What interests me in reading bad reviews of this novel (the ones, admittedly, I really like to read) is how upset people get with Joyce about writing it in the first place, as though in so doing he was only trying to stick his finger in as many eyes as possible. Those who rate the novel poorly also like to make claims that people who love Ulysses are just pretending to “get it” or trying to appear intelligent.
Well, I pretend all kinds of things, and I do attempt to come off as intelligent, but this book really is a sheer masterpiece and a monument to the human intellect. It’s better than the Bible, because one person wrote it. If aliens ever land, it is one of the things that we can hand them as absolute proof of our artistry and brilliance. Ulysses, like all great art, justifies mankind. And it’s more fun than any board game you have ever or will ever play. It’s the joy of language ecstatically written. Stop seeking symmetries with Greek mythology—this will never help you get what’s going on.
Let me stand next to your BUCK MULLIGAN.
When you listen to Jimi Hendrix play guitar or Coltrane play sax, do you attempt to trace influences or symmetries with previous musicians to enjoy what they are doing? No, at least not for the sheer visceral enjoyment of the music. Dig on Jimi shredding strings or Coltrane blowing sax. It’s the same for Joyce’s Ulysses. It is a marvelous and quite interactive experience. Relax. Untense those muscles. Joyce wants you to play with him. He just rolled you a ball. Roll it back. Try again. It’s fun. You’ll see.
“An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most mollificative suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus of the paranymphs have escorted to the quadrepedal proscenium of connubial communion.”
“Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signature of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.”
“Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller than red globules of man’s blood they creepycrawl after Blake’s buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow. Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.”
Tags: Bible · buttocks · James Joyce · Jeremy Cort · Jimi Hendrix · saxophone · Ulysses13 Comments
Ok, on the one hand, i agree with the basic gist of what you’re saying here, which is that readers are missing out if they dismiss Ulysses offhand because it’s “hard.”
In my own experience, those who publicly voice disdain for James Joyce usually haven’t given him a real chance, or at least haven’t had the chance to read Ulysses with the necessary guidance (this is why people spend their entire lives pouring over the material–so they can give us a foot in the door if we don’t happen to be blessed with a 5000 IQ).
What I find most vexing, Jeremy, is the use of quotes here without any explanation (like–why do you like this particular turn of phrase?) or context (this is after Stephen Dedalus does BLAH BLAH BLAH).
Such glib recitation seems to contradict your argument about the accessibility of James Joyce’s “genius” completely.
I find the argument that you don’t even need to ATTEMPT to understand the full meaning of each sentence–with all that delicious allusion and sly double entendre–in order to appreciate the book–because, look, he’s cool like a jazz artist–is a little condescending, both to the rest of us imbeciles who didn’t know better, and to Coltrane and Hendrix and to Mr. Joyce–like, “Aw, little Jimmy, did you make a STORY? Look at all the pretty words you made! Have a cupcake.”
Saying what essentially amounts to “sit back and let enjoy the ride, man” sells the book short.
I have to say I don’t really buy the Coltrane/jazz analogy in particular, or the music one in general. Part of the pleasure of listening to Coltrane (or any jazz) lies precisely in tracing influences and identifying symmetries — that’s kind of the point of jazz standards, and that’s why jazz collectors go nuts for recordings of different sessions of a song they already own in triplicate. (That’s why cover bands and remix DJs and mash-up artists are popular, too.) Sure, you can just sit back and enjoy your visceral reaction to the music, but you can also enjoy it on a whole other level — or so the conventional music snob wisdom goes — if you take the time to “get it”.
I also think the “visceral reaction” argument is an odd one in a Joyce apologia, because usually lit snobs sneer at books that give you “merely” a visceral reaction — the argument being, i.e., that books providing only entertainment/enjoyment are inferior to “literature” in which you are endlessly challenged by dense language and allusion, and, e.g., our very own Brooks Sterritt. If it’s okay to appreciate Joyce for the sheer visceral pleasure of the language, isn’t it also okay to appreciate Clive Cussler for the sheer visceral enjoyment of his white-knuckle plots?
I agree with the basic gist of what you are saying as well, Alexis, although I think you mistake my intentions. I meant to address a specific audience, that is: people who in prior attempts to read Ulysses failed to grasp what was actually of aesthetic merit in the novel and hence wrote it off as nothing but a breeding nest for sneering lit snobs (to borrow Andrew’s construction). It seems a little self-fulfilling to me when people approach Joyce’s labyrinth with a critic as their guide or abstract scheme as their map and then eventually give it up as a “medieval abstrusiosity.” I honestly believe understanding the technique and architecture underlying Ulysses’ eighteen episodes does not require an in-depth knowledge of Homer or Shakespeare at all– only patience and an open mind. Knowing the Western canon will certainly enrich the experience, no doubt, but it is the inherent craft and poetic play at work in the novel that makes it so original and– yes– so important. I have read plenty of novels with no literary merit whatsoever that make an endless array of literary references. My point is, having placed too much emphasis on these allusions, many lazy or bad readers never allow Ulysses to reveal itself as itself, as an aesthetic object in the world and not an abstract representation of other objects and ideas. One should bear in mind that Joyce himself removed the titles to the different episodes that hearkened back to Odyssean characters and scenes. He did this not to be more arcane and keep the snobs in material, but rather because he realized these references distracted readers who were first approaching the novel from its essential movement and significance.
I do not see how my analogy between Joyce and virtuosic musicians implies one should not attempt to understand the many allusions or references in Ulysses either, as I am concerned with people who are looking “for a way in.” No doubt, Ulysses is a microcosm of Western culture, drawing from a vast array of history, science, psychology, mythology, literature, etc.– but I do not think someone needs a deep and prior knowledge of these fields to acknowledge Joyce’s scary talent. Great books are meant to be reread again and again precisely because there exist varying levels of enjoyment and appreciation. Just as with jazz music (or the blues, or hip hop, or whatever), the pleasure is only increased as one becomes more aware of the surrounding context, the multiple versions of different songs, re-recordings, etc.– but I doubt very strongly many get into jazz in order to trace influences. Such logic seems backwards to me. I got into jazz because it sounds amazing, and only later was interested in the way Ellington and Monk influenced Mingus. Would you not agree, Andrew?
Jeremy, I wish you had included the argument above in the first place. The way you articulated your point just now makes your ideas on how to approach Ulysses very clear. Perhaps you were concerned with word count. For the future, I say let it all hang out.
I don’t think it’s particularly instructive to get into a detailed back-and-forth speculating about why people might or might not get into jazz, so I won’t try. Your point is well taken, though, and, as Alexis says, much clearer in your response — I didn’t understand from the original that you see visceral enjoyment only as an entry point for allusion-spotting.
For what it’s worth, though, I’m still not entirely convinced by the analogy. For a start, I think if we’re going to compare Joyce to a jazz musician, it’s a bit disingenuous to choose someone like Charlie Parker, who enjoyed and continues to enjoy wide renown because he’s on the easy-listening end of the jazz spectrum (let’s call him the Hemingway of jazz). Joyce is more like a Nels Cline or a Medeski Martin & Wood, who have much smaller but no less devoted followings because their sound is not instinctively as easy to appreciate — in the same way that Joyce’s prose, even if “marvelous”, still takes some effort to read as prose. And that’s why, like experimental jazz, plenty of people dismiss Joyce as random, unpleasant noise right off the bat.
I don’t mean to attack — I actually find this exchange quite interesting, and your response very thoughtful. (For the record, I’ve never read Joyce, but you’ve come closer than anyone at persuading me to try it.) I just feel like there’s something slightly fishy about comparing Joyce not to other virtuosos but to other widely popular virtuosos, because he is manifestly not the latter — and for a reason, despite how brilliant his prose might be by some standards. “Inelecutable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes” might be a neat sentence, but as “a way in”, it’s still only going to work for people who already read a lot of literature, and you’re kidding yourself if you think anyone can just sit down and instantly take pleasure in it in the same way they can with Charlie Parker.
I’m on page 5 of Ulysses and it’s pretty easy, so far.
Alexis, your statement: “’Aw, little Jimmy, did you make a STORY? Look at all the pretty words you made! Have a cupcake.’” The “Look at all the pretty words” part, at least, is dead-on as an appropriate response to Ulysses, or to music for that matter. The “combination of qualities that delights the aesthetic senses” would be beauty, after all, a point I think Jeremy makes later in his mention of Ulysses as an aesthetic object.
Also, “sit back and enjoy the ride” doesn’t sell the book short, I don’t think. One of my undergrad profs said the same thing about Gravity’s Rainbow (“Just let it wash over you”) after he told us to read it over spring break (no one managed except some kid who was probably a lit snob). Ulysses is going to be hard to read regardless–even with a guide no one is going to “understand the full meaning of each sentence.”
Andrew, thanks for the shout-out. What you are saying is completely defensible: of course it is “okay” to appreciate Clive Cussler’s white-knuckle plots. However, I would like to ask you if you think certain books can ever be *better* than others. Are all books equal in your eyes, or are there any you would say are inferior? I guess one possible response could be that it’s all “subjective.”
To take it further, possibly into offensive territory, is it possible for one book to be *smarter* than another? Here’s a quote from an essay by Ben Marcus I just read:
“In the literary world, it’s not politic to suggest that the brain is even involved in reading, or that our reading faculties might actually be improved. Mentions of the brain imply effort, and effort is the last thing we are supposed to request of a reader. Language is meant to flow predigested, like liquid down a feeding tube.”
Andrew, to clarify: it is not an entry point for allusion-spotting, but rather a doorway to:
– some of the most beautiful prose in the English language, period. Joyce did what writers are supposed to do, and what only the greatest writers can do– he refreshed the language. Just as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie refreshed jazz with bebop. Joyce was an experimenter, yes, but he was also highly conservative in his seeking a new sort of prose that could speak to new generations about the same old things.
– brilliant characterization. No book of fiction I have ever read contained characters so 3-dimensional and so well-sculpted that I had to keep reminding myself that they were nothing but fabrications. I mean, Ulysses is the closes thing to those books in television shows or movies we were inundated with as children which, when opened, unleashed real-life creatures who began teeming around your bedroom and speaking directly to you. Despite what I know, the fact that Leopold Bloom never lived on 7 Eccles Street with his wife Molly is still hard for me to swallow.
– Incredibly inventive writing techniques. From his stream-lined, sleek-muscled stream of consciousness to his parodies of catechisms, from his sections where Dublin becomes a temporal maze which can only be unraveled by uncovering synchronicities, to his episodes written in the form of a fugue, etc., etc., there is so much to learn from this book that to lift your nose to it and damn it as “unreadable high-brow nonsense” is kind of sad to me. Joyce is in the business of opening minds to fresh, unexplored possibilities. He is in the pool playing, and he wants you to jump in. Jump in. The water’s fine. The water feels great.
Honestly, the overarching symmetry with the Odyssey or the fact that Joyce attempted to make the book follow Aristotle’s outline for a tragedy in the Poetics is the least interesting aspect of the book. Yes, it’s still incredible, and Joyce’s ability to subvert Homeric constructions brilliant, but what makes the book a masterpiece is that, despite all the allusions to Dante and Aristotle and William of Occam et al., the book is entirely self-contained. Self-contained. Really.
I will probably reread Ulysses every few years until the day I die. I do not think that I really started perceiving how it really worked until after the third read– but it was obvious to me at once how brilliant and wonderful it was. I doubt I will ever understand everything in it, nor do I feel that I should. The book is certainly not for those who just want to get their eyes a little exercise on the subway, but for people who want to think, for people who love language, for people who love great writing. That’s it. The comparison between musicians is not meant to be taken literally (nor are any metaphors or similes), but rather a way to get you to look at the book in a fresh manner. I am glad we are having this discussion, by the way.
You said that I am fooling myself if I believe that the average reader can sit down and enjoy Ulysses with “instant pleasure.” I don’t believe that, but I still would urge them to try, and to ignore the critical parasites who have attached themselves to the work. But casual readers aside, we’re aspiring writers, and as aspiring writers, to not attempt to see what is happening in Ulysses, or to disregard that, is foolish. If I was a painter, I would still study Michelangelo and Picasso, even if I did not want to paint like them. Because they are masters in their own way, and all masters might not make good models, but they sure can teach us something about craft. I am not trying to sound pretentious, I promise, but we are here to get a Masters in Fine Arts, by the way. Fine arts. Think about it.
That said, I don’t want to sneer like a lit critic at anybody. Rather, I want to geek out over some really great writing like any old fanboy and share that with other writers. But despite this fact, or perhaps because of it, I agree wholeheartedly with Brooks that some books are obviously smarter than others, and better for you. Joyce has much more to give than Cussler, especially to a writer apprentice. I have never heard of Ben Marcus, but that quote Brooks posted makes me interested in what else he might have to say.
Cheers.
Brooks: well, no, of course all books are not equal in my eyes, but I don’t think that means all books don’t have equal potential to entertain/touch/move/challenge someone, somewhere. And I suppose that does boil down to everything being subjective (why do you put subjective in scare quotes?), though I tend to favour a sort of cooperative subjectivity (I believe the social scientists call it “intersubjective objectivity”) wherein a group of like-minded people can agree on the best set of books (or whatever) for their particular purpose while at the same time acknowledging how arbitrary that set is.
The main problem I have with the “some books are better/smarter than others” argument is that far too often it’s used to justify a “some readers are better/smarter than others” argument, which is bad logic if nothing else. Enjoying Clive Cussler doesn’t make you a bad person, and it certainly doesn’t make you any worse (or any *dumber*) a person than someone who prefers “literature” — which is unfortunately where many such discussions inevitably end up.
Jeremy: Your point is again well taken, but I would still argue that every hour spent writing will make you a better writer in the long run than every hour spent reading Joyce — I suspect we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one, but to me the best way to develop as a writer is just to *write*. (The “Fine Arts” in Master of Fine Arts, by the way, isn’t much more than a convenient technical distinction between a master’s degree earned *doing* your craft and one earned studying it academically — which gets you an MA — and I suspect that’s the reason MFAs are “worth” more, rather than that people with MFAs are more likely to have read and appreciated Joyce).
The reason I resist people telling me that Joyce is the best, that I must read Joyce, that Joyce will make me a better person, etc., is because a statement like “I read Joyce because I love language” implies (intentionally or not) that someone who hasn’t read Joyce must not love language as much — and in that respect Joyce begins to feel like a hoop I have to jump through to prove that I’m serious about writing. Frankly, I’d rather let my writing speak for itself — and if it’s really not that good to begin with then I doubt reading Joyce will make any difference.
Andrew, you should give Joyce a whirl. Try Dubliners.
For the record, I am not trying to insinuate or imply that anyone is not as intelligent or doesn’t love language as much as someone else just because they have/ have not read Ulysses. Such an assumption seems to rely more on your own prior experience and/or your own assumptions than my intentions. You, for instance, seem quite intelligent, Andrew, and I imagine you love language or we wouldn’t be discussing this. If you never read Ulysses, I promise I will not think you are dumber than me. In fact, I’d still drink a beer with you and we could talk about Stephen King and Marvel Comics or whatever. Such discussions also provide me pleasure.
All I am attempting to get across is that anyone who loves language and literature is really missing out by not reading Ulysses. I personally believe the literary tradition we’ve inherited is a record of influence and not an arbitrary creation of a patriarchal elite, as all literature is born from a dialogue with previous literature. Whether one is into that kind of thing or not, it is important to come to terms with that tradition before one starts attacking it or decides it is something vile.
I also agree with you 100 percent that the best way to improve one’s writing is by, well, writing, and writing as much as possible. I suppose I take it for granted that the people enrolled in an MFA program like our own are writing on a regular basis, or at least trying to– although I suppose many of them are not (on that note, I find Joe’s post below frankly disturbing– despite the fact that I enjoy Joe’s company very much). But this point aside, I think it is pretty obvious that reading and writing are complimentary habits, and that reading widely is essential to any serious exploration of the craft. I do not think that reading Joyce regularly will automatically make someone a better writer, like taking your “writer’s vitamin”, but I do think it will place at a writer’s disposal more tools to work with (although, again, that doesn’t mean said writer will use them well unless he/she practices using them, and cultivates their talent).
To sum up, I do believe Joyce will make a difference if you give him an honest, careful look, because reading Joyce will show you things that you have never seen before. And he just might make you want to kick your feet together and dance on your toes.
Let us not forget that the characters are Celtic and the time is Spring.
Any review (a critique, not just any article) written in the far or near past of a book published nearly 90 years ago, unless you’re citing this review in a historical context to argue something new, strikes me as an odd use of your time.
Not because reviews are unworthy as accompaniments for serious studies of a whole text, since any book’s reception is a key factor in determining its success or failure of a type, but from their irrelevance to the kind of discussion I think you want to have, which is not to contradict a specific review or group of reviews, but to promote a book you like and think others should like, too. It constitutes, in your estimation, an empirical degree of quality, exists on a sparsely-populated plane, the textual act of “justifying mankind.” And, you say, you mean to set the record straight.
You begin, however, by indicating a group of people that is amusingly misinformed or misguided, which is why you like reading these bad reviews, and continue that Joyce’s detractors miss out on Scripture Plus. That’s about it–no bad reviews are cited (Max Eastman would’ve been the obvious reference–Eliot, Stein, and Joyce were on his list of Unintelligibles–unless you mean David Frum’s pebble-kicking in National Review or on some dude’s one-star personal website review, which, I mean, be my guest), merely dismissed out of hand as being incorrect and not worth directing anyone to. Why didn’t you mention the dialogue between Joyce and Borges? Borges admired Joyce immensely, but went himself a different direction. (I can’t find the article on Joyce that Borges published in 1925 that contained his attempt to translate a page of it into Spanish–it’s in his Selected Non-Fictions. While searching, I found this article by Sergio Waisman that argues Borges’s “mistranslation” made the language “less stable, much more uncertain, and hence, much richer.” Hm.)
You don’t err in comparing Joyce to jazz, which, as Andrew says, does recognize and require influence and knowledge of symmetry, but does also recognize the merging of certain influences and certain symmetries to a point at which the old patterns and old symmetries (I’m using “old” to refer to what precedes Joyce, not what is antiquated by him) become unrecognizable and maybe parts of new influences, new symmetries. Maybe the merging creates noise, and nothing more. Jazz isn’t always pleasant. Neither is Ulysses, I don’t think, which is to say some of it is just textual noise. The “work” doesn’t lie in fooling yourself into thinking noise is harmonious or “higher” than other forms of art, but in outlasting noise. This is, at least, not contrary to Joyce’s purpose, nor prohibitive of aesthetic pleasure. I think stopping there is a mistake, but I understand your point, Jeremy, and agree.
Regarding this “merging,” which is kind of an unfortunate word choice on my part–I want to capture the means by which symmetries join and become asymmetrical, then, by a process, become symmetrical again, as if superimposed on the other, then pass through each other completely and become two distinct symmetries again. The stages between these distinctions and apparent sameness constitute, for me, the majority of jazz worth hearing or making.
Some of this filters through what I’ve been thinking regarding narrative, that “oversystematisation” depends on enthusiasts bent on discarding or canonizing a text on its individual de/merits, which may be considerable, and which depend on that text’s absorption into one kind of a system or another. Consider the various systems that conflate in Ulysses: religion, linguistics, psychology, the critical apparatus, etc. The book seems to lend itself to oversystemisation, but it also, by design, prevents the same–the effect of the book’s structure precludes a categorical verdict beyond aloof veneration or utter dismissal. Since it’s practically impossible to speak categorically about it without looking very ridiculous, no one does, except to say it’s a novel, more or less, that it’s really fucking good or bad, that if you want to write, you’d do well to read as much of it as you can or stay away, and that your distaste or neglect may not be a bad stage–that probably means your emulation of it will be unconscious, which is better or worse, and will or won’t eventually finish it. Otherwise, what’s there to say that hasn’t already been said or that lies beyond your own writing? What about it isn’t in such flux that your paying enough attention to it to monitor its intersecting symmetries doesn’t distract you from symmetries of your own design?
I share some of your enthusiasm, Jeremy. When people repeat a negative opinion of Ulysses, I shrug and tell them (or mean to) it’s up to them to decide whether to let a negative or positive opinion sway their own. I guess when I say the latter, I’ll mean yours. For whatever it’s worth, The Chronicle agrees with you: “No amount of populist pep talk can camouflage the fact that Ulysses is a demanding book. ‘The demand I that I make of my reader,’ Joyce told Max Eastman, ‘is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.’ … Membership in the self-selecting community that responds to Joyce’s challenge is not a function of class, wealth, or race, but rather of stubborn ardor. Its readers are convinced of a correlation between arduousness of effort and aesthetic pleasure.”
I’m an old friend of Jeremy’s and just looking for a way to get a hold of him. so if you see this jeremy, or anyone that would help me get in contact with him, I would greatly appreciate the help.
Chatterbox! What’s up, sir? Really good to hear from you. My email is jeremy_cort@yahoo.com. Hit me with your phone number. Hope all is good.