Who's Afraid of James Joyce?

261 Pages·2010·2.38 MB·English

by  Lawrence

Who’s Afraid of James Joyce?
The Florida James Joyce Series
University Press of Florida
Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
New College of Florida, Sarasota
University of Central Florida, Orlando
University of Florida, Gainesville
University of North Florida, Jacksonville
University of South Florida, Tampa
University of West Florida, Pensacola
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Who’s Afraid
of James Joyce?
Karen R. Lawrence
Foreword by Sebastian D. G. Knowles, Series Editor
University Press of Florida
Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton
Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers · Sarasota
Copyright 2010 by Karen R. Lawrence
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. This book is printed on Glatfelter
Natures Book, a paper certified under the standards of the Forestry Stewardship Council
(FSC). It is a recycled stock that contains 30 percent post-consumer waste and is acid-free.
First cloth printing, 2010
First paperback printing, 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lawrence, Karen, 1949–
Who’s afraid of James Joyce? / Karen R. Lawrence ; foreword by Sebastian D. G. Knowles,
series editor.
p. cm.—(The Florida James Joyce series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8130-3477-5 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8130-4168-1 (pbk.)
1. Joyce, James, 1882–1941—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
PR6019.O9Z6935 2010
823'.912—dc22
2009051042
The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University
System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida
Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College
of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida,
University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.
University Press of Florida
15 Northwest 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611-2079
http://www.upf.com
Contents
Foreword vii
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Living with Joyce: Grand Passion and Small Pleasures 1
Part I. Retracing The Odyssey of Style 13
1.The Narrative Norm 15
2.“Wandering Rocks” and “Sirens”: The Breakdown of Narrative 27
3.“Eumaeus”: The Way of All Language 42
4.“Ithaca”: The Order of Things 53
Part II. Compromising Letters: Joyce, Women, and Feminism 69
5.Joyce and Feminism 71
6.Women Building the Foundation 90
Part III. Bloom in Circulation: Navigating Identifications 97
7.“Eumaeus” Redux 99
8.Legal Fiction or Pulp Fiction in “Lestrygonians” 119
9.“Twenty Pockets Arent Enough For Their Lies”: Pocketed Objects as
Props of Bloom’s Masculinity in Ulysses 132
10.Bloom in Circulation: Who’s He When He’s Not at Home? 140
Part IV. Close Encounters: Hospitality and the Other 151
11.Close Encounters 153
12.Joyce in Transit 168
Part V. Return to Dublin 181
13.Reopening “A Painful Case” 183
Karen R. Lawrence and Paul K. Saint-Amour
Notes 203
Bibliography 223
Index 235
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Foreword
How daring is “Telemachus”? Karen Lawrence rightly scoffs at the “risks”
that the narrator takes in the first episode, comparing the adverbial intru-
sions to “a clown walking a tightrope only one foot above the ground.” But
as Ulysses progresses Joyce is provoked to more and more elaborate circus
acts, leading to the double high-wire display in “Ithaca,” where questioner
and answerer pass the trapeze from one hand to the other, high among
the stars. If Ulysses is a three-ring circus, and it has long been recognized
as such, then Karen Lawrence must be our ringmaster. Watching Karen
Lawrence put the narrator through his paces in the sawdust of “Circe” and
“Eumaeus,” one feels the same delight of an audience watching a lion danc-
ing in the ring: the only thing missing is ice cream (from Rabaiotti’s, per-
haps).
Lawrence’s term for the ponderous stylistics of “Telemachus” is “adverbial
mania”: an excellent coinage in a book full of mots and phrases justes. Law-
rence calls the figuration of women in Joyce’s life and work a “skirtscreen,”
another wonderfully felicitous phrase extracted from Finnegans Wake’s
“squirtscreened.” In Lawrence’s convincing formulation, “Penelope” repre-
sents the problem of female representation by the male pen, “a staging of
alterity that reveals itself as masquerade.” Always and everywhere, Karen
Lawrence has her ear to the ground of Joyce’s text, hearing echoes that we
can only guess at. When Mrs Sinico exclaims, “What a pity there is such
a poor house tonight!,” the reader could be forgiven for thinking it a stray
remark that happens to catch her neighbor’s sympathy: in “Reopening ‘A
Painful Case,’” Karen Lawrence and Paul Saint-Amour show us that Mrs
Sinico’s statement is the opening salvo in a carefully calculated assault on
Mr Duffy’s defenses.
“The drama of the writing usurps the dramatic act,” the telling trumps
the tale: so it is for Lawrence’s Joyce, and in Lawrence Joyce has found his
perfect reader, for in matters of style she is very nearly unmatched. Many
viii · Foreword
of her readings achieve an ideal state of syntactic equilibrium, a Johnsonian
balance. Take, for example, the discussion of Bloom’s purchased kidney
in “Calypso”: “The sensuous symmetry between the gland sliding into his
pocket and his own coins sliding quickly into the till conveys the tactile,
even sexual, pleasure that Bloom derives from his role in commodity cul-
ture, in the rituals of buying and selling.” In the space of one short sentence,
“sensuous symmetry” is placed in alliterative parallel with “commodity cul-
ture,” the gland slides into Bloom’s pocket in syntactic parallel with the
coin sliding quickly into the till (with a slight stretto in the metallic slide),
and “tactile” is given a second accent with “even sexual,” a double climax
that allows a double fall into “the rituals of buying and selling.” And all in
honor of Joyce’s own symmetries: “They lay, were read quickly and quickly
slid, disc by disc, into the till.” One is left with the inescapable impression
that Karen Lawrence, like Joyce, is incapable of writing a dull or unmusical
line.
There are other delights in Who’s Afraid of James Joyce? The narrative of
“Eveline,” set against the author’s own indecision at a crucial stage in her
career, had this reader on the edge of his seat. “Women Building the Foun-
dation” is a review of the progress of feminist studies of Joyce by one who
was there, while “Joyce and Feminism” is a sharp and sophisticated rebuttal
to Gilbert and Gubar’s “refusal to be Mollified” by the special pleadings on
behalf of feminist Joyceans. This is a fine set of essays, moving steadily from
gender and sexuality to empathy and hospitality, radiating outward into a
full engagement with Joyce’s work. In a triumphant return to the work and
the author that launched her spectacular career, Karen Lawrence gives us
a masterly balancing act: a peek behind the curtain of Joyce’s theatrical ef-
fects, and a rich defense of the humanity of Joyce.
Sebastian D. G. Knowles
Series Editor
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the publishers or periodicals listed below for permission to
reprint the following essays:
Chapters 1–4 were previously published as part of Karen Lawrence, The
Odyssey of Style in “Ulysses” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
“Joyce and Feminism” was previously published in The Cambridge Com-
panion to James Joyce, ed. Derek Attridge (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1990: 237–58).
“Women Building the Foundation” was first published as “Building on
the Foundation: Women in the IJJF,” by Karen Lawrence, in Joyce Studies
Annual Volume 2001, pp. 163–71. Copyright 2001 by the University of Texas
Press. All rights reserved.
“Eumaeus Redux” was first published as “‘Beggaring Description’: Poli-
tics and Style in Joyce’s ‘Eumaeus,’” in Modern Fiction Studies 38.2 (Summer
1992): 355–76.
“Legal Fiction or Pulp Fiction in ‘Lestrygonians’” was previously pub-
lished in Ulysses En-Gendered Perspectives: Eighteen New Critical Essays on
the Episodes, ed. Kimberly Devlin and Marilyn Reizbaum (Columbia: Uni-
versity of South Carolina Press, 1999: 100–110).
“‘Twenty Pockets Arent Enough For Their Lies’” was previously pub-
lished as “‘Twenty Pockets Arent Enough For Their Lies’: Pocketed Ob-
jects as Props of Bloom’s Masculinity in Ulysses,” in Masculinities in Joyce:
Postcolonial Constructions. European Joyce Studies, 10, eds. Christine Van
Boheemen-Saaf and Colleen Lamos: 163–76.
“Bloom in Circulation: Who’s He When He’s Not at Home?” was first
published in Joyce on the Threshold, eds. Anne Fogerty and Timothy Martin
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005: 15–27).
“Close Encounters” was first published in the James Joyce Quarterly, vol.
41, 1–2, Fall 2003–Winter 2004: 127–42.