Indulgence

My English teacher gave those ones from us, who wanted to study English, a short list of books we ought to read. When it came to James Joyce his advice was to read "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" rather than "Ulysses", because it was shorter and because it is essentially what Joyce is all about.

What really stayed in my mind was the sermons of the priests how they indulged in imagining the tortures that are awaiting the sinners in hell. I was very much amused by their obsessions because they felt so alien and almost in an odd way erotic. Yet I can imagine that to some people they must have been horrifying.