From kolb@ucla.edu Fri Mar 10 01:50:30 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id BAA49412 for ; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 01:50:29 -0800 Received: from caracal.noc.ucla.edu (caracal.noc.ucla.edu [169.232.10.11]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id BAA15687 for ; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 01:50:28 -0800 Received: from kolb (remote1.humnet.ucla.edu [128.97.208.81]) by caracal.noc.ucla.edu (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id BAA10149 for ; Fri, 10 Mar 2000 01:50:27 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <4.1.20000310013937.00c57930@pop.ben2.ucla.edu> X-Sender: kolb@pop.ben2.ucla.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 01:51:01 -0800 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Jack Kolb Subject: Re: beautiful language In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Steve and I have settled our differences, and I admit that I was rather impudent in my sentiments about Joyce (below). With Bruce, I'll only counter with sadness. I think that the greatness of Ulysses is that it operates wonderful as mimesis: that at no time does it depart from a realistic realm. At the same time, to see it as merely a playful exercise shows little understanding of its multiple resonance. The worst way to be exposed to Ulysses is through the academic exegete (my first wife was taught it as such, and it was forever spoiled for her; this isn't the reason for our divorce, but it could be {grin}). I know I can't Bruce how exciting and vibrant a book Ulysses is. And that's only one level. I wish I could admire more (I admire them, certainly) Bruce's list (Algren, Traven, etc.). That he dismisses Conrad and Forster and Woolf, however, makes me skeptical about the worth of his judgment. Jack Kolb Dept. of English, UCLA kolb@ucla.edu > >>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. > >Well, I've read the book several times, along with just about everything >else Joyce wrote, including his smutty letters to Nora (I particularly like >the ones in which Shames Voice rhapsodizes about the brown stains in her >knickers). And though I wouldn't be as severe as Steve Willett-- Joyce is >still fun and funny-- he is certainly correct about the inflated >reputation, due I believe to the conjunction of Ulysses with the growth in >university English depts. Joyce's stuff is a favorite with professors >because it is so teachable-- the prof as high priest and exegete, revealing >the hidden meanings (the pedagogical version of the shell game: we know, >but the students don't, under which shell lies the symbolic or allusive >pea). > >But as literary modernism gasps out its last breaths (strangled by its >bastard offspring postmodernism), helped along by lit crit tenured >life-support, Joyce's stuff looks more and more dated and musty, trapped in >its decade of birth's received wisdom. E.g., the nonsense that the horrible >history of the early 20th century had made literary realism impossible, a >cliche repeated endlessly. (For a refutation see Raymond Tallis' In Defense >of Realism.) In fact, what is best about Joyce is its realism (Nabokov has >a good essay on Joyce in this regard), not all that quasi-medieval, >pretentious showing off and creaky parallels to the Odyssey and parodies of >English lit, though the latter are entertaining and clever. Something else >that makes Joyce still readable is the music of his prose-- Finnegans Wake >is a disaster, the dodo of modernism, but the riverine monologue of Anna >Livia Plurabelle is gorgeous, almost music. Joyce needs to be read aloud; >he do the Irish in different voices. > >But, the farther we get from the 20's and 30's, the less convincing are the >reputations of those writers canonized by lit crit: E.M. Forster, apart >from Howards End, looks flabby; so too Virginia Woolf. But Ford Madox >Ford-- particularly his great tetralogy Parade's End, an under-appreciated >masterpiece-- looks better and better, as does Conrad, whose books >(Victory, Nostromo) Forster is not worthy to carry. > >In fact, I've been amused by the way the unmaskers of illicit canon >formation tend not to talk about those writers of this century whose >reputations are indeed due as much to institutional and ideological >prejudices (Woolf the best example; and I like very much Mrs Dalloway) as >to worth. In America, one-trick-pony punks are inflated with critical gas >while great writers-- Nelson Algren, B. Traven, John Sandford (ie. Julian >Shapiro) are relatively ignored. > >Bruce S Thornton >559-278-7037 (voice mail) >559-278-7878 (FAX) > .