I’ve never been able to read Joyce. But the point that it took him 7 years to write Ulysses reminds me of a story out of Don Quixote.
A man walks to the center of town, and gathers a crowd to watch the show he’s about to put on. The man picks up a dog and inserts a tube into its rump. He begins to inflate the dog. The crowd watches, fascinated. The dog grows larger. Eventually, the man pulls the tube out and lots of air noisily escapes. The dog runs away. The man turns to the crowd expectantly, and asks: “You think it’s easy to inflate a dog with a tube?”
Moral: Just because someone works hard at a piece of work doesn’t mean it’s great art.