Dubliners - James Joyce

DUBLINERS - JAMES JOYCE

In musical terms, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man and Dubliners by James Joyce are overtures whilst Ulysses is the full oratorio in excelsis deo. Finnegan's Wake is free jazz. The thing about all these works is that they're all masterpieces in their own distinct ways, with Joyce never putting a foot (or a word) wrong.

What is also interesting is that Joyce wrote all these books (particularly Ulysses) whilst living in desperate poverty, which tells us great art is not borne from material wealth and the comfort of riches but from adversity and (more often than not) a plebeian imagination. Moreover, what is doubly interesting is that the works of James Joyce have nowadays been claimed by academia and a self-proclaimed cultural elite as their own; proclaiming Joyce's books as being far too difficult for the non-University educated to even contemplate reading. It's called cultural appropriation.

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories first published in 1914 though written some years earlier, all being snapshots of life and events in Dublin during that period. Such is the brilliance of Joyce's writing that it's like putting a magnifying glass to these snapshots to show the finer detail, each detail being a universe unto itself.

Each story is distinctly different, the common theme between them being that for the main protagonist in each, it is a significant yet not fully realised event that is being captured. An additional yet more subtle spin at the end of each signifying another realisation that is unspoken yet just as if not more important.

So, in the story The Sisters, for example, a young man's (Joyce?) old vicar friend passes away and whilst hiding his own feelings so as not to betray how important the vicar was to him, records the thoughts and sentiments of those around him regarding the death. More significant is the revelation at the end that the vicar had been found alone one night in the confession-box of the chapel, laughing softly to himself. It was this that suggested to friends and family that there was 'something gone wrong with him'.

In the story The Encounter, two young boys (one of them Joyce?) bunk off from school and during the course of their day encounter a man who in the words of one of the boys is 'a queer old josser'. A pervert, in other words. The importance of the day and the experience of it is conveyed but more significant is when one of the boys (Joyce?) finds himself relieved to see the return of his friend after being left alone for some minutes with the man because in his heart he had always despised his friend a little.

In the story Counterparts, a man bullied by his employer takes a stand and humiliates him in front of others before dining out on the story in the local bars with all his friends. More significantly, he returns home that night and beats one of his children with a stick for letting the fire in the kitchen hearth go out.

Joyce casts no aspersions upon the characters in these stories but by revealing an additional insight into their lives - and significantly their inner lives - he shines a whole new light upon them. What he so beautifully describes in his writing is the life going on in the outer world but then shines his light upon the inner life. The life that might appear smaller and less significant than the outer one but that is actually far more expansive and much more meaningful.

To continue the music analogy, reading Dubliners is like listening to an LP, with each separate story being akin to an individual song. Any good LP can be listened to either as a collection of different tracks or as a complete piece, and with any good LP there is always going to be favourite tracks. So too with Dubliners there are also favourite stories, most people's being the one that brings it to an end, entitled The Dead.

According to the New York Times, The Dead is 'just about the finest short story in the English language'. According to Evan Dando (of 1990s alt-Punk band The Lemonheads) 'For me, it's all about the Dubliners by James Joyce. I love The Dead'. According to Will Self, Dubliners is 'startling'.

Being non-University educated and therefore unable to even contemplate reading Joyce, I hesitate in laying down any such similar grandiose declaration because I feel I've just not read enough short stories in my time to compare (and I've read a few). I would say, however, that The Dead is far better than that other much-lauded short story, The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I would also say that The Dead is a thing of beauty that in the sublime vision it presents, paints a picture of the universe that could be compared to Van Gogh's The Starry Night.

The Dead is the true precursor to Ulysses where Joyce zooms into the detail of the finite then out to the infinite; weaving time, heartache, exaltation and memory into a seamless narrative. If The Dead was a record then it would stand the test of time and be passed on from generation to generation, appreciated by all.

Forever and ever.

Amen.

John Serpico

Ulysses - James Joyce

ULYSSES - JAMES JOYCE

In reviewing the world through a book (for after all, isn't that what all book reviewing is about?) the question is where to begin? Where to start? The answer is of course to start at both the beginning and the end, and from the centre then move out. To start everywhere at once. And how do you do that? Well, you start with a review of Ulysses, James Joyce's modernist classic tale of life, the universe and everything as played out on a single day in Dublin, 16th of June 1904.

Now, the main problem with this is that Ulysses has a reputation that goes before it, that reputation being that not only is it one of the greatest books ever written but that it's also one of the most difficult to read. There’s little point in arguing against this as there seems to be a universal consensus on it. However, just because you're told something is difficult shouldn't mean that you must automatically agree and adopt that stance also. Just as when you're told that something is great art, it doesn't mean that you should again automatically agree. Art is, after all, subjective and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That said, I happen to agree that Ulysses is indeed one of the greatest books of all time, if not the greatest. I also agree that it's not exactly easy reading but I hasten to add that it's not an impossible read. I also hasten to add that Ulysses is extraordinarily enjoyable and even a life-enhancing experience that will leave its mark on a reader forever.

For what it's worth, the story focuses on two people - Stephen Dedalus, a young writer and teacher who could be Joyce himself; and Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising salesman. There are other characters too, not least Leopold Bloom's wife, Molly, but these two gentlemen - who could almost be father and son - are the main protagonists. The journey of Leopold Bloom through a single day echoes that of the hero Ulysses in Homer's epic poem The Odyssey which in itself conveys the idea that there are no new stories under the sun. Everything has been done before and only the scale changes. Or rather, only the perception of scale changes because ultimately Leopold Bloom's drift through the city of Dublin over a day is just as epic as Ulysses' mythical voyage to Ithaca over 10 years.

So does this mean that everything in life echoes through eternity, recurring an infinite number of times? On one level, yes, this is what Joyce's book suggests but more importantly the book also suggests that there is another life going on beneath the surface that is far more interesting than any possible earthly adventure. A shifting, complex life unique to each individual that is banal yet utterly profound. It is this 'lake of dreams', this 'sea of rains', this 'gulf of dews', this 'ocean of fecundity' that Ulysses is really about. The external world is finite and can be captured and contained by words if nothing else but the internal world is without end. Just 'Shut your eyes and see', as Joyce says.

Ulysses soars and dives and stutters and glides and turns linguistic somersaults in a bewildering display of absolute genius. Words are the tools used to set language free to reveal the subtext of everyday living and the life extraordinary alike. Only one other writer has come close to revealing the hidden meaning in language and that's William Burroughs through his use of cut up and a healthy heroin habit. For James Joyce, it took 7 years of living in poverty with nothing but sheer intelligence and will power to assist. To this day, however, Ulysses stands head and shoulders above just about any other book and is a testament to imagination unbound. Feted for its streams of consciousness, there is a richness even in the tiniest of observations that leaves the reader in awe at the wonder of the English language:

'Poets in the delirium of the frenzy of attachment... the condensation of spiral nebulae into suns... a new luminous sun generated by the collision and amalgamation in incandescence of two nonluminous exsuns... out of the vaulted cell into a shattering daylight of no thoughts... love loves to love love... your head it simply swurls, those pretty little seaside gurls... '

On and on it goes, ad infinitum for approximately 727 pages until we get to Molly Bloom's soliloquy where for the last 50 pages punctuation is dispensed with entirely as she reminisces, ponders and dreams before finally remembering the time she first gave herself to Leopold, her husband to be:

'... and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.'

As an aside, in November of 1966 John Lennon attended an art show preview at the Inidica gallery in London. On entering, the first exhibit he saw was a step ladder that had to be climbed to get near to a blank canvas attached to the ceiling from which a magnifying glass hung. Lennon climbed the step ladder and through his rimmed glasses peered through the magnifying glass at a word written very small upon the canvas. The word was 'Yes'. This was Lennon's first encounter with the art of the then unknown Japanese artist Yoko Ono and the significance of that encounter was immense.

In Ulysses, Joyce chooses to end his book with that same, single, life-affirming, orgasmic (on the lips of Molly Bloom), heartening, positive word: Yes. It is the final word. The final firework exploding into the heavens ('The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit') and illuminating the universe, the mind and the imagination for ever more.

Ulysses is always there. It is in this world and yet it contains this world along with all others. There is no escaping from it. It is there waiting like a fat Buddha at the centre of all things for the reader to come to it. It exists as a reminder of what is possible, reasonably demanding the impossible. It will not go away and until it has been read will tug at the back of the mind, gently nudging, gently whispering, gently extending an invitation to something very, very special.

To something more.

To something other.

  If Marilyn Monroe read Ulysses then so can you

John Serpico