When an attempt to break a world record in Bournemouth was a 'miserable failure'
The summer sun beat down on Bournemouth during what was hoped to be a record-breaking spectacle.
Alas, the ambitious attempt to forge the world's longest conga line, a highlight of the Bournemouth Regatta and Carnival on August 7, 1979, unravelled into what was unceremoniously dubbed a "miserable failure."
These were the stark, and perhaps ironically delivered, words of the event's compere, the aptly-named Tony Fail.
He, more than anyone, felt the sting as the final count revealed a conga chain that fell short by a staggering margin of more than 7,500 participants.
The vision had been grand - a joyous, snaking line of thousands, jigging and jogging their way into the annals of history.
The reality, however, was a far more modest affair.
A respectable, yet ultimately insufficient, 1,478 enthusiastic individuals joined the line-up on that fateful day.
Their collective energy, while admirable, was simply not enough to eclipse the formidable record of 8,000, proudly held by the seaside resort of Sidmouth..
The target remained tantalisingly out of reach, a distant dream dissolving in the summer haze.
Mr Fail, tasked with galvanising the crowds and narrating the hopeful triumph, was left instead to dissect the downfall.
He laid the blame squarely at the feet of the thousands of onlookers who, despite lining the route, chose spectating over participating.
His disappointment was palpable as he lamented to the Daily Echo.
"The sheer number of people who turned out to watch was astounding," he recounted, a note of frustration lacing his tone.
"There must have been at least 2,000 souls gathered at the Pier Approach alone, and the clifftops were absolutely teeming with faces.
Spectators, standing three deep, flanked both sides of our intended conga path along the promenade."
His voice carried the weight of what might have been.
"I feel sure, with absolute conviction," he continued, his gaze sweeping over the now-dispersing crowd, "that if every single one of those onlookers had cast aside their inhibitions and joined our merry chain, we wouldn't just have broken the record – we would have obliterated it. We could have easily boasted a magnificent line of at least 10,000 participants, a truly unforgettable sight for Bournemouth."
But it was not to be.
The day that had dawned with such vibrant promise ended with a whimper, a tale of what-ifs and a reminder that records are not broken by observation alone, but by the collective will and active participation of the many.
For Bournemouth in the summer of '79, the conga dream remained just that – a dream, danced by too few.
In a seaside spectacle that promised a pulsating ribbon of revelry, the ambitious attempt to forge a record-breaking conga chain in Bournemouth, unfortunately, and quite spectacularly, unravelled into what was succinctly described as a "miserable failure."
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That second sentence — the one about ice — obliquely refers to the critical shift away from Ellmann's humanist reading of 'Ulysses,' one that approaches this modernist classic as a difficult but essentially traditional novel, to one that views the book much more as an artistic experiment with language, a stepping stone on the way to the neologistic wordplay of 'Finnegans Wake.' In general, Ellmann sets 'Ulysses' against the backdrop of the people and institutions that shaped Joyce — his family, teachers and friends; Nora Barnacle, with whom he shared his life; the Catholic Church, against which he rebelled; and, later, the financial supporters whom he charmed and the fellow writers who paid him homage. In his inaugural lecture at Oxford in 1971, Ellmann declared: 'More than anything else we want in modern biography to see the character forming, its peculiarities taking shape.' 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'Ulysses' takes place during one day in Dublin — June 16, 1904, now known as Bloomsday — and exemplifies what Ellmann called 'the justification of the commonplace,' that is the faithful depiction of ordinary people leading ordinary lives. To achieve this, Joyce depended on an abundance of exact detail. Ellmann and Leader adopt a similar approach in their biographies — their books are rich in the minute, even trivial particulars that give vivacity to a narrative. Still, there can be too much of a good thing. Leader, for instance, reprints long extracts from the love letters sent by Ellmann's girlfriends. There are numerous pen portraits of his teachers and classmates at Yale (where he earned a PhD), his various colleagues at Northwestern (where he taught for 17 years) and the many people he interviewed — more than 300 — when he was researching Joyce's life. 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First, it underscores how Leader roots his narrative in letters and similar documentation. Second, and even more important, this family drama — especially the relationship of father and son — forms one of several parallels, verging on self-identification, between Ellmann and Joyce and explains some of the biographer's distinctive understanding of the novelist's life. Just as the Irish genius Joyce rejected Catholicism's dogmas and constraints, so the humanist, European-minded Ellmann freed himself from his parents' obsession with Jewish identity. On the very last page of Leader's biography, a nurse asked the dying Ellmann what religion he had, if any. His daughter Lucy answered for him: 'Jewish.' At which point, the almost speechless, bedridden scholar managed to veto this answer and croak out a single word: 'None.' A few sentences later, the biography is over. I've hardly touched on the second half of Leader's book. Again and again, Ellmann charms his way into the good graces, and the archives, of almost everyone possessing Joycean material or memories he needs. Throughout his career, Ellmann worked his scholarly prestige for all it was worth — top dollar from Northwestern, generous leaves of absence, a featherlight teaching schedule, and so many fellowships it's hard to keep count. While lackluster as a lecturer, in other academic contexts, he has been described as 'scrupulous, winningly pleasant, and unbending.' Still, according to his daughters, the modernist scholar Maud Ellmann and the award-winning novelist Lucy Ellmann, it was their mother who had the real brains in the family. When annoyed with her husband, Mary Ellmann would refer to him as 'Dickie-boy' and could leave him deflated by saying that he sounded just like his mother. In 1968, she finally brought out her own excellent book, 'Thinking About Women,' a witty, pioneering work of feminist thought (which I read long before anything by her husband). But then, on Nov. 4, 1969, disaster struck. Mary suffered a debilitating aneurysm, which left her paralyzed on one side and in a wheelchair. Partly so that ongoing care would be covered by Britain's national health service, her husband took up the offer from Oxford. Some scholars today view Ellmann's 'James Joyce,' as, to quote John McCourt, 'a wonderful product of a particular time — postwar, conservative, 1950s America.' Yet its author isn't so easily slotted. As one of Leader's many endnotes tells us, Ellmann testified 'in support of [James] Baldwin's 'Another Country' when there was a move to remove it from Chicago Public Schools' and, on May 7, 1968, 'he was one of three Northwestern faculty members who circulated a statement — a statement he wrote — in support of the demand of Black students for more recruitment and financial aid for Black Students, desegregation of the university's real estate holdings, and creation of a department of African American Studies.' Ellmann aptly described Joyce's heroes 'as grudged heroes — the impossible young man, the passive adult, the whisky-drinking graybeard. It is hard to like them, harder to admire them. Joyce prefers it so. Unequivocal sympathy would be romancing. He denudes man of what we are accustomed to respect, then summons us to sympathize.' In a muted way, Leader does the same in this evenhanded, well-written and sometimes provocative biography. Richard Ellmann starts out as a good little straight-A student but ends up being far better than that. Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic and a regular contributor to Book World. The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker By Zachary Leader Harvard University Press. 464 pp. $35.
