Having not read Ulysses,
I am not sure if I can validly make the judgments I’m about to. I’m going
to judge Joyce as an author, but I think we all should know that I haven’t
read his most central work. Acquainted with the Joyce who wrote Dubliners and Portrait, I do feel comfortable, however, evaluating both of the following
comments: “As for Joyce, he treated
people invariably as his equals, whether they were writers, children, waiters,
princesses, or charladies. What anybody had to say interested him; he told me
that he had never met a bore.” — Sylvia Beach and “And Joyce was a poor sick
f***er who probably died with his balls somewhere up around his navel. None of
that for me, thanks.” – Hunter S. Thompson.
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| Joyce looked like this at some point |
Since I can’t be sure what the latter entirely means (especially the balls around the navel part), I’ll start by saying that, although we saw in Portrait a character who was arrogantly aloof, Joyce certainly could not have been. In order to produce the detail of his writing, serious reflection must have been had on life experiences. As we mentioned in class, any author can write from the ivory tower, but the best ones have been in the trenches of daily existence with a keen eye for detail and beauty. For this reason, I’m prepared to agree with Sylvia Beach’s comment. How could Joyce have produced his level of detail without engaging people seriously and living life vigilantly?
Thompson’s comment, however vulgar, is not entirely
unfounded. For me, there’s a sliver of truth to the first part. Obviously
Thompson’s being postmodern has something to do with his critique of the
premier modernist, but let’s not pretend like some of the stuff in Joyce isn’t bizarre
(that of a “poor sick f-er”). I agree little with Thompson, especially because
his comment runs deeper than mine in terms of criticism of Joyce and his philosophy,
but I rest my case by saying that I sometimes felt like I needed a step back
from Portrait. But hey, being entrenched
in someone’s consciousness should be weird.
I think what Thompson means by that reference to the naval is that in his view Joyce was an extremely intense, detail-oriented writer who worried about every word he wrote -- the sort of writer who was trained in Jesuit schools and was forced to pay attention to every detail. Joyce took years carefully poring over his manuscript, and really puts us inside the character Stephen’s mind. I agree with Justin’s commentary that “being entrenched in someone’s consciousness should be weird,” and he therefore needed a moment to “step back from Portrait.” We all do, before we go back to it.
ReplyDeleteI may be reading this completely wrong, but if I am somehow understanding you correctly I disagree with what you are saying that Joyce cannot be compared to Stephen. As you say we cannot be sure since we did not read Ulysses, but I think it is wrong to say at this present moment that Stephen is not a younger Joyce. As Mr Kennedy said on Wednesday, Stephen has not yet learned that one of the most important things for a writer is patience. It is obvious that Joyce had the patience as a writer, but this does not mean he had it all his life. Right now I think it would be wrong to totally discount the possibility that Portrait is a depiction of Joyce as a young writer trying to learn his craft.
ReplyDeleteI certainly agree with Sylvia Beach’s comment. The fact that Joyce “treated people invariably as his equals” and that “he had never met a bore” shows that he was truly involved in what he was writing about. Joyce wrote about what he knew and what he experienced, which gave him the ability to provide the reader with a great amount of details that let the reader feel as if he were part of the story. In a way, Joyce was an author “of the people and for the people.” Beach’s comment and the fact that Joyce wrote about what he lived through remind me of our study of Dubliners. Just like in those stories, Joyce gets every detail right – from the general atmosphere present in Dublin, to the grid of streets in “Two Gallants.” In Portrait, Joyce’s precision and detail are less physical and more emotional. In Chapter I, he uses simple sentences – like ones that a toddler would use. He notices things that only little kids notice. As the story progresses, Joyce proceeds to describe Stephen’s hesitant personality towards girls – something natural for boys Stephen’s age. Joyce’s style grows alongside Stephen, as at the end of the novel we see an almost mature Stephen facing questions regarding his loyalty to his faith, to his family, to his country, and to what he wants to do with his life. I think it is fair to argue that at least in some ways Stephen reflects Joyce as a youth – he writes as if he’d experienced first-hand what he writes about.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with Maciej's characterization of Joyce as an author "of the people and for the people" and one whom "had never met a bore" I must temper it with the mere intent of Dubliners (that is to show the Irish people just how ugly and backwards there society is, thats paraphrased btw) and the fact that Stephen's own arrogance, as a semi-autobiographical character, is one shared by Joyce or some previous manifestation of his self. That being said while accepting Maciej's valid points I must again simply temper any attempt to further draw pre-concieved parallels between Joyce and Stephen moving forward beyond Potrait (like in, say, Ulysses). I say that because while Joyce writes from the perspective of reflection and past experience to merely correlate Joyce and Stephen as one in the same would be severely limiting to the possibilities of Stephen as a character and limiting, in itself, is so very anti-Joycean.
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