Since James Joyce came up in several comments over the last few days, I thought I might mention here that, back around 1978, he was damn near responsible for getting me booted out of college lit class. He was pretty much directly responsible for the C– I got on the final exam.
Bastard.
I will also add that in my college days, I was somewhat less temperate than I am in my old age. You didn’t hear it here, but there might have even been occasions when I attended class in a somewhat…altered…condition. Now, I’ve generally been a very happy altered person; not at all argumentative, sullen, or outright obnoxious, like a few too many folks I’ve known in my time. In my sophomore English Lit class, however, when confronted by FINNEGANS WAKE and ULYSSES, my happy, sedate altered self went right out the window and left behind some beastly, unfamiliar thing, which uttered phrases to my lit professor that proper college students really ought not — such as “lame-azz joking socksucker,” and “wasting my fooking time with this cockamamie bullschlitz,” and “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do you, prof?”
Well, maybe not quite that belligerent, but…damn near. My ire at the time was absolutely genuine because, altered states notwithstanding, I felt that I was at college, paying huge sums of tuition dollars (thanks, Dad), to get edumacated so that I might function in the real world, not be made the butt of some cruel joke that only hoity-toity college professors might understand.
Thus began my occasional fascination with the work of James Joyce.
I had to know: “What the FUCK was Joyce thinking?” and — considerably more pressing — “What kind of DELUDED IDIOT could even begin to think that this eye-searing gobbledygook was great literature?”
I’ll be the first to admit that, on a purely emotional level, those feelings haven’t changed much. They’ve been reshaped, redefined, uh…altered, stood on their heads, and enlightened by all kinds of scholarly discourse, but while I’ve had certain moments during my umpteen attempts to read these FINNEGANS WAKE and ULYSSES (not a one of which has lasted more than fifteen minutes) in which a bulb goes off and I go “yes, dammit, that’s IT!”, for the most part, I’m still left scratching my head, thinking that these particular works may be the most self-indulgent, pointlessly opaque collections of verbiage anyone has ever foisted on the world. Had I been a lit critic back when these works saw light, I would have certainly been among those who were openly hostile toward the author. Yes, and to this day, I resent Joyce for coming between me and a love of literature that might have blossomed much earlier had I not spent several years laboring under the apprehension that, in order to qualify as a “great author,” one must actually be a trickster.
Changing my major from Journalism to Fine Art only reinforced the idea because, in this field of endeavor, I soon discovered that pulling the wool over the edumacated critic’s eyes was as simple as putting a paintbrush in an elephant’s trunk.
Alas, at the University of Georgia, there were no elephants.
Two things happened in later years that, at least intellectually, put my mind on a somewhat different tack. The first was reading several stories in Joyce’s collection, THE DUBLINERS. My God, the man could write. He wrote beautifully, he communicated, he had passion. He didn’t use opaque metaphors. He touched vital nerves. Maybe, just maybe, he was something other than a trickster…
Which led to the second thing: realizing that, while Joyce’s denser work didn’t speak to me — to put it mildly — even when the context of some of that gobbledygook fell into place, it obviously spoke to others whose life experiences were different than mine. And maybe, just maybe, they weren’t necessarily deluded idiots. That’s not to say I would trust them with my car keys (because God knows what a Stop sign -really- means), but it would behoove me to remember that those same others might not share my appreciation of Voltaire or Dumas or Wells or Poe or Verne or Fleming or Lovecraft. Lord knows, even some of the most devoted aficionados of horror I know find THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH as unreadable as I find FINNEGAN. Gaah! Who would think it?
The one positive thing that I can pinpoint from attempting to comprehend ULYSSES and FINNEGANS WAKE was that it helped plant firmly in my mind the basic point of Mr. Steinberg’s topic from other day: that writing is to Communicate, with a capital C. If not with me, Joyce’s two monsterworks communicated with -someone,- and as my passion to write grew, I knew that I too must Communicate, in my own fashion, with whatever willing -someone- I might target. Thus, I have long resolved to make my own writing accessible but focused, articulate but simple, and intellectually honest but fanciful. It took a while longer, but I also came to accept that — as much as I might like to believe otherwise — no matter how well-crafted the fruit of my labor, there would be those with whom it simply wouldn’t connect. After all, one needn’t have to write sentences such as “The eversower of the seeds of light to the cowld owld sowls that are in the domnatory of Defmut after the night of the carrying of the word of Nuahs and the night of making Mehs to cuddle up in a coddlepot, Pu Nuseht, lord of risings in the yonderworld of Ntamplin, tohp triumphant, speaketh,” to miss making a connection. Sometimes the derived experience, not the expressive power of the vehicle, is simply as alien to another mind as the domnatory of Defmut is to mine.
(I’m sure at this point you are aching to raise the heinously valid point that I, as the writer, for all my noise, might fall short of delivering the goods, and that any failure to connect is the fault of someone other than the reader. Let’s not talk too much about that, all right?)
In accusing Joyce of extreme self-indulgence, do I not leave myself — an unabashed purveyor of deeply internalized grotesqueries that I unequivocally believe my readers deserve — open to the same charge?
Absolutely. The scale is different, but not the act. (After all, it’s highly unlikely that in my lifetime, or anytime thereafter, there will be ranks of scholars and academic foundations devoted to studying every word I’ve ever scribbled.) In the bigger picture, are not all of us who are compelled to express ourselves by telling stories engaged in absolute self-indulgence? Again, I say yes. But the nobler side of that is that, when we succeed, we are not sermonizing but engaging in a dialogue with our readers. If we successfully draw them into our work, we draw them into our world, and even if we never meet, we become partners.
That, to me, is the allure and the challenge: to find my target audience and acquire it, thereby forming a partnership of the willing. Do I do this by conducting market research, predicting trends, emulating successful formulas, and reliably conforming to readers’ expectations? Though some corporate publishers might think this is a really a good idea, absolutely not. Yes, it’s just plain smart to educate one’s self about the business of writing; but the way I get the job done is by indulging my passion. And if I do it with an eye toward communicating effectively, my target audience might just approve. Better yet, with due diligence on my part and a spot of good weather, it might actually grow.
Mr. Joyce obviously found his audience, and more power to him. I still think he was a bastard; I should have gotten a B+.
–Mark Rainey
10 Comments, Comment or Ping
Anonymous
Well,
And you know, Mark, coming from other such arguments over the works of folks like Kathe Koja, that I am prone to fall far afield from your opinions, and in a similar realm to the Joyce nightmares of your youth, but I have to say I agree on Joyce. It just is not the job of the reader to “decipher”. I have met a lot of folks who are Joyce “lovers” and Joyce scholars, and I have great respect for their tireless interpretation and deep thoughts on Ulysses. I read the book, and I found a lot to be impressed with in the writing, but in the work as a whole - not impressed. I find it much like organized religion. It is touted by zealots, of course, and OF COURSE the argument of those in the “know” is always that one just “doesn’t get it,” which is probably true on some levels…but I posit that it may be EQUALLY TRUE that there not so much to “get” as they let on…
But we don’t want to start that age-old battle here again, I don’t think. I have not attempted Finnegan’s Wake yet, as it took me the first forty plus years of my life to finally get around to finishing Ulysses…so I won’t speak on that one.
But it’s true as true can be that we speak to different bits and pieces of the universe with each word we write, and we don’t all speak to the same pieces at the same time, and sometimes not even in the same language, though we all (here at SU) write in English…
If we communicate thought through our words…something has happened, and thus the universe is not yet dead…
DNW
Jan 29th, 2007
Sully
Yeah, but how do you FEEL about this, Mark?
Hysterical.
I agree with Mark.
I agree with David.
I agree with everyone who disagrees with Joycian stuff.
Did I mention, I agree?
Self-indulgent? C’mon, for openers we have “James JOYCE.” The guy is eponymously sexually ambiguous, why should anything he says be straight? But he/she is a genius, so I look at him like I look at Salvador Dali when he invites a garbage truck to dump on his lawn and calls it art. Dali is a GREAT painter, but he also moves his bowels. I’m not signing on to everything he does. Similarly, James Joyce had a good “vowel” movement a couple of times, and I’m not necessarily signing on to that either. But the thing that really…um, moves me, isn’t Joyce at all. It’s the publishing world. How the hell did he get ULYSSES and FINNEGAN’S WAKE in print?
– Sully (Thomas Sullivan)
Jan 29th, 2007
jso
Mark,
Speaking as one of the deluded idiots who enjoyed ULYSSES, I have to point out that, if you would trust your car keys to a Lovecraft fan but not a Joyce fan, your insurance rates must be through the roof. Might as well hand over the whole key chain to a Bukowski fan!
And I think ULYSSES is definitely more readable than THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH. As for FINNEGAN? The only thing more unreadable than that would have to be anything in a language I can’t read at all.
The most unreadable writer I’ve ever read? William Hope Hodgson, by a long shot. BOATS OF THE GLEN CARRIG and HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND. With whom did that gentleman think he was communicating? (Yeah, I know that’s not really a rhetorical question.) What century did he believe his audience to be living in?
The lousiest, phoniest put-on of a big novel I’ve ever read in my life? THE TOMMYKNOCKERS by about a hundred million miles. Why not a public torching of that kind of publishing phenomenon? Maybe because, as awful as it is, we know EXACTLY how it got published.
Is part of this issue with the discursive, stream-of-consciousness novel in general? If so, I’d have thought that the mention of Thomas Pynchon a few weeks ago would have set off a firestorm. Does the opening section of SOUND AND THE FURY fit into this category as well?
jso
Jan 29th, 2007
Frank Wydra
What, no elephants at Georgia? Uga, the bow-legged canine, will cry himself to sleep if you destroy his fantasy.
Mark, the thing about a good story is that it creates a buzz. People talk about it and what it is saying or trying to say. The more talk, the greater the buzz. Whatever your style, if you are that falling tree in the proverbial forest, the one that no one hears, have you communicated?
For all their criticized faults, widely read writers are, in fact, communicating. People read them. People talk about them. People try to understand them. Teachers teach them. Years later, students rail against them. By their work they have created a buzz. And underneath all that buzz is a message. I suspect most of us who scribble here wish we had a tenth of Joyce’s (or King’s, or Pynchon’s) past present, or future readership.
Anyway, I think you should have been given at least a B+ or A-. And, I agree with Sully and whatever it is he disagrees with.
Frank
Jan 29th, 2007
Anonymous
I hope I made it quite clear that one of the many things I finally managed in my ancient youth (a hard lesson, I admit) was to avoid making value judgments based on someone’s appreciation, or lack thereof, of any particular literature (or whatever relevant taste). As for trusting anyone with my car keys, it’s a moot point, as I pretty much trust no one.
Absolutely, Faulkner’s THE SOUND AND THE FURY sent me over the edge right about that same time. However, it took a relatively short time to become acclimated to his prose, and now — though I can’t say I -enjoy- Faulkner (with a few exceptions, such as “A Rose for Emily”), in some perverse way, his work draws me back. For that matter, believe it or not, Joyce’s story “The Dead” has become one of my all-time favorites…
Perhaps it’s ironic, in that I generally dislike Lovecraft’s Dunsanian fantasies, but I find THE DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH one of his most thoroughly engaging works. Perhaps it has to do with the cats. Different strokes, you know…
To me, “stream of consciousness” implies that the work flows in the manner of thoughts, i.e., that it might in some fashion emulate the way my brain works. Evidently my brain works in this fashion not at all, as there is precious little that I’ve encountered in the realm of “stream of consciousness” that in any way whatsoever touches a vital nerve. Bukowski and Pynchon I have never sampled. Call it gun-shyness…
I can’t speak to THE TOMMYKNOCKERS, as every respectable human being I know has warned me away from it, and so far, I have heeded their advice.
Frank — excellent point. Communicating often goes beyond just the author’s words. For what it’s worth, I expect I will be “a student” railing against -something- from now till forever. It keeps me young.
And I disagree with everything Sully said, except for everything he said that I don’t disagree with. Indeed.
–M
Jan 29th, 2007
jso
“The Dead” is one of my favorites, too. However, in the past few years, “The Destructors” by Graham Greene has become just about my favorite story. It’s a hoot.
Mark, here’s a tidbit for you. While I was writing a story that you eventually published… something about fish tanks, I think… I happened to be reading Sound and the Fury. The third section of SATF is told by Jason Compson, who is a bitter, raving, overwrought little pissant. He exemplifies these traits so beautifully in that section, that I was inspired to turn my dumb fish tank story from a third person telling into a first-person rant by some guy who just happened to be… a bitter, raving, overwrought little pissant. (Lest you thought I was being autobiographical.)
jso
Jan 29th, 2007
Anonymous
Dammit, Jeff! Bust my bubble, will you…?
I love the title “The Destructors.” THAT sounds autobiographical.
–M
Jan 29th, 2007
Janet Berliner
I’m with Sully all the way. Then, again, I still haven’t
made it through MOBY DICK…. J.
Jan 29th, 2007
Anonymous
I’m for the title MOBY DICK VS. THE DESTRUCTORS. Mark, start writing the darn thing…set it in Arkham and maybe call the whale thing MHBY-DKKK. Start the book with “My name is the mad Arab…” Just a thought.
Jan 30th, 2007
Anonymous
Okay, but you’re going to hit me up for a percentage, aren’t you.
–M
Jan 30th, 2007
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