Paulo Coelho on James Joyce

For years I've entertained the opinion that Paulo Coelho's is an incredibly shallow writer.

I haven't read a single Coelho production, precisely because of the reasons cited in The Economist. But a million and a half others worldwide have read Coelho and they adulate him. 

I believe that as a writer/artist the shallower one is, the wider her popularity might be. My rationale is simple--a novel/a piece of art is not the exact equivalent of a mass product.

The Bible is the world's biggest seller, and from personal experience of it, I can tell that it's a supremely bright book.

But the Bible is one of "The Books", not a book.

A comparison can be made between Ceolho's The Alchemist, which has sold a 150 million copies worldwide, and James Joyce's Ulysses, which didn't sell during his lifetime, but has grown to become a biblio-institution over time.

The former is shallow; the latter is deep, and if you are fishing around for an explanation try veering in the direction of Nicolas Carr (he'll tell you why Ulysses endures over The Alchemist or 29 other "mystical" books Coelho has fabricated over the years).

When a bad writer attacks a pioneer of form, the depth of the former's intellectual impoverishment is exposed. 

Coelho's propaganda against James Joyce is a mark of his abys(s)mality:

[Joyce has damaged the 20th century novel by reducing it to] pure style [...] there is nothing there [...] If you dissect Ulysses it gives you a tweet.

Defenders of Joyce have justly lashed out against Coelho, and the lashings sound better-crafted than some of the zombie-musings of Coelho on mystical whales etc.:

Here's Stuart Kelly in The Guardian:

Coelho is, of course, entitled to his dumb opinion, just as I am entitled to think Coelho's work is a nauseous broth of egomania and snake-oil mysticism with slightly less intellect, empathy and verbal dexterity than the week-old camembert I threw out yesterday. 

What a wonderful way to call Coelho "stinky"!