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Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2000 20:52:38 -0800
To: classics@u.washington.edu
From: Jack Kolb <kolb@ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: beautiful language
In-Reply-To: <200003080653.PAA08022@ham.t.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp>
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 <200003070816.RAA04882@ham.t.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp>
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>There are indeed a lot of concrete details in _Ulysses_, but 
>everything is passed through Joyce's deep freezer of a mind and 
>comes out frigid, sterile, lifeless and brittle.  That's the measure of 
>his prose, and it was all quite plain in that other frigid book, 
>_Dubliners_.  There isn't a character in _Ulysses_ I care about the 
>way I care about, say, Milly Threale.  Or even Dr. Behrens in 
>another novel.  Strip away the idolatry from Joyce, put him in with 
>the enemy and see what happens.  That Joyce could write clever, 
>precise and occasionally engaging prose (in _Portrait_ for example) 
>I've never contested; what he used the prose to convey is another 
>matter.  Whenever he tries to turn the poet, from the epiphanies of 
>the _Portrait_ onward, he sinks badly: all shallow, derivative music 
>just like his own verse.  This is obviously a matter of taste, but hardly 
>irrational.  Lots of other people find him sterile besides Gromrowicz.  
>And please, don't cite the book's ending as an example of "life," 
>"passion" or "energy." I know it by heart.  Beckett's _More Pricks 
>than Kicks_, not to mention the great trilogy, has more humanity 
>than all of Joyce put together.  And he's funny, which Joyce never 
>is--even when we're sinking in a quicksand of puns. 

So much for your opinion of literature, Willett.  This shows that whoever
taught you Ulysses (yourself?) spoiled it for you.  Ulysses is the great
humane epic of this century.  Your glibness betrays you: you haven't read
the book: you've just read the commentary.

Jack Kolb
Dept. of English, UCLA
kolb@ucla.edu
.