14 ms·
Who the Hell Is This Joyce (1928)
- Gowan29 6y agoThat was an amazing read!
- RyanShook 6y ago“But the world is wide and there is room for both of us to be wrong.”
- themodelplumber 6y agoSadly it's not meant as an insult and yet it seems Wells was not able to afford his more passionate sentences a little touch-up. That a feud occurred around writing like this is unfortunate but it's also notable that Joyce was extremely graceful in his correspondence. He demonstrates an open-mindedness that Wells could have used to his own advantage. But Wells seemed strongly captured by his own perceptions and chose to give the finger to what could be called a growth mindset. Plus it's terrible to tell a friend that you may both be wrong, when they may still have something to say--unless you are ready to be accused of backing out of the entire friendship arrangement. Relationships are all about reconciliation. They're not about subjective meta-narratives which attempt to evenly dole out critique, but from one side. It makes the doling side appear delicate and fearful of their own weaknesses. Better to listen to friends, ask questions, and present your concerns as if they are third parties to yourself. Otherwise you will end up without friends when you need them most. Wells' own writing was likely gasoline on the fire, but I don't think he knew what he was getting into. Simply admitting possible fault as an entry point to subjective commentary like "BUT you're in the same fault zone with me" is a slap in the face.
- radiowave 6y ago> Plus it's terrible to tell a friend that you may both be wrong You're very definitely not British.
- themodelplumber 6y agoCould you explain this comment? I'm not British.
- dmix 6y agoYou seem to be taking excessive British politeness as more of an insult when it's really an attempt at diffusing any hurt/confrontation from the underlying critiques. The intention of adding that statement is not really to reiterate he thinks Joyce is bad or wrong, the main point was admitting he may very well be wrong himself - as a saving-face escape hatch of sorts. Adding "maybe we're both wrong" is similarly a way to avoid confrontation and politely avoid open disagreement - allowing them both to remain on the same plane of neutrality and maintain respectful discourse. It's always difficult to explain these sorts of things without tonality and cultural familiarity (much like explaining sarcasm on the internet). For the British culturally there is an underlying assumption that you're trying to be respectful/non-confrontational even when you're technically critiquing someone's work (which is a sort of overwhelming politeness the British are famous for - being polite means never being brash or overly direct). Another example of this sort of indirection is a "backhanded compliment".
- radiowave 6y agoThank you. This is a much clearer explanation than I was likely to give. I'll add that there was some also implied humour in my comment, and perhaps also in Wells's remarks to Joyce. Humour is the great leveller, before which we all have to confront our failures and fallibilities, and laugh.
- themodelplumber 6y agoThat's so interesting. Thank you for your explanation. I think I can only offer in reply that if Wells' English is excessive British politeness, I wonder if there is even an adjective which could begin to describe Joyce's Irish politeness. :-) With all due respect to cultural differences, one of these levels of politeness seems to have comparatively and metaphorically wiped the floor with the other.
- divbzero 6y agoI can hear Joyce’s chuckle as he read this last bit from “Yours, H. G. Wells”.
- dmix 6y ago> And while you were brought up under the delusion of political suppression I was brought up under the delusion of political responsibility. So much relevant to today in this personal letter.
- mathattack 6y agoI’ve has Ulysses on my shelf for years. Wells may have just put it there for another few years.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y agoI managed to struggle my way through Ulysses, which at least has some semblance of narrative structure and mostly uses actual English words, but Wells is commenting on Finnegans Wake, which is thoroughly impenetrable. Here's the second paragraph: Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen- core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface. ( from http://finwake.com/1024chapter1/1024finn1.htm http://finwake.com/1024chapter1/1024finn1.htm )
- briansteffens 6y agoAh, but you left out the first paragraph which clarifies the second entirely! >riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. And you'll just have to read to the end of the book to find out how the sentence begins. Joking aside, I actually love this style of writing even though I get virtually no narrative from it. I read it almost like some sort of abstract poetry, letting my mind wander as the words go by. Also, I find it reads a lot better out loud than silently: easier to notice some of the strange dream-like word mixes. Like `venissoon` kind of sounds like `very soon`. I only saw `venison` until I read it out loud.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y agoI love Jabberwocky as well, but that's a single page, not 500. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky
- macarthy12 6y agoPlease, tell me, is there a reply? I want to see Joyces response.
- casefields 6y agoThere's more info here on their relationship: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/03/09/henry-james-h-g-wells-art/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/03/09/henry-james-h-g-wel...
- sateesh 6y agoThanks for the link, it is an interesting read. But it is about interaction between Henry James and H.G.Wells, not between James Joyce and Wells.
- donedanadone 6y agoIt's most like that song - who the fuck is Alice. Alice has left, gone...
- seven4 6y ago"My warmest wishes to you Joyce. I can’t follow your banner any more than you can follow mine. But the world is wide and there is room for both of us to be wrong." Thats HG Wells for - "You Suck".
- fisherjeff 6y agoI don’t know, I read it as “you don’t like my books and I don’t like yours, and that’s fine!” It’s a great piece: An eloquent reminder that disagreement doesn’t have to mean disrespect.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Angostura 6y agoI got a completely different feeling. I read this as 'we have both been irrevocably shaped by our influences into being entirely different types of writer, thinking the other's have little merit - but we may both have merit'.
- anonymousiam 6y agoJames Joyce
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago> You began Catholic, that is to say you began with a system of values in stark opposition to reality. Well, I agree, but I also have never seen it written so nicely like this.
- perl4ever 6y agoIt sounds like it might be clever, but then I realize I don't know what it means. If you had values not in opposition to reality, then they wouldn't be relevant to reality, would they? Because in not opposing reality, they couldn't guide you in changing it. The most you could really say about values being objectively wrong is if they are inconsistent and could not be fulfilled in reality in any possible universe. But what is a possible universe? And what if all value systems are impossible to completely fulfill?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cousin_it 6y agoYou're overthinking it. Some people have a "fuck this world" attitude, others don't, that's all Wells wanted to say.
- pjc50 6y agoIt's quite clearly a scientism/superstition feud. Remember that Ireland was extremely Catholic at this point, and the guilt/purity psychology of that would pervade everything. Wells is arguing that Joyce is being shocking for the sake of it in an internal struggle with his conservative values, while Wells sees himself as a scientific man "never been shocked to outcries by the existence of water closets and menstrual bandages". (Presumably a reference to Ulysees and the content that got it banned: https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/ulysses-and-obscenity# https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/ulysses-a... )
- svat 6y agoReally impressed with H. G. Wells here; he manages to: - imagine (correctly or incorrectly) a system of values/upbringing that might result in Finnegan's Wake being seen as good or worthwhile [not his words, but for example: valuing “artistic” / “creative expression” over pleasure or illumination for the reader], - articulate his own values and why as a result he considers it not worth his time, - yet remain humble [you may not think so but this is how it appears to me] that this is just his own point of view and for others with different values, this “extraordinary experiment” may be worthwhile after all — or not. This ability to imagine another point of view, another system of preferences even, and come with a plausible explanation of it.
- nickff 6y agoI think you've hit upon the fascinating contrast in this review; a reviewer who is empathetic towards an almost disdainfully distant author. This style of multi-layered writing used to be more common, but I have not seen it in more recent reviews, which read more like ideological screeds.
- themodelplumber 6y agoI agree in part but also disagree: It has a certain accommodation to it--you are probably fine where you are. I'm fine over here. But why is this necessary, unless you basically hate a person and don't think you could ever reconcile? It's a psychology of tribalism. Unfortunately the letter also has a certain "shoot first, ask questions later" aspect to it. Like, why wouldn't Wells diplomatically _ask_ Joyce about the perspectives that informed his writing to the public in such a way? The "articulate his own values and why as a result he considers it not worth his time" aspect is also a bit of a cringe along the same lines. You can see it all the time today, in comments on things that are shared on various, ahem, online communities. Especially in response to new projects or posts that don't seem completely pragmatic or tuned for performance, as if everything is meant for a paying audience of common moviegoers. Why wasn't I consulted? I'm a common man! I represent your most common audience! Nah, I think Wells was also feeling afraid of being left out, tossed into the dustbin. Why else would you stake your entire identity so firmly in opposition to someone else, in a letter to that person, instead of keeping it open and asking questions? You're arguing for your own existence. Maslow has entered the chat with some cake and coffee and a monthly stipend. Finally he seems to project some pretty nasty subjective perceptions right into Joyce's rationale. It kinda pulls Joyce down from what Wells seems to treat as a high horse. But it also promotes Wells' own perceptions all the way down the page. Like he invited himself to a debate and forgot to summon a live opponent. TBH while it's amusing to read, and especially in a pompous voice, it also illustrates (to some, and hopefully) how we can learn to do much better for ourselves and others as a thoughtful corresponding audience.
- flatline 6y ago> Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they will ever be to read. That pretty well sums up my experience with Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake as well, though to be fair I have never given the latter much of a try.
- demadog 6y agoHave you read Dubliners? Such a good collection of stories. Honestly he mastered “great” writing and seems he just got bored and wanted to play at a higher level.
- bvm 6y agoThe Dubliners is my desert island book. I can happily just sit there and re-read The Dead over and over again and never bore of it, there's so much there. Especially the way it builds to that incredible ending passage. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
- barking 6y agoI haven't read The Dead but I greatly enjoyed John Houston's film adaptation of it. I also never read Ulysses but the BBC produced a very listenable book at bedtime of it that I can remember listening to in the Summer of 1991 as the coup was underway in Russia (I wasn't there btw)
- biswaroop 6y agoYes! Sorry, I'm just here to fan over Dubliners too. Every winter, on a snowy Massachusetts day, I read them all over again. It's incredible how The Dead and Araby contain so much of what makes us humans. It's hard to explain the images and feelings Joyce brings out in me as I'm reading them. I've met people who think it's boring, and while I understand that different people are attracted to different styles of writing, I'm always amazed that it's possible to dislike Dubliners.
- 6y ago
- BruceEel 6y agoGreat find! Another interesting and rather different take on Finnegan's Wake is Terence McKenna's FW talk : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdXBulkqH5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdXBulkqH5s , worth listening to.
- adaisadais 6y agoI just finished Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. (9.3/10) Should I read Ulysses? I’ve wanted to read it on account of its acclaim but after reading some comments here I feel like maybe not?
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y agoAnna Karenina is a classical novel that follows classical literary conventions. It's heavy and will give your understanding of Russian naming a workout, but it's still basically readable. Ulysses, on the other hand, is hundreds and hundreds of pages of modernist stream of consciousness, from the point of view of many characters who don't believe in providing context, where every sentence is packed full of complicated wordplay and obscure allusions, and everything happens at a snail's pace. If the idea of reading a book where you literally can't understand half of it gives you pause, Ulysses is probably not the book for you. For what it's worth, Joyce is commenting on Finnegans Wake, which goes 10x on everything above and is basically entirely incomprehensible.
- saberience 6y agoYou should add "in your opinion." Just because you couldn't understand or appreciate Ulysses, it doesn't mean that other people cannot, it takes a certain amount of education and reading of other books to be able to "get" Joyce and especially Ulysses. Do you expect a person to fully understand C++ the first time they use it?
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y agoI read Ulysses to the end and appreciated it as the literary experiment it is. I don't intend to do it again though, and despite being quite widely read, thank you very much, I'm not going to claim I understood more than a fraction of it.
- leephillips 6y agoI don’t think this description of Ulysses is accurate nor perceptive. The first time I read it, I felt confused for the first 100 or so pages, and then it clicked. Once you get it, it’s crystal clear; and, in fact, you realize that it’s carefully plotted, with everything fitting together beautifully. Don’t deny yourself the pleasure of this book just because of other people’s lazy takes. If you would be more comfortable with a companion, look up Nabokov’s lecture. But ignore 99% of the other Ulysses criticism, especially anything that talks about Homer. Nabokov understood Ulysses, as he understood Kafka, the way very few other people have.
- gazzini 6y ago> Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they will ever be to read. I’m imagining HG Wells on a modern software team, code-reviewing a large refactoring diff.
- runawaybottle 6y agoI honestly feel like he’s got a new fan in me, digging the bitterness lol.
- mcv 6y agoI am already too wordy in my code reviews. Don't make me emulate Wells. Though now that you mention it, I do recognise a bit of myself in this. I always try to mix criticism with praise. Not quite this brutal, though.
- raverbashing 6y agoWell Finnegans Wake is, in an artistic way, one literary version of IOCCC
- purplezooey 6y agofunny letter. "You have turned your back on common men—on their elementary needs and their restricted time and intelligence, and... you have elaborated.
- alberto_ol 6y agoprevious discussion 4 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12552507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12552507
- Quequau 6y ago100% of my interest in James Joyce comes from Joseph Campbell. The first time I tried to read Joyce my attempt did not go well because I didn't really understand why Campbell was so taken with these works, so my own expectations about what I was getting into were wildly off the mark. So I really get where H. G. Wells is coming from. Though I have to admit that Wells' writing is way, way more articulate than my thoughts at the time. Many years later I got back into Joseph Campbell by way of Julian Jaynes and wound up with Finnegan's Wake again only I suppose with a different set of expectations and perspective. It's still not something I personally would read for idle pleasure but I feel like I'm understanding more of the big picture Joseph Campbell was all about, so it was a worthwhile read.
- dtwhitney 6y agoIMHO, Ulysses is worth the time, but I agree about Finnegans Wake
- melq 6y agoAlso, Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist are excellent and not nearly as dense.
- cgsullivan 6y agoI was in a book club dedicated to reading Finnegans Wake, all 626 pages. We met every two weeks over dinner and would discuss a page or two, or sometimes just a paragraph if things were especially puzzling. It took us eight years to complete. I agree with Wells about the frustrations with the endless riddles and the incessantly opaque style. However an unexpected pleasure was how much fun it was to read in a group. For example, a set of allusions sprinkled on the page might catch the eye of someone for whom the subject was a pet interest or hobby, otherwise we all would have missed it. I learned a lot about world history, art, philosophy, etc., and I almost always ended the evening astounded at the oddest bits of information my friends had tucked away in their heads. Finnegans Wake works really well as a scaffold for learning and conversation; as a story, I'm not so sure, but I think it is a remarkable literary experiment. There are also several truly beautiful passages hidden away in the book, which hit you by complete surprise when you stumble on them.
- yutopia 6y agoSo Wells = modernist and Joyce = (early) postmodernist? This all looks familiar and relevant to our times, the struggle between one who believes in a shared reality and possibility of progress, and the other whose MO is to persistently challenge and deconstruct. I’ve only read Dubliners so not an expert on Joyce by any means though. > But the world is wide and there is room for both of us to be wrong. Perhaps not so in the 21st century, the postmodernists have won. External reality is a mirage now and we can choose from any of the countless, mutually incompatible narratives as we see fit.
- dri_ft 6y agoI would describe Wells not as modernist but as a hangover of a certain strain of Victorian thinking: a basically rationalist, socialist worldview, optimistic about the prospect of improving the world if we could just drop all our silly prejudices. John Stuart Mill, George Bernard Shaw, the Fabian Society.... This perspective didn't fare very well in the early twentieth Century. Orwell describes Wells somewhere as 'too sane to understand the modern world'. I'd count Joyce as a canonical modernist. (If he isn't, who is?)
- yutopia 6y agoThanks, so Finnegans Wake is considered a modernist novel? Interesting. Totally out of my depth here but it seems so much at odds with modernist ideas in other artistic disciplines, e.g., architecture.
- dri_ft 6y agoDefinitely. Yes, there are lots of modernisms. Modernism in literature really has very little in common with modernism in architecture, for instance. Even more confusing, each of these modernisms has its own postmodernism, all 'post' their respective modernisms in different ways. The sort of fragmentation of language and narrative that we see in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake is a pretty central modernist trait, I'd say. An even more central example would be something like Eliot's The Wasteland.
- 000dry 6y agoIt seems theres a bit of an impression of Wells here that he is being even-handed, but I would beg to differ. He frames himself and Joyce as opposites, as if in an attempt to make what follows fair game. I think if someone came up to me and said, "Not that my opinion matters, but I think you're disgusting", I'd still be pretty offended. I think onlookers would see something like that as unnecessary. Just don't write the letter next time, eh Wells?
- bzbarsky 6y agoContext matters. Per the other comments up-thread, the letter was a response to a request for help in advertising a specific book (Finnegan's Wake) that Joyce made of Wells. Not writing the letter and just not responding to the request would be fairly rude too, no? Just refusing without expalaining why would also be a bit odd, given that Wells had provided just such help for Joyce's previous work.
- brushfoot 6y agoThis reminds me of Vladimir Nabokov's opinion of Joyce. Here's Martin Amis, speaking at Nabokov's centenary celebration in 1999: "[O]nly once, I think, did [Nabokov] bow to a superior talent. Of James Joyce he said, 'My stuff is patball to his champion game.' "Now, how sincere was Nabokov being? In my view the bidding starts at 50% and then drops sharply. Anyway it's a judgment he whittled away at elsewhere. That 600-page crossword clue Finnegans Wake Nabokov considered a tragic failure: 'a cold pudding of a book, a persistent snore in the next room.'"
- reedwolf 6y ago>You began Catholic, that is to say you began with a system of values in stark opposition to reality Heh.
- draw_down 6y ago?
- at_a_remove 6y agoI plan on quoting this in a letter to a friend who despises his Catholic upbringing yet recognizes that he has certain baggage from it. It will amuse him.
- Gormisdomai 6y ago"Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they will ever be to read." Part of this message would be good for programmers to hear too
- dtwhitney 6y agoHaha! I thought the same thing. And now I shall continue writing PureScript, because I enjoy it :)
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoIsn’t this the perfect code? Fun to write, boring to read. When reading existing code, I love boring.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoSo recently I noted that Dickens' re-evaluation came 70 years after his death https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23454834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23454834 - it is now 79 years after the death of Joyce - is there a re-evaluation under way, is he going down, and if so who is going up? I personally don't think Wells is going up, but Verne might be (based on nothing more than feeling). on edit: although of course there would be no reason that the critical reputation of Verne should be gained at the expense of Joyce. Just that we are far enough away from a generation of writers that you would think there would be some shaking up of the critical order.
- dmoo 6y agohttps://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0610/1146705-listen-ulysses-james-joyce-podcast/ https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/0610/1146705-listen-ulysses-... For those who want to dip their toe into Ulysses
- david927 6y agoThis is a wonderful critique and made all the more enjoyable with hindsight. Wells here represents a common view but not an enlightened one and history has favored the latter. Joyce was arguably the greatest writer of the 20th century. Wells wrote enjoyable books that could entertain most anyone.
- demadog 6y agoI mean, these two quotes by Joyce himself say it all: “If I gave it all up immediately, I'd lose my immortality. I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.” -Joyce's reply for a request for a plan of Ulysses, as quoted in James Joyce (1959) by Richard Ellmann “The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works.” -Interview with Max Eastman in Harper's Magazine, as quoted in James Joyce (1959) by Richard Ellmann. Eastman noted "He smiled as he said that — smiled, and then repeated it."
- forgotmypw17 6y agoI think putting H. G. Wells in the byline, while setting the date to 2016, is confusing/incorrect.