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

[PJ Manney]

On Jan 27, 2008 9:20 AM, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:
> "Damien Broderick" <thespike at satx.rr.com>
>
> > 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. 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.
> The Molly Bloom meme is very weak indeed.

It's the difference between who started the meme and who continues it.
 And I still maintain that just because Harry Potter is popular (and
why not, with a writing style which allows even the most
attention-deficit brain to follow the action when she tells you what
the character will do, tells you what the character is doing and then,
just in case you didn't catch it, tells you what the character did,
scene after scene, after scene...   {don't you wish there was an
emoticon for hanging yourself with a noose?})

I know it's a red-rag to a bull, John, but I'll invoke your wrath by
bringing up Jonah Lehrer, author of "Proust was a Neuroscientist"
because he has an excellent point about the writers he discusses, like
George Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust -- all
influenced subsequent writers and reading today, because 1) they were
very good at what they did and 2) they intuited powerful insights into
how people really think, behave, function, etc. that moved literature
from one type of examination of life to another.  And many of these
insights weren't a moment of intuitive brilliance derived from
self-reflection, like Proust's.  George Eliot studied science and had
close relationships with the leading British biologists of the day.
Gertrude Stein studied with William James at Harvard.  Woolf was
herself mentally ill and spent a life in bed considering the science
of mental illness as applied to herself and derived her insights from
that.  I would put Joyce in the same category as Proust and Woolf --
the peculiarities of their minds provided excellent fodder.

Are any of these writers popular now?  No.  But if popularity = rate
of consumption was all that mattered, the the world's greatest works
of fine art would be found on biscuit/cookie tins and in prints in
cheap hotel rooms.

Would you be reading the same way if those difficult, confrontational
writers hadn't existed?  No.  Art, like science and like all
knowledge, is based on the aggregation of information, styles,
approaches.  I took a quick look at today's NYT Bestseller list.  Ian
McEwan's Atonement is extremely popular since the critically acclaimed
movie has come out and I can guarantee you that he wouldn't have
written the same book if those prickly writers before him had never
existed.

> Yes, I understand that there are those who like to cut themselves off from
> the culture they actually live in and would say the examples I cite are not
> literature and they know they are not literature because they are popular.
> So I suppose you could say Molly Bloom is famous in the category of
> literary characters that are almost completely unknown.

No, but like those who study science and philosophy, it pays for those
who study literature to know who did it first and why.

However, I am the last person to throw around high-brow credentials or
claim aesthetic superiority.  I wrote television!!!  BUT -- even we in
the philistine trenches have to know where our stories come from.

> > Does this look like gibberish to anyone except a Philistine?
>
> You might be amused by "The Postmodernism Generator":

Hey, don't confuse postmodernism with an honest attempt to honor what
deserves honoring.  While Postmodernism as a concept has its points,
how it's practiced by your average academic is, IMHO, a waste of
trees.

> Reading these Postmodern "essays" can be pretty funny at first, but by the
> second paragraph my eyes start to glaze over, just like it does when I try
> to read Joyce. That could be my fault as literature is not my forte' but
> there is reason to suggest it may not be entirely my mistake; Mr. Joyce has
> not stood the test of time very well.

Try reading him first.  But as I said before, if you've only had the
occasional jog around the park of reading, you'll collapse from lack
of oxygen before you finish it.

> A century ago only a tiny minority of specialists appreciated the works of
> Joyce and Einstein, today it's still the same with Joyce while Einstein has
> entered the popular culture. It's true that even today most don't understand
> exactly what Einstein did (although many more understand Einstein than
> understand Joyce) but Einstein wasn't writing about the human condition,
> Joyce was or claimed to be, and that is inherently more accessible.

Einstein is a popular figure for reasons that have nothing to do with
understanding E=mc2.  A series of excellent photos (which is how the
majority of the world know him), his quirky, soulful and strong
personality, putting himself out there as a warning bell during the
atomic period and his way with an aphorism were all excellent PR
fodder.  Think of the great scientists the public doesn't know because
they didn't have the personal qualities to create a media love fest.
Joyce was by all regards a destructive, alcoholic asshole who was most
likely mentally ill and with no redeeming personal qualities except
his way with turning the written English language upside down.

> But I could be wrong.

Read some more, then get back to me.

> PS: I understand Joyce doesn't like punctuation, but why does he cling to
> the bourgeois convention of putting spaces between words?
> heshouldhavewrittenanentirebooklikethiswhatajoythatwouldbetoread

Because Gertrude Stein got there first.  ;-)

PJ