So very close to being done for the semester and a sweet, sweet five-week break. My only standing obligation is my “Drugs in Dystopian California” paper. It needs to be ten pages and it currently stands at 6.25, meaning it should be done tonight.
My final judgment on James Joyce: grudging admiration. As much as I found Dubliners and Portrait a bit dull and Ulysses more frustrating than enlightening, I have no doubt that Joyce knew exactly what he was doing. I went to a Picasso museum in Barcelona that showed his progression as artist—he went from very accomplished realist to all the weird, tripped out cubist and surrealist stuff. The point was that he didn’t deviate from the norm because he had a lack of talent, but rather because he had an abundance of it.
The same can be said for Joyce. Writing my paper on Dubliners, I grew to appreciate his technical mastery—the paper showed how he trapped his characters in the text (introducing them mid-sentence, not introducing them for paragraphs, having the names of secondary characters dominating the story, etc.) as a way to show them being trapped by the social pressures and anxieties of the day. Stylistically these are very plain stories, but I read a wide range of interpretations of them, both individually and as a collection. Interesting stuff, even if I can’t say I enjoyed reading it.
Ulysses is a different beast entirely. Our professor said you can’t read Ulysses once because it makes very little sense; it was written to be reread. To me, frustration outweighed my interest, especially as Joyce intentionally wrote nearly unreadable chapters, i.e. at the end of the long day the men are tired, so the chapter is long-winded and tiring to read. Great. Yet, as much as I hate to say it, part of me wants to start Ulysses over from the beginning now that I know what to expect.
The book is also a brick, and Joyce provides a billion little details. My great personal revelation while reading Ulysses is that each of these details either mean something, or they don’t; it’s up to the reader to make connections, patch pieces together to make a coherent argument about what something “means” even though such an argument is bound to be riddled with holes. The fact that there might be meaning in something reminds me an awful lot of how life works. Each person has a world view and as you observe things happening, they either fit into your world view or they don’t. Things that have no meaning for you may have meaning for someone else. So in that way, Ulysses is stunningly original. It really is on the level of Shakespeare in terms of the sheer number of interpretations it can support.
Anyway, this revelation comes at a time when I’ve been getting into Cormac McCarthy. Reading “reviews” on Amazon is something I love to do because I HATE IT SO MUCH. The two biggest camps are: 1) Cormac McCarthy is a genius and the best living American author, or 2) Don’t believe the hype, his stuff is unreadable and the only people that like it are constipated academics who lie. (For the record, I fall into that first category and resemble the second.)
What drives me crazy is this underlying assumption that “good writing” ought to equal “accessible writing” when in fact they have nothing to do with each other. First off, “accessible” is a quality only each reader can decide for him/herself. Personally, I think too many readers refuse to get in the writer’s rhythm. Greek classics and Icelandic Sagas don’t feel like modern stories because… erm, they’re not. But if you take some time, you fall into the rhythm of that work and it’s smooth sailing. (As a matter of fact, this was my experience with Mr. McCarthy.)
Second, a lot of good books don’t go in one direction. I don’t read many mainstream best sellers, but typically there’s a fairly straightforward plot. I don’t mean it doesn’t have twists and turns a la The DaVinci Code, but rather what events took place and how they occurred is fairly straightforward. This does not describe, say, Ulysses. Or Blood Meridian for that matter. If you finish a book, set it aside, think a minute, then pick it back up and read the last couple pages over to see if you missed The Meaning in that last chapter, that’s a sign the book is complicated. And really great books give you a sense that there’s Meaning in there somewhere, you just have to back and look for it. I suspect this makes some people feel dumb and therefore angry.
Third, you cannot judge a book based on your own view of morality. The works of Cormac McCarthy do not end gently. The world is fairly brutal and unjust, and the characters try (and often fail) to make sense of the brutality and injustice. If you don’t think the world works this way (often because of a belief in a just God), this does not necessarily mean the book is pointless, nihilistic, or needlessly depressing. The same goes if you just don’t like to think about those kinds of things.
Anyway, this whole thing reminds me of a time years ago when went out to eat at a Spanish restaurant in Chicago with one of Amy’s (ahem) less cultured friends from high school. She and I happened to get the same glass of dry red wine, which I quite enjoyed. She, however, thought it “sucked” because it was too dry and promptly put a couple ice cubes in it to water it down. I also suspect she thought I was being snooty because I claimed to like it just the way it was.
That is all.
Current Mood: Almost…Done | 
Currently Listening To - Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros - “Streetcore”
— It’s my last outing for awhile since we head to South Carolina on vacation Wednesday. I’m in the giving mood, so I’ll grant myself a four-star performance even though I probably don’t completely deserve it. Today marked my 17th (!) outing, meaning I only need eight more sessions before I break even for the seasonal pass. I’m guessing I should hit that by the end of January or early February, meaning the remaining months are all gravy.
