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While in Hilton Head I did what I often do, visit my books and read every New Yorker magazine my father has.
Also had a few discussions regarding writing with my father, who is a self-published writer via authorhouse.com.
He's self-published five books. Yes, I know some folks scoff at self-publishing, just as some scoff at fan-fiction. You aren't *really* a writer unless you're published by a publishing house and all that. Why people have to put other's down to feel important themselves, I'm not sure. But there it is.
At any rate, I re-discovered my old, food stained copy of James Joyce's Ulysess, which has notes and underlines all through it - if a sign of love is notes in the margin, food stained pages, and a loose binding then I think I may have loved this book to death - I'm incredibly hard on books I adore. This is the "corrected text" version published in 1986 and edited by Hans Walter Gabler, Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchoir. Vintage Books. Why was it corrected? Well, Joyce did not type and wrote it in long-hand, hired a bunch of amateur typists to type it for him - these people were recruited over a four year span and included some French nuns who did not speak a word of English, as well as people in Zurich and other countries. The 1922 version as a result was corrupt with errors - errors that Joyce, a meticulous writer, later discovered and wrote up and sent to his publishers. They corrected some of them but not all. As a result no definitive version of the text exists. In 1986 - the editors cited above went through all of Joyce's handwritten manuscripts, as well as all the different versions of the text and came up with what they felt was Joyce's intent. The result is a clearer and more readable text than the one my Dad attempted to read in the 1950s.
Staring up into my parents bookshelves - I found the rest of my Joyce books, all published between 1972-1987.
Of particular interest was one by Arthur Power, ed. by Clive Hart, entitled : "Conversations with James Joyce". (1974, University of Chicago Press.). Apparently Joyce didn't like being interviewed and was generally reticient on his interests or books - except with Arthur Power - another Irish writer and literary critic. So I started flipping through the book and discovered quite a few gems on writing, Proust, and Ulysses that I thought I'd share with you.
1. On Marcel Proust - whom Power wasn't overly fond of and thought a tad on the pretentious side. Here's Joyce's response to Power:
His innovations were necessary to express modern life as he saw it. As life changes, the style to express it must change also. Proust's style conveys that almost imperceptible but relentless erosion of time which as I say is the motive of his work." (p. 79. By the way - both Joyce and Power had read the French version of the work, not the translation.) [Joyce did meet Marcel Proust at a party once. According to Joyce, their conversation consisted of two lines:
Proust: "Do you like truffles?"
Joyce: "Yes, I do." ]
2. Intellectual vs. Emotional Writing Style. Or Outline vs. No Outline? What Joyce says, which I'll reproduce below, oddly fits something Steven Buscemi said in the New Yorker recently. Buscemi was telling the interviewer about his experience writing the script for Trees Lounge. He had taken a screen-writing course and was instructed to not write any dialogue or action until he had the structure of the story completed. Write an outline first. But his whole body resisted the process of writing an outline. He just could not do it. Completely blocked. So he sat down and watched a bunch of John Cassevetes films - and realized there was no structure to these films, they were completely unpredictable and so true to life. You lost yourself in them and the characters. The characters emotions drove them. So he sat down again to write and allowed himself to get lost in the writing, to get lost in the characters and their actions and see where the story went.
Power tells Joyce how he prefers the more classical approach, that is more structured, as the Greeks taught. The hero's journey that Campbell preaches would fit with this.
Joyce responds:
I have tried to write naturally on an emotional basis as against an intellectual basis. Emotion has dictated the course and detail of my book (Ulysess), on an emotional writing one arrives at the unpredictable which can be of more value since its sources are deeper, than the products of the intellectual method. In the intellectual method you plan everything before hand. When you arrive at a description, say of a house, you try to remember that house exactly, which after all is journalism. But the emotionally creative writer refashions the house and creates a significant image in the only significant world, the world of our imaginations. The more we are tied to fact and try to give a correct impression, the further we are from what is significant.
The important thing is not what we write but how we write. And in my opinion the modern writer must be an adventurer above all, willing to take every risk and be prepared to founder in his effort if need be. In other words - we must write dangerously: everything is inclined to flux and change nowadays and modern literature to be valid must express that flux. In Ulysses - I tried to express the multiple variations which make up the social life of a city - its degradations and its exaltations. Avoid the classical with its rigid structure and its emotional limitations. [Interesting. If you've read the novel - you'll note it does not stick within one structure. Ulysess is equal parts play, prose poem, ramble, footnoted literary critique, questionnaire, and novel. Joyce plays with the concept of structure within the novel - something I'd forgotten until I picked it up again and just flipped through the pages. Here he mentions how he used that as a sort of metaphor about the city in which he lived - the idea of the attempt to impose structure, yet unable to completely stay within its confines. I do agree with some what he states above - I think how and why we write is more important than what. But then I've never been all that much of a "what" person, now I think on it. What seems rather limiting and obvious to me. Why on the other hand....not so much. Writing dangerously...not as easy as it looks and impossible to make a living - Joyce certainly didn't, nor did Jane Austen (who while more structured than Joyce did, if you read some of her contempories opinions, write dangerously for her times). ]
Joyce: A book in my opinion should not be planned out beforehand, but as one writes it will form itself, subject, as I say, to the emotional promptings of one's personality. [Put the last bit in bold because that is how I write - I do not plan, I let it form itself, unstructured beforehand, prompted by my emotions and personality. Like Buscemi, I cannot write any other way. I'm not saying one method is better than the other - I do not feel qualified to make such a statement, all I can do is what is best for me. Whenever I've attempted to impose structure on my creativity before hand, I become creatively constipated, stuck, blocked. My body, mind and soul resist. Once I throw out that self-imposed or outside structure, my creativity flows. This is true with painting, drawing, pottery and writing. ]
Thought and plot are not so important as some would make them out to be. The object of any work of art is the transference of emotion, talent is the gift of conveying that emotion... [Ah, yes. Agree. I find that the television shows, books, stories, movies, plays, music that I enjoy the most are the ones that convey emotion, that make me feel what someone else is feeling. The plotty items with very little character or emotional development - tend to leave me somewhat bored or detached. I often can see what will happen next before it does. And find the story predictable. I am willing to excuse plot-holes and less structured plotting, if the emotion is there - if I can feel what the characters feel. But I will not excuse poorly developed or stock characters in a meticulously plotted and perfectly described universe. ]
3. Joyce on "romanticism" vs. "realism". (In short, Joyce would not have liked Dorothy Dunnett very much, while I enjoyed her tremendously.)The conversation sprouts from Power's view that there is a realism in romaticism and that romanticism has meaning and substance.
What makes most people's lives unhappy is some disappointed romanticism, some unrealizable or misconcieved ideal.
4. Joyce on literary analysis and criticisms of his work, specifically Ulysess and authorial intent. His statements on this reminded me a bit of Khalad Hosseni's comments regarding his book The Kite Runner on book tv a while back, not to mention Joss Whedon and ME's views on how people have interpreted theirs.
What do we know about what we put into anything? Though people may read more into Ulysess than I ever intended, who is to say that they are wrong: do any of us know what we are creating?
Which of us can control our scribblings? They are the script of one's personality like your voice or your walk.
[Very true of my own writings in lj, on television media, etc. I cannot control them, they pour out of me, and are open to interpretation.]
Finally, he had this to say about his own work and others, a comment that felt oddly reassuring to me even though I suspect it is on his part a defensive one. It is in response to Power's critique that facts are more important than emotion, more real.
To fault a writer because his work is not logically conceived seems to me poor criticism, for the object of a work of art is not to relate facts but to convey an emotion. Some of the best books ever written are absurd.
All of these quotes are from: Power, A. "Conversations with James Joyce" ( 1974) University of Chicago Press.
More books on James Joyce and Ulysses:
1. Kenner, H. Ulysess Revised Edition (1987) John Hopkins University Press. [This is a literary analysis of the book Ulysess, chapter by chapter, line by line.]
2. Ellman, R. Ulysess on the Liffey (1972) Oxford University Press. [Contains biographical notes as well as literary analysis.]
3. Peake, C.H James Joyce: The Citizen & The Artist (1977) Stanford University Press. [Biography]
4. ed. Hart, C & Hayman, D. James Joyce's Ulysess:Critical Essays (and I forgot to copy down date and publisher for this one, sorry.)
Books by James Joyce (one's I've read or read sections of in bold):
1. Chamber Music
2. Dubliners ( a book of short stories, contains my favorite "The Dead" and one about a charwoman. Nothing like Ulysess.)
3. A Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man
4. Exiles
5. Pomes Pennyeach
6. Finnegan's Wake [read sections of it, much like reading a long beautiful prose poem]
7. Stephen Hero
Also had a few discussions regarding writing with my father, who is a self-published writer via authorhouse.com.
He's self-published five books. Yes, I know some folks scoff at self-publishing, just as some scoff at fan-fiction. You aren't *really* a writer unless you're published by a publishing house and all that. Why people have to put other's down to feel important themselves, I'm not sure. But there it is.
At any rate, I re-discovered my old, food stained copy of James Joyce's Ulysess, which has notes and underlines all through it - if a sign of love is notes in the margin, food stained pages, and a loose binding then I think I may have loved this book to death - I'm incredibly hard on books I adore. This is the "corrected text" version published in 1986 and edited by Hans Walter Gabler, Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchoir. Vintage Books. Why was it corrected? Well, Joyce did not type and wrote it in long-hand, hired a bunch of amateur typists to type it for him - these people were recruited over a four year span and included some French nuns who did not speak a word of English, as well as people in Zurich and other countries. The 1922 version as a result was corrupt with errors - errors that Joyce, a meticulous writer, later discovered and wrote up and sent to his publishers. They corrected some of them but not all. As a result no definitive version of the text exists. In 1986 - the editors cited above went through all of Joyce's handwritten manuscripts, as well as all the different versions of the text and came up with what they felt was Joyce's intent. The result is a clearer and more readable text than the one my Dad attempted to read in the 1950s.
Staring up into my parents bookshelves - I found the rest of my Joyce books, all published between 1972-1987.
Of particular interest was one by Arthur Power, ed. by Clive Hart, entitled : "Conversations with James Joyce". (1974, University of Chicago Press.). Apparently Joyce didn't like being interviewed and was generally reticient on his interests or books - except with Arthur Power - another Irish writer and literary critic. So I started flipping through the book and discovered quite a few gems on writing, Proust, and Ulysses that I thought I'd share with you.
1. On Marcel Proust - whom Power wasn't overly fond of and thought a tad on the pretentious side. Here's Joyce's response to Power:
His innovations were necessary to express modern life as he saw it. As life changes, the style to express it must change also. Proust's style conveys that almost imperceptible but relentless erosion of time which as I say is the motive of his work." (p. 79. By the way - both Joyce and Power had read the French version of the work, not the translation.) [Joyce did meet Marcel Proust at a party once. According to Joyce, their conversation consisted of two lines:
Proust: "Do you like truffles?"
Joyce: "Yes, I do." ]
2. Intellectual vs. Emotional Writing Style. Or Outline vs. No Outline? What Joyce says, which I'll reproduce below, oddly fits something Steven Buscemi said in the New Yorker recently. Buscemi was telling the interviewer about his experience writing the script for Trees Lounge. He had taken a screen-writing course and was instructed to not write any dialogue or action until he had the structure of the story completed. Write an outline first. But his whole body resisted the process of writing an outline. He just could not do it. Completely blocked. So he sat down and watched a bunch of John Cassevetes films - and realized there was no structure to these films, they were completely unpredictable and so true to life. You lost yourself in them and the characters. The characters emotions drove them. So he sat down again to write and allowed himself to get lost in the writing, to get lost in the characters and their actions and see where the story went.
Power tells Joyce how he prefers the more classical approach, that is more structured, as the Greeks taught. The hero's journey that Campbell preaches would fit with this.
Joyce responds:
I have tried to write naturally on an emotional basis as against an intellectual basis. Emotion has dictated the course and detail of my book (Ulysess), on an emotional writing one arrives at the unpredictable which can be of more value since its sources are deeper, than the products of the intellectual method. In the intellectual method you plan everything before hand. When you arrive at a description, say of a house, you try to remember that house exactly, which after all is journalism. But the emotionally creative writer refashions the house and creates a significant image in the only significant world, the world of our imaginations. The more we are tied to fact and try to give a correct impression, the further we are from what is significant.
The important thing is not what we write but how we write. And in my opinion the modern writer must be an adventurer above all, willing to take every risk and be prepared to founder in his effort if need be. In other words - we must write dangerously: everything is inclined to flux and change nowadays and modern literature to be valid must express that flux. In Ulysses - I tried to express the multiple variations which make up the social life of a city - its degradations and its exaltations. Avoid the classical with its rigid structure and its emotional limitations. [Interesting. If you've read the novel - you'll note it does not stick within one structure. Ulysess is equal parts play, prose poem, ramble, footnoted literary critique, questionnaire, and novel. Joyce plays with the concept of structure within the novel - something I'd forgotten until I picked it up again and just flipped through the pages. Here he mentions how he used that as a sort of metaphor about the city in which he lived - the idea of the attempt to impose structure, yet unable to completely stay within its confines. I do agree with some what he states above - I think how and why we write is more important than what. But then I've never been all that much of a "what" person, now I think on it. What seems rather limiting and obvious to me. Why on the other hand....not so much. Writing dangerously...not as easy as it looks and impossible to make a living - Joyce certainly didn't, nor did Jane Austen (who while more structured than Joyce did, if you read some of her contempories opinions, write dangerously for her times). ]
Joyce: A book in my opinion should not be planned out beforehand, but as one writes it will form itself, subject, as I say, to the emotional promptings of one's personality. [Put the last bit in bold because that is how I write - I do not plan, I let it form itself, unstructured beforehand, prompted by my emotions and personality. Like Buscemi, I cannot write any other way. I'm not saying one method is better than the other - I do not feel qualified to make such a statement, all I can do is what is best for me. Whenever I've attempted to impose structure on my creativity before hand, I become creatively constipated, stuck, blocked. My body, mind and soul resist. Once I throw out that self-imposed or outside structure, my creativity flows. This is true with painting, drawing, pottery and writing. ]
Thought and plot are not so important as some would make them out to be. The object of any work of art is the transference of emotion, talent is the gift of conveying that emotion... [Ah, yes. Agree. I find that the television shows, books, stories, movies, plays, music that I enjoy the most are the ones that convey emotion, that make me feel what someone else is feeling. The plotty items with very little character or emotional development - tend to leave me somewhat bored or detached. I often can see what will happen next before it does. And find the story predictable. I am willing to excuse plot-holes and less structured plotting, if the emotion is there - if I can feel what the characters feel. But I will not excuse poorly developed or stock characters in a meticulously plotted and perfectly described universe. ]
3. Joyce on "romanticism" vs. "realism". (In short, Joyce would not have liked Dorothy Dunnett very much, while I enjoyed her tremendously.)The conversation sprouts from Power's view that there is a realism in romaticism and that romanticism has meaning and substance.
What makes most people's lives unhappy is some disappointed romanticism, some unrealizable or misconcieved ideal.
4. Joyce on literary analysis and criticisms of his work, specifically Ulysess and authorial intent. His statements on this reminded me a bit of Khalad Hosseni's comments regarding his book The Kite Runner on book tv a while back, not to mention Joss Whedon and ME's views on how people have interpreted theirs.
What do we know about what we put into anything? Though people may read more into Ulysess than I ever intended, who is to say that they are wrong: do any of us know what we are creating?
Which of us can control our scribblings? They are the script of one's personality like your voice or your walk.
[Very true of my own writings in lj, on television media, etc. I cannot control them, they pour out of me, and are open to interpretation.]
Finally, he had this to say about his own work and others, a comment that felt oddly reassuring to me even though I suspect it is on his part a defensive one. It is in response to Power's critique that facts are more important than emotion, more real.
To fault a writer because his work is not logically conceived seems to me poor criticism, for the object of a work of art is not to relate facts but to convey an emotion. Some of the best books ever written are absurd.
All of these quotes are from: Power, A. "Conversations with James Joyce" ( 1974) University of Chicago Press.
More books on James Joyce and Ulysses:
1. Kenner, H. Ulysess Revised Edition (1987) John Hopkins University Press. [This is a literary analysis of the book Ulysess, chapter by chapter, line by line.]
2. Ellman, R. Ulysess on the Liffey (1972) Oxford University Press. [Contains biographical notes as well as literary analysis.]
3. Peake, C.H James Joyce: The Citizen & The Artist (1977) Stanford University Press. [Biography]
4. ed. Hart, C & Hayman, D. James Joyce's Ulysess:Critical Essays (and I forgot to copy down date and publisher for this one, sorry.)
Books by James Joyce (one's I've read or read sections of in bold):
1. Chamber Music
2. Dubliners ( a book of short stories, contains my favorite "The Dead" and one about a charwoman. Nothing like Ulysess.)
3. A Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man
4. Exiles
5. Pomes Pennyeach
6. Finnegan's Wake [read sections of it, much like reading a long beautiful prose poem]
7. Stephen Hero
