Classics and the Western Canon discussion

@Patrice
I read Richard II, half of Henry IV pt 1, but xmas got in the way of the rest.

@Thomas
Thanks for that link. I will listen in the morning.

@Charles
Thanks for that advice. I will try.

Overall I am not at all a fan of artists blowing smoke and expecting the audience to appreciate the art without asking for meaning. I find it arrogant, and it dismisses the fact that it costs the audience to view an artwork (time, so much time). My time is limited and I get angry at a piece of art that demands it without any exchange.

But... as I said I haven't given up, and this conversation today has prepared me for another plunge (tomorrow).

Thank you !

As one who is firmly in the intimidated, confused, anxious, exasperated, but also yearning to "get it" group, I appreciate the comments of explanation from Charles and others and was glad to see Thomas's endorsement of them @44. Although any work of art needs to be viewed as a whole before all the pieces make sense, so the no spoilers policy here is often frustrating to me--though perfectly understood and approved. However, in this case, it does seem that loosening it might help some of us reading this for the first time.

Also for my fellow struggling pilgrims, I think the comment @49 is useful. I read sections four and five (also with minimal comprehension or enjoyment) and found them very different and more accessible than the three Stephen Daedalus chapters. I suspect that once formal discussion begins one question may well be to understand the function of the seemingly ancillary first three chapters. (Not exactly a good way to invite readers in. ;)

I haven't read a read along with this group. so, looking forward to reading this with you.

Zeke wrote: "As one who is firmly in the intimidated, confused, anxious, exasperated, but also yearning to "get it" group, I appreciate the comments of explanation from Charles..."

I'm with Zeke here. Although I'm intimidated, I am excited to be able to read this with such a great group and a knowledgeable moderator and have appreciated all the advice so far.

I just read the first two chapters (have not yet embarked on difficult chapter 3, though), and I am feeling a little bit less intimidated. At least I could visualize the scenes and characters, even if I didn't understand all of what they were talking about. Looking forward to when the threads open!

Charles wrote: "Cass wrote: "Gah. I started reading the first 3 pages and I just about threw the book across the room. What on earth is it about? How was any publisher persuaded to read enough of this to see that ..."

I found this helpful, Charles. Thanks.

Cass wrote: "Gah. I started reading the first 3 pages and I just about threw the book across the room. What on earth is it about? How was any publisher persuaded to read enough of this to see that it was "good"..."

The first section is pretty well documented and once you read some of the annotated notes it all becomes clear. Any of the online sites will have information on it.

It's further on that I start to despair...

Genni wrote: "I'm in, but I don't think I have ever been so nervous about a book. :p I decided to go ahead and read A Portrait, hoping it would break me in a bit. Is the style of Ulysses similar to A Portrait, o..."

Genni wrote: "I'm in, but I don't think I have ever been so nervous about a book. :p I decided to go ahead and read A Portrait, hoping it would break me in a bit. Is the style of Ulysses similar to A Portrait, o..."

A Portrait... has similarities but it concentrates on Stephen Dedalus, who is, to simplify things a bit, Joyce's younger alter ego. He's intellectual; touchy; obscure in his thinking, etc. Ulysses has Bloom, who is none of these things. No matter how obscure the prose in Ulysses gets (and it does get very obscure) Bloom's sections are always grounded in life's more basic things: food and sex and familial feelings. It's like decoding something and finding that it's the lyrics to a song you knew all along. :)

Patrice wrote: I have tried reading Ulysses in the past and failed. I don't understand why it's considered by many to be the greatest book of the 20th century but I think reading with Thomas and this group is my best shot of finding out why. Thomas, would it help to read it aloud? With an Irish accent? ;-)."

Yes, yes it definitely would! Listen to the Internet Archive it's the best out there that I've found and it's free. You can download it and play it back on a media player if you are like me and like to wander around listening

I have studied the first chapter a fair bit and read about 4 different sites which have all contributed a few different angles on it. I am now very appreciative of how many layers there are, so many subtleties it's like a poem, every word matters. And, I also find it very entertaining. So, that's a start right?

Patrice wrote: The accents (in the recording) aren't very "Irish" are they?.."

Not in that one no, there is another one I've found which seems to be more 'authentic' accent wise if you'd prefer?

Patrice wrote: "The accents (in the recording) aren't very "Irish" are they?
"
I sought desperately for an audio version of War and Peace (or Anna Karenin, or Crime and Punishment) in which the reader spoke English with a russian accent. I really thought that would have set the tone for the book... alas I never found such a thing.

Thomas wrote: "Laurel wrote: "Has anyone found the ReJoyce podcasts? Very interesting and helpful, by Frank Delaney. You can get them (free, of course) through iTunes."

These are fantastic! Delaney is analyzing ..."

Oh, these are wonderful! I'll definitely be able to get through chapter 3 now!

The trouble is, the same as I've found with all of the annotated sites, it starts at the beginning and it's taken him 2+ years to get through to Chapter 5! Oh well, at least I'll get that much down pat :-)

He just called Jane Austen 'Janey'. I love this guy :-)

I just finished the first chapter and I'm getting the idea that there are lots of references to pop culture of the time. I don't care about pop culture of my own time, and here I am reading of someone else's! As another has mentioned, this thing probably gets harder to read with each passing decade as references are lost to the collective memory. I'm going to be depending on the big red flags Thomas puts out for us so I'll know what not to ignore.

And where are the quotation marks, for God's sake?

Can't wait to get this thing started. It looks like we're going to be a big, fun crowd.

Thomas wrote: "Patrice wrote: "Thomas, would it help to read it aloud? With an Irish accent? ;-)
"

Listen to the RTE performance! It's magnificent.

https://archive.org/details/Ulysses-A..."

Not only is it excellent, listening to it prevents one from skimming over any of it, missing important details. I had read section 1 twice before I listened to the recording, and found much that I had sloughed over suddenly emerging as meaningful.

In addition, it makes clear who is saying what, and what is conversation and what is self-rumination. That alone is worth the price of admission!

Patrice wrote: "What is interesting to me is that I can't remember a group of people more interested in starting the discussion before the assigned date. It seems we're all champing at the bit!"

Indeed. Already, before the first content thread had been posted, we have almost 70 posts. That's more than many groups get on an entire book!

This group is truly amazing. This read is particular proof of that, with some participants reading the book for the first time and others true experts in it. And all shades inbetween.

It's trite to say that the point of life isn't the destination but the journey, but I think in this case the journey IS going to be the destination. And a wonderful journey and destination, too.

Zippy wrote: "And where are the quotation marks, for God's sake?."

I know!! Punctuation is for the plebs!!

Everyman wrote: "Indeed. Already, before the first content thread had been posted, we have almost 70 posts. That's more than many groups get on an entire book!

This group is truly amazing. This read is particular proof of that, with some participants reading the book for the first time and others true experts in it. And all shades inbetween."

+1 this.

Thomas wrote: "He said after it was published, "The pity is the public will demand and find a moral in my book or worse they may take it in some serious way, and on the honor of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it." ."

Are we supposed to take him seriously? In the intro to my copy of A Portait it says that it took him seven years to complete Ulysses. That is a lot of labor for a work of frivolity. Or was he sitting around a large portion of the seven years? Or maybe I should ask how much of a gentleman he was? :-)

Genni wrote: "Are we supposed to take him seriously? In the intro to my copy of A Portait it says that it took him seven years to complete Ulysses. That is a lot of labor for a work of frivolity. Or was he sitting around a large portion of the seven years? Or maybe I should ask how much of a gentleman he was? :-) "

A fair question. The painter Frank Budgen was one of Joyce's friends in Zurich who knew Joyce while he was at work on Ulysses, and he recalls this conversation:

I inquired about Ulysses. Was it progressing?
"I have been working hard on it all day," said Joyce.
"Does that mean you have written a great deal?" I said.
"Two sentences," said Joyce.
I looked sideways but Joyce was not smiling. I thought of Flaubert.

Nora Joyce would sometimes be awakened at night by her husband because he couldn't stop laughing at what he was writing. He said of himself that he was only "an Irish clown, a great joker at the universe." But he was dead serious about the art of language, and he was a literary virtuoso of the highest caliber.

But did he have a point? Should he be taken seriously in that respect? That I'm not so sure about.

Zippy wrote: "And where are the quotation marks, for God's sake?"

The system is French. Guillemets (‹‹ and its right-hand pair) are used only at the beginning and end of an entire conversation. Unlike in English, where any non-speech is found outside of the quotation marks, in French guillemets do not end when an incidental clause (he said, she smiled, etc.) is added. To indicate that a new person is speaking, a tiret (m-dash or em-dash) is added.

This is a technical issue in narration. There can be no reported direct speech, given the narrative strategy of the book, because there is no one to report it or report it to. The speech of others becomes an experience of the character, not an independent occurrence. The dash is a way of marking off what the character hears, but it is not usual in French to mark off the other end as it is with the close quote in English.

Joyce's intent was to register speech as we actually experience it, as a noise integral with the other noises in the outside world and with the commentary and related thoughts with which we embellish what we hear.

This is part of the difficulty of the first three chapters, because there are remnants of the familiar external narrator who provides access first to one character, then another, so we have two different narrative strategies at work. The thing settles down when Bloom appears.

Joyce is the only one of the High Modernists to have used this narrative system with such thoroughness. In recent years we have lost interest in attempts to tell a story with such extreme interiority. You'll find it in patches in most contemporary fiction, but we have become so used to it in its less extreme form that no one remarks it.

Genni wrote: "Thomas wrote: "He said after it was published, "The pity is the public will demand and find a moral in my book or worse they may take it in some serious way, and on the honor of a gentleman, there ..."

It is not that is or is not a moral book, but that someone will impose a particular moral on it -- a lesson. And that is indeed what happened in the period of censorship. Because the book did not conform to any recognizable "gentleman's code" (or an equivalent American system of propriety) it was deemed immoral -- in this particular case, obscene. What the judge did in striking this down was to give credence to the view we now hold, that obscenity is a shifting idea with uncertain boundaries. This was what Joyce hoped for. He had had censorship run-ins in Britain before, and in France the situation had an additional difficulty in that if a book were declared obscene, seditious, or something of that sort then the printer as well as the publisher was liable. What Joyce meant was that the antonym to moral should not be immoral but rigid. He did not want Ulysses to be taken as some fable with a moral at the end, but as an acknowledgment of human diversity and an acceptance of the human condition. There will be many big and little instances of this.

Likewise, the antonym of serious is not frivolous but joyous, welcoming.

@76: Would this be similar to Mark Twain's announcement at the beginning of Huckleberry Finn?

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
per
G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE”

I don't think any modern book has drawn to itself such a complexity of related issues. quote marks -> the psychology of private experience -> the relative nature of moral judgment -> the comic aspects of everyday life ... ?!? For most novels these would be some quiet thoughts after the book is done with. Here it's like the starting line for a drag race. There's this terrible racket waiting for the light to go green, followed by lots of shrieking, smoke, and burnt rubber. This book has been a heavy burden for writers since, to crawl and struggle out of its very long shadow. One strategy has been, as Cass and others have pointed out, to simply repudiate the whole business. Certainly there was never any possibility of a writer's going mano-a-mano with Joyce at his own game. You would lose. Even Nabokov, the Cassius Clay of literature, had to step sideways.
'

Thomas wrote: "But he was dead serious about the art of language, and he was a literary virtuoso of the highest caliber.

But did he have a point? Should he be taken seriously in that respect? That I'm not so sure about. ."

Ok, this helps me understand where he is coming from a bit more. I also feel like I WANT to read it more now, because we have an appreciation of language in common. :-)

Charles wrote: "Genni wrote: "Thomas wrote: "He said after it was published, "The pity is the public will demand and find a moral in my book or worse they may take it in some serious way, and on the honor of a gen..."

Thanks for the expansive comments, Charles. I'm glad that you are adding your expertise in the field to this discussion.

I forget who recommended using shmoop.com but it saved me from getting completely frustrated with Episode 3. I have lots of questions about episode 3 and can't wait for the thread to open. But this is a step up from my original question when I started episode 3 without shmoop.com - which was "I'm lost. What's going on here?"

Charles wrote: "...Even Nabokov, the Cassius Clay of literature, had to step sideways...."

LOL! Love to hear you elaborate on that comment sometime, Charles.

It was that continual dancing movement which made Clay so hard to hit. You didn't just wade in and start punching.

This conversation brings to mind a comment that has stuck with me... Made by a celebrity chef on an australian production of "My restaurant rules" (of all people and all places). To set the scene... Six couples and two judges go to a dinner party hosted at the home of one pair of contestants... They proceed to eat and evaluate the food (much face-pulling ensues.)

The meal was a bit bizarre and then judge asked the contestant... What is the point? It seems like you are trying to educate the guests rather than give them a good meal.

He was making the point that these were, ostensibly, his guests and should be treated as such, they were not his students to be educated (and condescended towards).

I suppose that Joyce was not writing to please us, nor to teach us a lesson. And while his style is very playful I do not believe that his work is just a literary game (though its reputation might lead us to believe so).

His aim seems rather to depict 'the world as it is' (as he experienced it). Trying so without compromises makes him a very 'moral' writer. Still, if we cannot communicate with the book, it is not unreasonable to decide that it must be (as far as we are concerned) a failed experiment.

As I strongly suspect that precisely this will happen, I'm still undecided about reading it (I have read Joyce's earlier prose), but I will keep an eye on this discussion.

Zippy wrote:
And where are the quotation marks, for God's sake?"

I know!!! It's crazy. Listening to the recording though clears it up. Also the annotated version here: http://www.columbia.edu/~fms5/ulys.htm uses colour to divide the book up and it's much easier to follow.

http://www.audible.com/pd/Classics/Ul...

This looks good too.

An audio version with great Irish accents.

Tiffany wrote: "I forget who recommended using shmoop.com but it saved me from getting completely frustrated with Episode 3. I have lots of questions about episode 3 and can't wait for the thread to open. But this is a step up from my original question when I started episode 3 without shmoop.com - which was "I'm lost. What's going on here?" "

I tacked episode 3 last night. Or, rather, I tried to tackle it. I was about as successful as a fourth grader trying to tackle Marshawn Lynch* in full stride.

More than once I had to beat down the suspicion that Joyce had simply closed his eyes, opened the dictionary at random, plunked down a finger, chosen the word it landed on, done that several successive times, and then tossed in a few "ofs" and "ands" and such to make it into a semblance of a sentence, but not a sentence because a sentence is supposed to have at least a semblance of comprehensibility. Okay, I know he didn't really do that, but if he had maybe it would have made even more sense.

Which was a surprise, because once I got two pages into episode 1 it turned out surprisingly to start making a certain amount of sense, and episode 2 I actually enjoyed. Then I hit episode 3. And I fully agree with Tiffany's asking "what's going on here?" though I asked it, at least mentally, in somewhat more colorful language.

But I'm committed (and I don't mean to a mental institution, though that may be the case by the time I get to episode 16). I will at least let my eyes move over every word of episode 3. Then I will wait for Thomas and Charles and all the rest of you to help me figure out at least a modicum of what Joyce is driving at. And I hope to find myself actually enjoying even episode 3.

Meanwhile, though, I am finding myself clinging desperately to the life raft of sanity.


*Marshawn Lynch -- very powerful Seattle Seahawks running back, nicknamed "The Beast."

I wonder how many of us, at the end of this read, will agree with the blurb on the Penguin edition that claims that "despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book."

I am more than halfway through (the whole book) and I find it painfully UNreadable. Uuuuuuugggggggghhhhhhhhh.

Reading all our comments, it sounds like we're all going to have a colonoscopy.

Ulysses isn't going to detect cancer... What is it that compels us to climb into Everyman's raft?

Everyman wrote: "I tacked episode 3 last night. Or, rather, I tried to tackle it. I was about as successful as a fourth grader trying to tackle Marshawn Lynch* in full stride."

Episode 3 is probably the most challenging in the book. And it comes early, before first-time readers have become more comfortable.

Zippy wrote: "Reading all our comments, it sounds like we're all going to have a colonoscopy.

"

Ha! Incidentally, H.G. Wells once accused Joyce of having "a cloacal obsession." (This was in a surprisingly positive review of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.)

Everyman wrote: "I tacked episode 3 last night. Or, rather, I tried to tackle it. I was about as successful as a fourth grader trying to tackle Marshawn Lynch* in full stride.
"

What's going on here? Muhammad Ali? Marshawn Lynch? Colonoscopies? I'm afraid to say that James Augustine Joyce would be loving this conversation...

But in any case, Do not let Episode 3 get you down!

If it gets unbearable, SKIP IT and go on to episode 4, which is where the book really takes off. I hope Charles and I can shed some light on Stephen's walk on the beach, but for now it's just a walk on the beach. It's not crucial to what follows.

Cass wrote: "He was making the point that these were, ostensibly, his guests and should be treated as such, they were not his students to be educated (and condescended towards). "

A prickly but hopefully fair defense of 'hard books':

This is an unresolvable issue which, as your example points out, goes beyond literary questions, beyond entertainment, out into the wider world.

Dentistry. What anaesthesia hath wrought. The purpose is not to cause pain but to get the tooth out. Rotten teeth can kill you.

But then: religion. Would you be happy with a cut-down religion simple enough to fit into a cathedral stained-glass window? Depends on who you are and the nature of your faith. The contention of the Reformation was that we did not need priests to understand. But that hasn't changed much.

The contention underlying 'hard books' vs 'beach reads' (to take those at opposite ends of the spectrum) is what literature (fiction) is for. Entertainment? Of course. But what is entertaining? Instruction? Ick, but useful in some contexts. Maybe a useful comparison would be a marathon run -- painful, lots of work, but very rewarding. Nobody ever claimed we all need to run marathons. (I don't think anybody has claimed this.) The problem of the meal was that it was a bit much, though the diners would probably not have been happy with a hamburger, either. People go out of their way to eat a meal as the ancient Romans would have enjoyed. Apparently we find it largely inedible. Why do people do it, then? Whatever it is, it expands the idea of eating for pleasure.

I think the problem with Ulysses (and a few other such books) is the teachers and cultural mavens who propose to tell us what is good for us and what is necessary for us to end up on the right side of the culture and class wars. This does three disservices -- it spoils the books which demand some sort of reader participation, it spoils books like detective stories by claiming that they are a waste of time, and it degrades readers as beings who cannot choose for themselves.

Writers do owe something to their readers -- not to cheat them with false claims, not to give them puzzles and then withhold the clues necessary to solve them, not to disrespect the reader's ability to understand (not the same as challenging it). But readers owe something to the writer as well -- to take the writer as serious and well-intentioned (which allows for the possibility of well-intentioned failure). It's true that some writers are pretentious, arrogant, self-serving. That doesn't invalidate the whole enterprise.

Everyman wrote: "I tacked episode 3 last night. Or, rather, I tried to tackle it. I was about as successful as a fourth grader trying to tackle Marshawn Lynch* in full stride."

Ha ha! I love that image. :)

Well, I also attempted chapter 3 last night. Same thing for me, I had no clue what was going on. I had some slight glimpses (a dog, walk on the beach, something about an aunt's house), but everything was all jumbled together. My eyes did, however, pass across every word of chapter 3, so I pat myself on the back for that.

The Columbia link Nicola referred to looks great, I think I'll be looking over that today.

Everyman wrote:I tacked episode 3 last night. Or, rather, I tried to tackle it. I was about as successful as a fourth grader trying to tackle Marshawn Lynch* in full stride.

More than once I had to beat down the suspicion that Joyce had simply closed his eyes, opened the dictionary at random, plunked down a finger, chosen the word it landed on, done that several successive times, and then tossed in a few "ofs" and "ands" and such to make it into a semblance of a sentence, but not a sentence because a sentence is supposed to have at least a semblance of comprehensibility. Okay, I know he didn't really do that, but if he had maybe it would have made even more sense.."

If you are stuck on Chapter 3 I highly recommend the podcasts. The first bit is dealing with an idea of Aristotle's regarding what's visible and why it's visible (along with some other stuff). It's very well broken down but you have to skim through the podcasts to find the ones which deal with that. There are over 250 of them (and growing) so you have to search. Fortunately they are all in order.

Zippy wrote: "Reading all our comments, it sounds like we're all going to have a colonoscopy.

Ulysses isn't going to detect cancer... What is it that compels us to climb into Everyman's raft?"

Ha doesn't it.

I was busy writing a little list of priorities yesterday... You know "housework (2hrs per day), cooking (2hrs per day), french (3hrs per day), exercise (1hr per day)...and then there was Ulysses and it was only this group that kept it on the list, and the idea that if I don't read it this month with this group I know I will never ever attempt it again.

It has been awhile since I even tried to read, let alone understand, this beast of Joyce's, but somehow "last time" I did get beyond the infamous Chapter 3 and I recall some very understandable passages. This time, I "know" about some ignominious passages ahead and do hope I make it through and to those, regardless of how I shall react. Moby Dick and the remainder of Proust are probably the last other shibboleths of literature I shall consider to want to "conquer" on this earthly pass, although hopefully there will be many others to enjoy. But I am increasingly leaning towards the pundits who suggest read less and re-read more. Although I'm certainly not there yet. (Oh, I forgot about Infinite Jest and maybe Pynchon and/or William Gass.)

Everyman wrote: "More than once I had to beat down the suspicion that Joyce had simply closed his eyes, opened the dictionary at random, plunked down a finger, chosen the word it landed on, done that several successive times, and then tossed in a few "ofs" and "ands" and such to make it into a semblance of a sentence, but not a sentence because a sentence is supposed to have at least a semblance of comprehensibility. Okay, I know he didn't really do that, but if he had maybe it would have made even more sense...."

LOL! This post made my day!

@94 - Thomas

@95 - Charles

I completely agree with Charles' comments about reading books. I know a few friends and more than a few literature teachers who would be shocked at Thomas' suggestion that I skip episode 3.

And even though I don't understand episode 3, I'm quite eager to see what the rest of the book holds in store.

Charles wrote: "Writers do owe something to their readers -- not to cheat them with false claims, not to give them puzzles and then withhold the clues necessary to solve them, not to disrespect the reader's ability to understand (not the same as challenging it). But readers owe something to the writer as well -- to take the writer as serious and well-intentioned (which allows for the possibility of well-intentioned failure). It's true that some writers are pretentious, arrogant, self-serving. That doesn't invalidate the whole enterprise. "

Very well said.

Very.

Lily wrote: " But I am increasingly leaning towards the pundits who suggest read less and re-read more. Although I'm certainly not there yet. .."

My thoughts have been leaning that way this last year, too, Lily, although I haven't leaned quite so far as to fall off the reading wagon either.

Tiffany wrote: "I know a few friends and more than a few literature teachers who would be shocked at Thomas' suggestion that I skip episode 3."

Just to clarify -- I don't recommend that you skip episode 3, as much as I love a good professor-shocking. But if the choice is utter frustration and despair versus skipping the episode, I say skip it. You can always go back to it later, and if you fall in love with the book, you will.

I like Anthony Burgess's distinction between Class 1 and Class 2 writers (from Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce) :

Not a spoiler but a bit long:

(view spoiler)[Novelists, like poets, work in the medium of human language, but some may be said to work in it more than others. There is a kind of novelist (conveniently designated as Class I), usually popular, sometimes wealthy, in whose work language is a zero quantity, transparent, unseductive, the overtones of connotation and ambiguity totally damped. The above* -is an attempt at rewriting the opening of Joyce's U!ysses in the manner of a Class I novelist-one of the American Irvings, say: Stone or Wallace. Such work is closer to film than to poetry, and it invariably films better than it reads. The aim of the Class I novel can only properly be fulfilled when the narrated action is transformed into represented action: content being more important than style, the referents ache to be free of their words and to be presented directly as sense-data.

To the other kind of novelist (Class 2) it is important that the opacity of language be exploited, so that ambiguities, puns and centrifugal connotations are to be enjoyed rather than regretted, and whose books, made out of words as much as characters and incidents, lose a great deal when adapted to a visual medium. Drugstore bestsellers, which overwhelmingly belong to Class I, sometimes nevertheless admit the other category, but only when the lure of the subject-matter-invariably erotic -is stronger than the resistance that the average novel-reader feels towards literary style.

Needless to say, there are stylistic areas where the two classes of fiction overlap. Transparent language -like that of W. Somerset Maugham in his novel Cakes and Ale -can be elevated to a high level of aesthetic interest through wit, balance, euphony, and other devices of elegance. Elegance, however, is the most that Class I prose can achieve; for dandyism one must go to Class 2 writers. But opaque language can be so self-referring that the reader, legitimately seeking some interest of character and action, may become resentful. A novelist who has brought his reader to the brink of action only to put off the action while he engages in a virtuoso prose cadenza is indulging in the ultimate dandyism, which makes the clothes more important than the body beneath. If the promised action is of a violent nature, and the author decides to enjoy a digression on the word itself, finding violent, because of its phonic associations with violet and viol, a somehow unviolent term, then murmurs about artistic irresponsibility will probably be in order. A Class 2 novel, in fact, does not have to be a better work of fiction than a Class 1 novel, but it usually has a better claim to be regarded as literature. The beginning of literary wisdom, at least in the field of the novel, lies in a realisation that Class I and Class 2 novelists have some-what different aims. To appreciate James Joyce, one must accept that, for better or for worse, he is irredeemably entrenched in the very heart of Class 2 writing, and that to him literary development was a matter of digging himself more and more deeply in. (hide spoiler)]