Re: Joyce, Episode 144: Womb to Tomb

Frank discusses Kevin Spacey and Joycean phrases such as "Pin it Down."

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Comments

[Euphrates Moss]

My copy of Shakespeare is a well-annotated version known as The Riverside Shakespeare. I actually have several editions, but this is by far my favorite. It has some additions that were made to the canon through the use of computers, brilliant analyses as forwards to plays, an attempt at a chronology of plays by composition, and some incredible insight into the practices of the time. I love it. Also, I can't wait to hear more about Sylvia Beach. She and Harriet Weaver Shaw are two literary heroes of mine along with Lord Henry Wriothesley for their patronage of the arts.

[TomE]

Stephen composed a villanelle towards the end of the Portrait, where I think I liked him less. Here, he’s in even less comfortable circumstances, and while his poetic language is still elevated and symbol-laden, the words he uses while thinking about the process of writing are more like a workman’s. He’s concerned about his art, but uses common words like “glue” and “stick” to describe the working-through of the poem under construction. He also has to deal with mundanities like finding a piece of writing paper.

My impressions jump from Stephen here to “Little Chandler” in “A Little Cloud” from Dubliners. Perhaps it’s my American point of view, but I feel that Joyce is showing us that Stephen, in addition to being a scholar and thinker, is a craftsman as well, and that he has (dare I call it such) a work ethic. Chandler, like Stephen earlier in Proteus, daydreams of the writer’s life—of recognition and acclaim—but Chandler never buckles down and does the work, as Stephen is doing here. We know Stephen will leave Dublin and Chandler will be stogged in place, like the empty porter bottle.

[l. b. lebin]

gee frank, i'm 74 years old. i wonder if i'll live long enough for you to get through chapter 3. i know you're close to the same age, so i guess if the lear-ness doesn't get to you, it shouldn't bother me either. love the unpacking.