Showing posts with label Contra Joyce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Contra Joyce. Show all posts
Friday, August 02, 2013
E.M. Forster on Joyce's Ulysses
"Ulysses is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, it is an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed, where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell" - Aspects of the Novel (1927)
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Joyce - Rottenness in Literature
Alfred Noyes
Sunday Chronicle
October 29, 1922
I have picked on Ulysses because it brings to a head all the different questions that have been perplexing literary criticism for some time. There no answer possible in this case. It is simply the foulest book that has ever found its way into print. Yet it has received columns of attention from many of the leading journals, and its author has been proclaimed a slightly mad genius, but still a genius.
The writing is this book is simply bad as writing, and much of it is obscure through sheer disorder of the syntax. But - there is no foulness conceivable to the mind of madman or ape that has not been poured into its imbecile pages.
Yet some of our 'intellectuals', including one of our leading novelists, have been stating that its author comes within measurable distance of having written the best book in the world.
No word of thought conceivable in Dublin or the New York Bowery is omitted, and the foulest references to real persons in this country, attributing vile diseases to them, amongst other equally disgusting suggestions.
I have recited the case of this book because it is the extreme case of complete reduction of absurdity of what I have I called the "literary Bolshevism of the hour." It can do little harm, because the police are, on the whole, circumventing our pseudo-intellectuals.
But what concerns all of us, and most urgently demands consideration, is that our Metropolitan criticism should be treating works such as those by Mr. Joyce seriously as a work of genius at the very moment when journal after journal is helping depreciate the value of some of the noblest pages in our literature.
The battle that is being wages over the works of Tennyson, for instance, the assault that has been made on all the Victorian writers - and it is interesting to note that Bolshevik Russia has recently been declaring that Dickens is more dangerous than Denikin - are indications of the destructive spirit which may lead us on the road to barbarianism.
Sunday Chronicle
October 29, 1922
I have picked on Ulysses because it brings to a head all the different questions that have been perplexing literary criticism for some time. There no answer possible in this case. It is simply the foulest book that has ever found its way into print. Yet it has received columns of attention from many of the leading journals, and its author has been proclaimed a slightly mad genius, but still a genius.
The writing is this book is simply bad as writing, and much of it is obscure through sheer disorder of the syntax. But - there is no foulness conceivable to the mind of madman or ape that has not been poured into its imbecile pages.
Yet some of our 'intellectuals', including one of our leading novelists, have been stating that its author comes within measurable distance of having written the best book in the world.
No word of thought conceivable in Dublin or the New York Bowery is omitted, and the foulest references to real persons in this country, attributing vile diseases to them, amongst other equally disgusting suggestions.
I have recited the case of this book because it is the extreme case of complete reduction of absurdity of what I have I called the "literary Bolshevism of the hour." It can do little harm, because the police are, on the whole, circumventing our pseudo-intellectuals.
But what concerns all of us, and most urgently demands consideration, is that our Metropolitan criticism should be treating works such as those by Mr. Joyce seriously as a work of genius at the very moment when journal after journal is helping depreciate the value of some of the noblest pages in our literature.
The battle that is being wages over the works of Tennyson, for instance, the assault that has been made on all the Victorian writers - and it is interesting to note that Bolshevik Russia has recently been declaring that Dickens is more dangerous than Denikin - are indications of the destructive spirit which may lead us on the road to barbarianism.
Monday, July 15, 2013
The Scandal of Ulysses
The Scandal of Ulysses
Aramis
Sporting Times, no. 34 (April 1922)
After a bored perusal of James Joyce's Ulysses, published in Paris, I can realize one reason at least for the Yankee judges fined the "Little Review" $100 for the original publication of a very rancid chapter of the Joyce stuff, which appears to have written by a perverted lunatic who has made a specialty of the latrine.
As the readers of the "Pink'un" know, I have dealt appreciatively with many unconventional books in these pages; but I have no stomach for Ulysses...James Joyce is a writer of talent, but in Ulysses, he has ruled out all the elementary decencies of life and dwells appreciatively on things that sneering louts of schoolboys guffaw about. In to that, this stupid glorification of mere filth, the book suffers from being written in the manner of the demented George Meredith. There are whole chapters of it without any punctuation, or other guide as to what the writer is really getting at. Two-thirds of it are incoherent, and the passages that are plainly written are devoid of wit, displaying only a coarse salacity intended for humor.
The main contents of the book are enough to make a Hottentot sick. Ulysses would have been boycotted in the palmiest days of Holywell Street. And yet there a number of New York intellectuals who declare that Joyce has written the best book in the world, and that Ulysses is the topmost of them.
Over one supremely nauseous chapter, that the publishers were indicted on, a great deal of highbrow nonsense was talked in court for the defense by a Mr. Moeller. He said in bland tones that the chapter was a "Unveiling of the subconscious mind, in the Freudian manner, and that he saw no possibility of these revelations being aphrodisiac in their influence"
The court gasped, and one of the Judges protested: "See here, you might as well talk in Russian. Speak in plain English if you want us to understand what you are saying".
Moeller was asked what he thought would be the effect of an objectionable chapter on the mind of the average reader. Moeller responded "I think it would mystify him".
It would have also have a similar effect of an ordinary emetic. Ulysses is not only pornographic, it is intensely dull. As the volume is about the size of the London Telephone directory, I do not envy anyone who reads it for pleasure.
Aramis
Sporting Times, no. 34 (April 1922)
After a bored perusal of James Joyce's Ulysses, published in Paris, I can realize one reason at least for the Yankee judges fined the "Little Review" $100 for the original publication of a very rancid chapter of the Joyce stuff, which appears to have written by a perverted lunatic who has made a specialty of the latrine.
As the readers of the "Pink'un" know, I have dealt appreciatively with many unconventional books in these pages; but I have no stomach for Ulysses...James Joyce is a writer of talent, but in Ulysses, he has ruled out all the elementary decencies of life and dwells appreciatively on things that sneering louts of schoolboys guffaw about. In to that, this stupid glorification of mere filth, the book suffers from being written in the manner of the demented George Meredith. There are whole chapters of it without any punctuation, or other guide as to what the writer is really getting at. Two-thirds of it are incoherent, and the passages that are plainly written are devoid of wit, displaying only a coarse salacity intended for humor.
The main contents of the book are enough to make a Hottentot sick. Ulysses would have been boycotted in the palmiest days of Holywell Street. And yet there a number of New York intellectuals who declare that Joyce has written the best book in the world, and that Ulysses is the topmost of them.
Over one supremely nauseous chapter, that the publishers were indicted on, a great deal of highbrow nonsense was talked in court for the defense by a Mr. Moeller. He said in bland tones that the chapter was a "Unveiling of the subconscious mind, in the Freudian manner, and that he saw no possibility of these revelations being aphrodisiac in their influence"
The court gasped, and one of the Judges protested: "See here, you might as well talk in Russian. Speak in plain English if you want us to understand what you are saying".
Moeller was asked what he thought would be the effect of an objectionable chapter on the mind of the average reader. Moeller responded "I think it would mystify him".
It would have also have a similar effect of an ordinary emetic. Ulysses is not only pornographic, it is intensely dull. As the volume is about the size of the London Telephone directory, I do not envy anyone who reads it for pleasure.
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