James Joyce Reading Group discussion

Many writers and critics and scholars have long separated James Joyce and Virginia Woolf - putting them in opposing camps. I don't agree with this sentiment, and feel they have much more in common than they do differences.

Would anyone care to comment on this practice? I'll say more once the ball gets rolling.

Don't know a thing about her, except Albee asking who was afraid of her. ;) But who can put Joyce in the same camp as anyone?

Seriously, Where should i start with Woolf, if I should?

Why am I the only other person of 13 members who actually posts?

Dar Agrimorfee,

Thanks for writing. Yeah, it's a little lonely up in here.

If you love Joyce, I would start with Mrs Dalloway. Like Ulysses, it's also a "day in the life" novel, and illustrates a lot of her considerable powers of perception and prose. She hasn't yet completely tossed traditional narrative structure, but she's departing from it in a very natural way.

OK thanks. I was aware of Mrs. Dalloway from the recent movie adaptation, which bored me to tears, but that likely doesn't mean anything. I'll give it a shot in the future.

Yeah, please don't compare the book to the film. It's a good book. The film was...well...you've already said it.

I think your experience of reading The Waves (an extraordinary book!) is a lot like most people's reading of Finnegans Wake. The "sense" is not as important as the "sound"....and Joyce said all the sense comes from the sound...another Joycean paradox!

If you ever get around to reading The Waves again, I think you'll have an easier time of keeping track of the characters as they develop into old age. It was a lot easier for me...I read it a few times, and the first two readings were pretty close together, so it was easier to put it all together.

But you are really on to something that I think both writers were working on - which was, in a way, a way to transcend "form" and go for pure experience....isn't that what all great works of art are trying to do? I think this is especially important considering some of the comments you've made about "the moment of connection" (I remember you mentioning this in reference to Septimus, in particular) - I think they are trying to extend that "moment" for longer and longer periods. I think in some ways, like a drill sargeant, they want to wear us down to the point where we lose track of details and just go with the flow (sorry for that lame phrase!) of the narrative.

I just read To The Lighthouse this summer, after trying to read it again and again throughout my 20's and 30's. somehow this time around it really struck me as something beautiful. I can see how it clearly positions itself in terms of development, in between Mrs Dalloway and The Waves. Like The Waves, it uses the echo and the reflection of the sea to mark the passing of time as the characters progress through the narrative. A nice touch...

Well, Woolf actually hated Joyce's work. Many critics are of the opinion that the true reason that she killed herself was out of a feeling of literary inadequacy; she thought that nothing new could be accomplished with the novel after what Marcel Proust had done with it. Also, which opposing "camps" would these be?

Molly, I had the same challenge trying to keep track of indvidual voices in Gaddis' A Frolic of His Own (barely got through it) and JR (I gave up). But The Waves sounds interesting.

Thank you for your post, Molly. I wanted to say something similar...here's my take on this difficult question:

1) We can never really know what drives someone to commit suicide. I have known a few people that have taken their life. I knew them pretty well, and I would never take it upon myself to know the "real reason". Whatever the "real" reason is, it must be the outcome of an incredibly complex set of issues.

Neither you or I were close friends with Ms. Woolf. I don't think we are qualified to make these assertions, even if they are handed down from clever intellectuals who want to base their career in the ivory tower by answering the big mysteries.

2) There is also the looming issue of her childhood sexual abuse. There is a complete text on the subject ("Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work") and it links the abuse to her lifelong battle with migranes and depression. Again, I don't see this as an easy answer, but something to consider.

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Moving on, and back to this statement of mine about "camps".

Forgive me if I expressed myself badly. What I was trying to get at was that as long as I can remember (especially when I was in graduate school writing my thesis on Joyce), it seemed to me that people wanted to construct some sort of literary hierarchy among the modernists in particular in order to determine whose writing is "THE BEST". I saw many scholars side with Joyce or Woolf or Proust, always arguing who was the real innovator, who was the copycat, who was responsible for this or that development in prose, etc. etc. etc.

It seems that people would embrace one of these three great writers and sign on to some kind of silent allegiance to them, which, it seemed to me, kept them from seeing the beauty in the other writers I mentioned (or other modernists...everyone has their fave it seems, and that, IMO, is part of the problem; everybody seems to need a hero - I want to live in a world without heroes).

This trend extends beyond my scholarship into the community at large. I have brought up Joyce a few times on the Virginia Woolf discussion list, and he gets brushed aside, like, "why are you trying to discuss HIM?". This happens in a variety of settings, not just in universities and literary discussion groups.

And, with reference to Woolf's feelings about Joyce - I don't see them as easily slated as "Well, Woolf actually hated Joyce's work".

I've read quite a lot of her fiction, her diaries and letters, and some of the biographical material. Although she had criticisms of Ulysses in her early years (I believe she said something like: "He's merely an adolescent, scratching his pimples....I don't go for all of those fireworks"..if you really want I can pull out the diaries and check the actual wording, but it's very close).

The diaries in her later years reflect a change of heart and a greater sympathy and appreciation for his work. Read the diaries from 1939. Joyce died that year, and her diary entry when she learned of his death reads as a heartfelt sympathy for a great writer. She wrote that his death was a "great loss", and she made some statements in that entry that make me feel like she had come to appreciate his work.

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This is kind of my point. Why is it that readers hold on to one of these great writers and don't find it possible to find all the beauty and depth that is inherent to all of their work. While I find it much easier to draw paralllels between Woolf and Proust, I find it just as easy to draw parallels between Woolf and Joyce. That was my point....sorry it took so long to get here.

Okay, forgive my wording there. Who am I to say why someone did commit suicide. The way I said that probably made it sound like more of an absolute. Obviously, there were many reasons that she had. The war was a factor as well. I just thought that it was interesting for someone to conjecture that this may have been why she did. And remember, I said "many critics are of the opinion that the true reason", by which I simply meant to imply that this reason seemed widely agreed upon. I was really just trying to make a point about how indifferent she was to Joyce's writing, I think she may have been somewhat found of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but aside from that she found Joyce irrelevant. Who knows what she even meant by that. It's ridiculous to attempt to explain reasons for suicide just as much as it is to presumptuously associate writer's who are often times, completely disparate in terms of style and theme. For example, it's common for most critics or devotees of William Gaddis to associate him and Joyce. I can see why they might want to do this, but it's essentially a superficial association, and I think that it debases the integrity of both artists. Ironically enough, Gaddis cited the great Russian novelists as a primary influence more than anyone else, and he hadn't read much of Joyce's works at all. He once said that if they want to find Joyce in everything they will. It's a critical obsession to couple writers with each other. Especially, if they want to draw parallels with their favorite writer Granted, sometimes it's appropriate, but other times it's drastically erroneous, not to mention beside the point.

Indeed, Jimmy, it's clear that a great deal of criticism is about itself, not the writing is seeks to examine. Or, it often about the critic.

I've never read Gaddis, and I've heard some nice things about his writing. Can you recommend something? Who could read any of the great Russian writers and not be influenced???

Back to the critic thing: I'm a musician and have made many recordings as a saxophonist. There was a while there when my records first started coming out, and I read all these reveiws and it was laughable, because they compared me to so many different players - players that have nothing to do with each other....I kept thinking, how is it possible that these people can hear so many different things? And then I realized that taking anything they said seriously was a waste of time. Again, I think they write about themselves more than anyone else.

I read Pynchon's new novel this summer (Against the Day), which I thoroughly enjoyed. I kept feeling like the exhuberance of his prose reminded me of Joyce, but I wouldn't go so far as to say he was influenced by Joyce (although it does seem possible to say that, you can just as easily say, why say that at all?) or that he wrote like Joyce. Now I don't even know why I brought that up...

I also noticed that you have some great books on your shelves that I've read, in particular the books on harmony, etc. by Schoenberg. I'm a huge fan of his work, and studied at USC (I did degrees in both music and literature there), where they once had the Schoenberg Institute (it has since been moved to Austria under the supervision of his grandson), which was managed by Leonard Stein, who was a student of Schoenberg's. It was amazing to have access to his notebooks and papers and scores...(I think Stein's failing health and some other issues (that are laughable) factored into the move. Stein died last year, if I'm not mistaken.

I took a class with Stein on Wozzeck, and he was one of those old-school masters that could tell you in great detail about any random bar you might cite in any of these composer's great works.

I started on Mrs. Dalloway the other day, and I definitely see the connection that has been mentioned...not a stylistic connection, but their purposes of stream-of-consciousness writing seem identical...it's like taking Molly's soliloquy (sp? sorry) and incorporating into the style of Bloom's musings (sort of).

Not sure if I will finish this book...the style is hard to keep my interest, if that is the only direction this takes.

yeah, it doesn't have the stylistic fireworks that something like ulysses has...but i really enjoyed the ways that woolf burroughs into her characters and shows them from a variety of perspectives. you learn more about clarissa from others than you do from the narratives that reveal her POV.

Agrimorfee wrote: "Don't know a thing about her, except Albee asking who was afraid of her. ;) But who can put Joyce in the same camp as anyone?

Seriously, Where should i start with Woolf, if I should?

Why am ..."

I post alot!! And I also haven't read any wolfe other than 'mark on the wall' (which I enjoyed), where should I begin?

that post by agrimorfee was posted a long time ago...
:)

if you want to read virginia woolf, i recommend mrs dalloway, it might help pave the way for ulysses.

Right on, thanks man.

My pleasure.