In college, I took a course dedicated to the study of a single novel.
It was Ulysses by James Joyce, his magnum opus.
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I spent 16 weeks reading and discussing it with my classmates and our professor. But personally, I contributed little to these conversations. The book confused me, mostly. It felt disjointed, jarring and strange.
Each chapter takes on a different style.
One is a play. Another is saturated with literary devices, like onomatopoeia and alliteration (to mimic a symphony). And the last chapter is a nearly-complete stream of consciousness: thousands of words punctuated by only eight periods.
Ulysses is also dense with obscure references, allusions and innuendos, red herrings.
“I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles,” Joyce said, “that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant.”
Joyce purposefully made his authorial intent unclear.
He didn’t care if The Reader immediately understood his writing.
He wanted her to think, to hypothesize and put the pieces together, one by one, slowly, meticulously, until she finally, suddenly, understood the reference, the chapter, the book itself.
And often, this sensation — this click, this moment of clarity — compelled The Reader. Solving a puzzle, after all, is satisfying.
But reading copy should not feel like solving a puzzle.
Reading copy should always feel easy, even effortless.
This is why great copy is clear and concise and relevant. Anything less is taking a risk. Because the moment The Reader feels any confusion or frustration, they will stop reading your ad. They will not push through. They won’t go back and reread. Because thinking is too hard, too time-consuming.
This makes Ulysses “bad reading” for copywriters.
Especially new writers, those learning the fundamentals. Because what we take in informs what we put out. I speak from experience:
The cryptic, winding, confusing literature I studied in college, including Ulysses, contributed to the many bad habits I brought into my early years as a copywriter. “You write like a firehose,” my editor told me. “You need to be a nail gun.”
So my advice to developing copywriters is this:
Avoid James Joyce, William Burroughs, William Faulkner, and other authors who force you to wrestle with the text and push through the confusion. This style, at this stage in your education, is counterproductive.
Best to circle back.
In the meantime, I recommend reading more accessible authors:
Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski and Ernest Hemingway, Joyce Carol Oates and Sandra Cisneros and Sally Rooney. These authors write clear, concise, simple sentences. Powerful sentences.
These authors write like copywriters.
