[ExI] Joyce (was: John C. Wright Interview)

[Damien Broderick]

At 12:20 PM 1/27/2008 -0500, John K Clark wrote:

> > Molly Bloom's rapturous closing lines that
> > complete ULYSSES are about as  justly
> > famous as anything in 20th century literature.
>
>That is quite simply untrue, Molly Bloom is almost completely unknown to
>the human race, as is every word Joyce ever wrote.

Agreed. My comment assumed an interest in literature.

>For everyone who has
>heard of Molly Bloom a hundred have heard of Mike Hammer, a thousand
>have heard of Hercule Periot, and ten thousand have heard of Harry Potter.

That's also true, but my comment assumed an interest in literature.

>If Joyce had something new and deep to say about being alive you'd think it
>would have sunk in by now;

It has; his effect on literature has been immense. Not everyone reads 
literature, of course--less than 5% of the population, I suppose. 
Maybe less than 1%. Maybe the same proportion that reads cognitive 
science, evolutionary theory, cosmology, but maybe more since 
literature doesn't require quite *that* much specialist study to get 
a foot in the door.

>and if he had found a new way to entertain
>you'd think people would read him for fun

Easy entertainment is not the only motive for reading fiction; I'm 
astonished that I have to make this point.

But I have to admit that specialist readers in literature develop a 
taste for difficult texts that push the limits, and for complex 
theories of reading and writing that are satisfying and pleasurable 
exactly because they require effort and cleverness. That sort of 
specialization can become indistinguishable from masturbation or 
circle-jerking. Today's academy has certainly sunk into that kind of 
self-indulgence and mutual grooming, as I've complained in my own 
critical books.

The interesting thing about Joyce--up until FINNEGANS WAKE--is that 
his work really did make a difference to the way writers and 
sophisticated readers understood the possibilities of fiction. It's 
like the "modern music" that everyone reviled and mocked at the start 
of the 20th century; it can be quite startling to listen to the 
scores of many mass-audience movies today and realize how completely 
they have absorbed the once-horrifying innovations of Stravinsky and 
his pals. Meanwhile, though, more kids do prefer thudding hip-hop 
using two or at the most three notes.

>PS: I understand Joyce doesn't like punctuation

You understand wrong. When he wrote in an attempt to convey the flow 
of thoughts and half-thoughts running under the level of sharp 
conscious awareness, he did that. The rest of the time, not.

Damien Broderick