of the marketplace, then write the truth of your time. But more than that, write the truth against your time. Don’t simply cater to what’s popular or fashionable. Anyone can be a servant to the trends of the day, but real respect comes from challenging those trends, from exposing the contradictions and hypocrisies of the world around you.

As for admiration from women—young women, you say—you’re mistaken if you think that’ll come simply because you’ve scribbled a few lines. You’ll have to earn that admiration by being someone worth admiring. And that, lad, comes from integrity, not fame. It comes from standing for something, whether in your writing or in your life.

You don’t have to be a politician or an agitator, no. But you do have to be engaged. Writing that’s disconnected from the struggles of real people, from the forces shaping society, is just fluff. If you want to be remembered, if you want respect—not just from women, but from anyone—then make sure your writing speaks to something deeper than your own desire for recognition.

The revolution may seem to have “gone off the boil,” as you say, but the conditions that give rise to revolution—class struggle, exploitation, alienation—are still very much alive. They shape the world you live in, whether you see them or not. A writer who ignores that is just writing for their own reflection in the mirror.

So go ahead, chase your fame, but be wary of what you sacrifice for it. You want respect? Then respect yourself enough to write something that matters. That, young man, is how you’ll stand out—whether or not the world notices right away.

---

Points to ponder again, but all these old guys seem so earnest. I bid my farewell and decide to go for something more contemporary. I head off to the first floor, to a cubicle identical in every respect to the last one - and ask to speak to JD Vance.

Me: President Vance, you've pretty much reshaped political thinking on the right, and not just in the United States. You also know how to write so I'm seeking advice here about what to write about. Like you I'm disgusted by hypocrisy, and I know that elites everywhere pretend to care about ordinary people but only want to preserve their own enviable lifestyles from destruction at the hands of what they see as the envious rabble. This is the only way I can understand how 'Populism' ceased to be a synonym for 'Democracy' and instead became an insult flung in the face of politicians who address ordinary people's problems. Perhaps this is what I should write about if I want to become famous and successful and rich and have the admiration of my peers, particularly women if I'm being completely honest?

Vance: Well, you’re hitting on some important truths there, but let’s break it down. You’ve noticed the hypocrisy of elites—good. That’s a reality most people don’t want to see. Elites do what they can to protect their own interests, and they’ll use whatever language is convenient to do it, whether it’s dressed up as “compassion” or something else.

And you’re right—'populism' should have been about democracy, about addressing the real needs of everyday people. But the elites—media, academia, even parts of the political establishment—have twisted that word, made it a pejorative, because it threatens their power. It’s easier to dismiss the anger and frustrations of working-class folks as backward, dangerous, or even ignorant than to face the fact that they’ve been ignored for decades.

Now, about what to write if you want to become famous, successful, and yes, admired by women—you’re going to have to decide what matters more: fame or substance. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be successful, but success for its own sake? If that’s your goal, you’ll end up writing what sells, not what matters. And trust me, selling out to the elites is a quicker way to get famous than exposing them.

But if you’re serious about addressing these issues of hypocrisy, elites, and populism—then you’ve got a real topic on your hands. Write about the growing divide between the elites and ordinary people, about how elites weaponize language to maintain power. Dig into why populism gets smeared, why the concerns of working-class people are dismissed or caricatured. You’ll find that this isn’t just an American problem—it’s global. And that’s your hook.

If you go down this path, though, you need to be prepared for backlash. You won’t just get admiration from your peers. You’ll get pushback from those who don’t want their comfortable illusions shattered. But if you speak clearly, directly, and with integrity, people—especially ordinary people—will respect you.

As for the admiration of women, well, authenticity and standing for something real is a good start. But don’t make that the reason you write, or you’ll miss the bigger picture. Write because you have something important to say. Fame and admiration may follow, or they may not—but at least you’ll know you’ve written with purpose.

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So as I sit on the bus - on the top deck at the front where I can get the best view - I get to thinking about what all those guys said. That you can’t write just for fame, you have to get to the important truths and be brave and controversial. Has a ring of truth but sounds kind of hard work.

But one thing continues to puzzle me. Those guys span three centuries and the complete political spectrum yet - strangely - how come they all said the same thing?

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Author’s note: in the spirit of this story, all the characters the fourteen year old protagonist debates with in the museum are voiced by ChatGPT.