"Welcome O life. I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
When I'm asked, as I am on occasion, to name my favourite author and/or book, I always feel hesitant to answer. It's not because I don't know, am not sure or find the question foolish, although those are all perfectly legitimate positions. Rather I've grown used, over the years, to a certain incredulity in the questioner when I finally do answer. The unsaid feeling being that I'm being somehow pretentious, dishonest and self aggrandizing as if I was trying to one up the other person by choosing the most difficult and rarefied subject to admire
Admittedly, I'm probably just being neurotic but, still, it gives me pause. The answer, by the way, is easy for me and has been for some time. My favourite author is James Joyce and my favourite book is his epic adventure of the everyday, "Ulysses".
I suppose I should include some kind of biographical sketch of Joyce but, I'll be honest, that would be boring and I'm too lazy, so click here thank you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce
Good enough? Okay then.
Lets back up a bit. In preparation for this post I've been trying to remember exactly when I first become aware of James Joyce. I remember that "Ulysses" was the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question but I don't think that was it. Actually, somewhere in my teens I became fascinated by Ireland and all things Irish although I'm not sure where or when that began either . I remember being struck by the physical beauty of the country in Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" and that was definitely part of it, but it's clear to me that the greatest factor influencing my Irish obsession was the music of The Pogues.
A quarter century after discovering them The Pogues remain at the top of my favourite all time bands, particularly the albums, 'Red Roses For Me", "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash" and "If I Should Fall From Grace With God". Their songs, mostly written by lead singer Shane MacGowan, are filled with references to Irish history, mythology and literature performed with a punk sensibility fused with traditional Irish instrumentation. Great stuff, can't recommend it enough, and it solidified my decades long obsession with all things Irish. Joyce actually appears on the cover of their third album, the great "If I Should Fall from Grace With God".
Now parallel to this I'm sure I'd read at least some Joyce, perhaps selections from "Dubliners" or a first attempt at "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and I can pinpoint exactly the individual work and the surrounding circumstances that made me an admirer. It was reading "The Dead", late into the night one Christmas Eve. "The Dead" if you don't know, is the last piece in "Dubliners" a lengthy, rambling story centred around a Christmas Eve dinner party attended by Dublin artists and intellectuals. Like all the stories in "Dubliners" it is not driven by narrative but by the astute observation of character and behaviour and by the uniquely Irish (or better, the uniquely Dubliner) flow of conversation. It is also a masterpiece, one of the greatest short stories ever written. I'm not going to discuss the plot but I will say that the last few pages contain some of the most beautiful prose in the English language. I was engrossed in the story anyway but the concluding passages, an extended meditation on love and death, were transporting. Alone in my bedroom I was moved to tears (and I'm not an easy cry, or at least I wasn't then) and still get goosebumps thinking about it. Joyce and I (I call him Jim) have been pretty close ever since.
"(A writer is) a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of existence into the radiant body of everlasting life" (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
After the rapture of "The Dead" it was definitely time to reattempt Joyce's great autobiographical novel; "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". I remember being primarily struck by the early passages about the young hero Stephen Dedalus' struggles at school as they were moving and easy to identify with. Needless to say the subtleties of Irish politics and history were largely lost on me and were aspects I would only learn to appreciate later. Another vivid passage is a sermon on hell that appears late in the book, terrifying and vivid even to a non-believer like myself.
There where however, several passages, particularly a complex discussion on aesthetics during Stephen's college years that were baffling to me. This was frustrating because, in the arrogance of youth, I had a relatively high opinion of my intellect and reading level at the time and it was more than a little humbling to discover how little I knew or understood. So amongst the many other valuable things I learned from Jim was a sense of humility, an important and underrated aspect of being a serious student, or for that matter a reader, of literature.
Needless to say, I've re-read "Portrait..." many times over the years and my appreciation of it has grown alongside my increased knowledge of Irish history and politics and the particulars of Joyce's own life , as well as my own life experience. It's one of my favourite books and one I'm happy to recommend to almost anyone.
"The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. Paintings of Moreau are paintings of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our minds into contact with eternal wisdom; Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys." (Ulysses)
"Oh rocks!' says Molly Bloom, drumming her fingers in impatience. 'Tell us in plain words." (Ulysses)
So now we come to the reason behind this rambling and self absorbed post. Today is June 16th, so Happy Bloomsday! June 16th 1904 is the day on which James Joyce's great masterpiece "Ulysses" takes place. All over Dublin today, but especially in Sandymount, people are celebrating the life, work and characters of James Joyce, particularly, of course, those of "Ulysses". June 16th 1904 was also the day on which Joyce met the great love of his life Nora Barnacle, the woman who would be his companion for the rest of his life, so it's safe to say that the date was not chosen at random.
"Ulysses" has dozens of memorable characters but it focuses primarily on three, Stephen Dedalus, returning from "Portrait..", Leopold Bloom, a lower middle class advertising agent of Jewish extraction and Molly Bloom, his earthy, sensuous wife. Bloom is the "Ulysses" of the title and it's his day long peregrinations (his "Odyssey") that make up the bulk of the novel's narrative. Stephen serves as a sort of Telemachus as he wanders a parallel course around Dublin and Molly is a bawdy, witty and adulterous Penelope.
The simplest narrative imaginable is given the the most complex treatment. Every chapter corresponds to an incident from "The Odyssey" of Homer, has it's own symbol as well as being symbolic of organs of the body, various disciplines of the arts and a specific literary technique. The style of writing changes from chapter to chapter from relatively straightforward prose, to stream of consciousness, script (play form), catechism, newspaper headlines to complex pastiches of mythical and biblical speech, pulp fiction and in one chapter (Golden Oxen of the Sun), the entirety of English literature.
It's all this that gives the novel it's intimidating reputation and I'm not going to deny that it's a challenging read. I've read it several times and have even listened to a very good audio version and I'm certain that I have not gotten every allusion or enjoyed every nuance. If one approaches the book (or any book) as a test, the chances are you will not enjoy it, you'll resent and abandon it as a self indulgent piece of intellectual noodling. This would be a great pity because of all the books I've ever read, not only is it one of the most impressive and important but it's also one of the most fun.
First of all, it's a hilarious book. It's filled with the complex and witty wordplay true, but that sits comfortably alongside, corny puns, physical and scatological humor and the unique comic voice of the city of Dublin and it's denizens. For me the comic highlight is the chapter "Cyclops" in which Bloom is confronted by a drunken, anti-Semitic Irish nationalist. The chapter bounces back and forth between the point of view of a smart alec observer of the incident and a mock heroic narration in the style of ancient Irish myth, culminating in a pseudo biblical passage in which the triumphant Bloom ascends to heaven:
"And there came a voice out of heaven, calling Elijah! Elijah! And he answered with a main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohoes's in Little Green Street like a shot off a shovel."
Even more than the humor however, what I love about "Ulysses" is it's in-your-face humanity. All of the literary genius and mastery of language would amount to nothing if Joyce didn't populate the novel with living, breathing human beings with all the faults and foibles that entails. Bloom is one of the great figues of literature not because he's brave or strong (although he is after a fashion) but because he's decent. As a husband, a father , a son and a breadwinner, he's everything a man can really be and more. He's not perfect, with a predilection towards voyeurism and an overall preoccupation with matters sexual, but he is unfailingly kind and empathetic, even to those who despise him.
Then there's his wife, one of the great women of literature. We should hate Molly for her unfaithfulness but we don't. If anything we understand (without actually approving) her needs and frustrations both personal and sexual. She's so funny and honest it's as easy for us to forgive her transgressions as it is for Bloom himself. The last chapter of the book "Penelope" is her internal monologue and it's a tour de force of writing, arguably the best in the book. I would never presume to say that Joyce completely understood women, but he certainly understood Molly Bloom (as well he should since she was based on Nora).
Other favourite chapters of mine include the opening chapter "Telemachus" which reintroduces us to Stephen Dedalus and spells out his current dilemma (in the words of the Clash "should I stay or should I go"), "Wandering Rocks", portraying various characters and their interactions, "Nausicaa" in which a voyeuristic encounter between Bloom and a pretty young women is rendered in a style aping pulp romance novels and "Sirens" the most musical chapter of the book, even including an an onomatopoeic overture.
For the record, for me the most difficult chapter by far is "Golden Oxen of the Sun". I always have to take it a page at a time as the style changes every few sentences and it seems to be written for maximum obfuscation. "Circe" written in the form of a play is also tough because of it's aggressively hallucinatory content but it's also very funny and fun to read. I've often wondered if an ambitious theatre director has ever produced it for the stage. I'll bet it's happened. I've seen "Penelope" produced as a one woman show called 'Molly" and it was brilliant!
Anyway, this is getting long and I'd really like to post it on Bloomsday, so I should wrap it up. If you take nothing else away from what I've written here let it be this; don't be intimidated by Joyce and "Ulysses". By all means read "Dubliners" and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" first. If you don't care for those, fair enough, no writer, no matter how great, is for everybody. However, if you do enjoy those, you must attempt "Ulysses'. Don't worry about getting every nuance, try to enjoy the language and spending time with the characters, Hopefully that will be enough.
Before I go, I have a confession. Even though Joyce is my favourite writer, I have never successfully completed his last, and some say his greatest, novel "Finnegan's Wake". It's combination of wordplay, literary, historical and mythical allusion and dream logic just completely defeats me. I'm literally not knowledgeable enough to read it. I have listened to some very old audio recording of Joyce reading from it and did enjoy the musicality of his reading but that's the best I've managed. Ah well, maybe someday when I have the time to read it side by side with a book of annotations, but until then I'll leave it alone.
Well, I hope this has been fun to read and has adequately explained why Joyce is so important to me. Some of my other favourite writers include, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Honore de Balzac, William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov and Cormac McCarthy and I may write about all of them in the future. I would never presume however, to call any of them by their first name
Happy Bloomsday!
PS - A word about the photos. All these were taken during a trip I took with my wife, to Ireland in 2009. The first one is me with the statue of Joyce on O'Connel Street in the heart of Dublin, the second is a casting of Joyce's death mask from the James Joyce museum in the Martello Tower at Sandymount, the third is me with the bust of Joyce in St. Stephen's Green, the fourth is the Martello Tower in Sandymount, the setting for the opening scenes of "Ulysses" and the home of The James Joyce Museum and the last is me raising a pint of Guinness to my friend Jim in Davey Byrne's Pub which appears in the '"Lestrygonians" chapter of "Ulysses".
Thanks
excellent post.
ReplyDeleteI read bits of Ulysses to celebrate, mostly Molly's inner run-on sentence.
watched the 1967(?) film also.
riverrun, mofo!