u/kafuzalem

For someone whose style leaves stories open to interpretation and who developed a multimeaning style in the wake, Joyce's prose is anything but! No holds are barred.

From Realism and Idealism in English Literature (Daniel Defoe-William Blake), Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing (Oxford World Classics).

'Even Oliver Cromwell himself, the Lord Protector of civil liberties, was of Celtic origin, son of a Welsh father and a Scottish mother. So, over six centuries had passed since the Battle of Hastings before the true successor of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty was to ascend to the throne of England. The people who acclaimed the coming of the awkward and taciturn Dutch commander were acclaiming themselves, saluting the human symbol of a true rebirth.

For the first time now the true English spirit begins to appear in literature. Consider how minimal the importance of that spirit was in the earlier times . In Chaucer, a court writer with a polished and comely style, the indigenous spirit can just be discerned as the framework for the adventures of respectable people- meaning Norman clerics and foreign heroes. How is the great English people depicted in the variegated dramas of William Shakespeare, who wrote two hundred years after Chaucer? A boorish peasant, a court jester, a half-mad and half-stupid ragamuffin, a gravedigger. Shakespeare's characters all come from abroad and afar: Othello, a Moorish prince; Shylock, a Venetian Jew; Caesar, a Roman; Hamlet, a Danish prince; Macbeth, a Celtic usurper; Romeo and Juliet, citizens of Verona. Of all the rich gallery, perhaps the only one who can be called English is the fat knight with the monstrous paunch, Sir John Falstaff. In the centuries following the French conquest, English literature was schooled by masters such as Boccaccio, Dante, Tasso and Messer Lodovico. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are a version of the Decameron or the Novellino; Milton's Paradise Lost is a puritanical transcript of the Divine Comedy. Shakespeare with his Titianesque palette, his eloquence, his epileptic passion, and his creative fury, is an Italianized Englishman, while the theatre of the restoration takes its cue from the Spanish stage and the works of Calderon and Lope de Vega. The first English writer to write without copying or adapting foreign works, to create without literary models to instil a truly national spirit into the creations of his pen, and to manufacture an artistic form for himself that is perhaps without precedent (with an exception of the monographs of Sallust and Plutarch) is Daniel Defoe, the father of the English novel.'

I have recently read Margot Norris’ Suspicious Readings of Joyce’s Dubliners where she is clear ‘that all the stories are incomplete and require interpretive activity to complete them’ (Norris 2).

The stories in Dubliners proceed linearly through three phases 

A an introduction to a social situation 
B the narrator gives us a linear time-line of events related to the social situation
C things don’t end up great for a character -

 ‘an essentially unhappy situation finally persists, even intensifies. This in fact is the rule of Dubliners. The grammar of these stories tends towards the persistence of unpleasant conditions-from bad to worse’ (Scholes 69).

Norris frames her suspicious readings in narrative-narration terms ‘My own suspicious reading practice more than others puts the narration into either collusion or conflict with one or another figure in the story, obliging the narrator to play an interpretive role that frequently has an ethical dilemma’ (Norris 7).  

I’d like to take Norris’s suspicious readings further and explore a collusion between the narrator and narrative to obfuscate the cause of the negative outcomes in each story. This collusion takes place in a Humean sequence of events (Phases A-C above) allowing Joyce to use the reader’s indolence to cloud the issues.

In Counterparts 

Phase A: A partner at a Dublin law firm confronts an employee over shoddy work and gives the employee till the end of the day to complete a task or the partner will take things further.
Phase B: The employee sneaks out for a pint at lunch, comes back, doesn’t complete the task, insults the partner, pawns a watchchain to get money for booze and goes out for the night. He spends almost all of the money and loses an arm wrestle twice.
Phase C: He hits his son when he gets home because dinner wasn’t ready.

The dichotomous interpretations are;

Interpretation 1: an overbearing employer harasses an employee, breaking him as a man -

‘The bell rang furiously and when Mrs Parker went to the tube, a furious voice called out in a piercing north of Ireland accent (Joyce 70).

‘Mr Alleyne did not lose a moment’ (Joyce 71).

‘Let me tell you that if the contract is not copied before this evening I’ll lay the matter before Mr Crosbie… Do you hear me now?’ (Joyce 71).

‘Mr Alleyne began a tirade of abuse………….. The tirade continued’. (Joyce 74).

‘He shook his fist in the man’s face’ (Joyce 75)

Interpretation 2: An employee with entrenched alcoholic habits and intrusive violent thoughts and actions is struggling in work and life -

‘Why have I always to complain of you?’ (Joyce 71).

‘You have always some excuse or another for shirking work’ (Joyce 71).

‘Understand once and for all that you get a half an hour for your lunch and not an hour and a half. How many courses do you want, I’d like to know?’ (Joyce 71).

‘Mr Alleyne bent his head again upon a pile of papers. The man stared fixedly at the polished skull which directed the affairs of Crosbie and Alleyne, gauging its fragility. A spasm of rage gripped his throat for a few moments and then passed,’ (Joyce 71). 

‘The man recognised the sensation and felt that he must have a good night’s drinking.’ (Joyce 71).

‘He felt that he must slake the thirst in his throat.’ (Joyce 72).

‘He stood up from his desk and, lifting the counter as before, passed out of the office. As he was passing out the chief clerk looked at him inquiringly.
-It’s all right, Mr Shelley, said the man pointing with his finger to indicate the objective of his journey.
The chief clerk glanced at the hatrack but, seeing the row complete, offered no remark. As soon as he was on the landing the man pulled a shepherd’s plaid cap out of his pocket, put it on his head and ran quickly down the rickety stairs’ (Joyce 72).

‘From the street door he walked furtively on the inner side of the path towards the corner and all at once dived into a doorway. He was now safe in the dark snug of O’ Neill’s shop’ (Joyce 72).

‘The dark damp night was coming and he longed to spend it in the bars, drinking with his friends amid the glare of gas and clatter of glasses. (Joyce 73). 

‘But his head was not clear and his mind wandered away to the glare and rattle of the publichouse’ (Joyce 74). 

‘He longed to execrate aloud, to bring his fist down on something violently.’ (D 74). 

‘He felt strong enough to clear out the whole office single-handed. His body ached to do something, to rush out and revel in violence. (Joyce 74).

‘Suddenly, as he was fingering his watchchain, he thought of Terry Kelly’s pawnoffice in Fleet Street.’ (Joyce 76).

‘His heart swelled with fury’ (Joyce 81).

‘His wife was a little sharpfaced woman who bullied her husband when he was sober and was bullied by him when he was drunk’ (Joyce 81). 

‘-Now, you’ll let the fire out the next time! Take that you little whelp!’

To cloud Interpretation 2, Joyce plays the simplest of tricks - get Interpretation 1 in first. Mr Alleyne’s bell rang ‘furiously’. Mr Alleyne’s voice is ‘piercing’ ! The narrator introduces us to Mr Alleyne almost entirely through dialogue giving us nothing to hang blame or the reader’s likes or dislikes on. After the telling off of Farrington by Mr Alleyne, Joyce quickly stops our reification of Interpretation 1 by performing a switch on a familiar trope-

‘But if Joyce is indeed working within a tradition of clerk and scrivener narratives- a tradition that more peripherally includes Charles Dickens’s Bob Cratchit as well - then one of the conventions he violates is that of depicting clerks and copyists as thin and pallid men. Unlike the delicate and insubstantial starvelings of the nineteenth-century fictions, Joyce makes his scribe Farrington a robust physical presence - “tall and of great bulk” with a volatile body and a psyche structured like a human volcano.’ (Norris 124). 

Margot Norris spots the point at which Joyce shuts the reader down as the reader is about to revert to well known scrivener/copyist characterisation ! We don’t quite start down the path of Interpretation 1 because physically, Farrington is intimidating and Mr Alleyne appears to be a weakling. Joyce has muddied the waters.

This occurs within  “Phase A: Introduction to a Social Situation” which finishes at ‘and then passed,’ in ‘A spasm of rage gripped his throat for a few moments and then passed, leaving after it a sharp sensation of thirst.’ (Joyce 71). From ‘a sharp sensation of thirst’ onwards we have “Phase B: the narrator gives us a linear time-line of events related to the social situation” which in this case revolves around Farrington getting a pint and then getting funds to get pints for a night out and then having a night out.

In Phase B there are many direct references to alcohol and violent inclinations. How does Joyce obfuscate Interpretation 2- i.e. Farrington is a violent alcoholic who is on the edge? 

Joyce deploys his second trick: Farrington plays a fake throw to sneak out unnoticed for a lunchtime pint ‘He stood up from his desk and, lifting the counter as before, passed out of the office. As he was passing out, the chief clerk looked at him inquiringly. 
-It’s all right, Mr Shelley, said the man pointing with his finger to indicate the objective of the journey. (Joyce 72, note 7 Presumably the toilet). 
The chief clerk glanced at the hatrack but, seeing the row complete, offered no remark. As soon as he was on the landing the man pulled a shepherd’s plaid cap out of his pocket, put it on his head and ran quickly down the rickety stairs’. 

The character throws a deceptive fake throw pointing to the toilet, then, not taking his hat from the hatrack, slips a cap on, slopes off and pulls the wool over Mr Shelley’s eyes.

As the narration is moving through the following sequence -

Employer tells off employee
Employee thinks of smashing employers head in
Employee turns to thoughts of drink rather than getting on with work
Employee pretends to be going to the toilet but sneaks out for a pint  
 
the narrator, at that moment of Farrington’s sleight of hand, also hides the ball, distracting the reader - we read of the chief clerk, who obviously has some wits about him because he ‘looked at him [Farrington] inquiringly’ ; is referred to in dialogue as ‘Mr Shelley’ and even more time is given to this third character with ‘The chief clerk glanced at the hatrack but, seeing the row complete offered no remark.’ The narrator gives us more info on a third character than we’ve had so far; does the narrator extole the Odyssean cunning of Farrington to sneak out of the office, to seek and attain a pint  - nope! We see things through Mr Shelley’s eyes. The narrative and narrator are colluding to pull the wool over the reader’s eyes distracting us from fully investing in Interpretation 2.

The many references to violence should draw us deep into Interpretation 2. This is clouded by putting them beside interactions with Mr Alleyne.; Joyce uses an insight of the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Joyce was well up on Scottish culture and philosophy 

‘However, as we shall see, much of Joyce’s interest in Scottish literature and philosophy stems from his attempt to create a kind of Celtic consciousness……….-while persistently raiding Scottish culture in order to create a response to, or diagnosis of, a colonial legacy.’ (Barlow 9).

and David Hume in particular-  ‘With his various engagements with Hume, we can see a radical and sustained form of skepticism in Joyce, one that questions the connections between the representations of our minds and the “reality” or otherwise of the external material world.’ (Barlow 70).

Humean skepticism in Dubliners is present in relation to Hume’s views of causation.

Dr Mark Robson summarizes it in the ‘Who the hell is?’ series-

‘We cannot legitimately talk about necessary connections between events, neither can we suppose they are really ‘out there’ in the world. All we can really say, he argues, is that we have grown to expect windows to break when the stones hit them. In other words, we have grown a habit of mind or thinking that makes us expect that the one will happen after the other happens. This habit grows more and more entrenched as we are repeatedly exposed to one type of event following another type of event’

And Stanford Online Encyclopaedia Of Philosophy, (David Hume, 2 Philosophy of , Metaphysics, and Epistemology. 2.2 Metaphysics) refines it further for us - 

‘Hume’s most famous contribution to metaphysics might well be his theory of causation. Hume takes there to be three components to our idea of causation: first, spatial contiguity, second, priority in time of cause before effect.’

If, as a reader, we encounter a scene, we are inclined to believe that subsequent scenarios arise as a result of that scene (i.e. priority in time of cause before effect!).

Repeatedly we come across Farrington’s violent intentions immediately after Farrington’s interactions with Mr Alleyne. Joyce relies on the reader’s

indolence with respect to causality and puts them right beside each other; this obscures Interpretation 2 and carries us towards Interpretation 1. Instead of Farrington’s worrying thoughts jumping out at us, we put them down to Mr Alleyne’s interactions with him. 

The narrator is not interpreting for us but is expertly deployed by Joyce to misdirect us, shut us down or let the story proceed all within the background of a Humean narrative. The outcome in Counterparts are figures you can neither blame nor support; the reader cannot say ‘well I would’ve done the exact same thing’ because no one aspect of the narrative is fully laid out.

Barlow, Richard. The Celtic Unconscious: Joyce and Scottish Culture. University of Notre Dame Press, 2017 

Norris, Margot. Suspicious Readings of Joyce's Dubliners. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. 

Joyce, James. Dubliners. Edited by Margot Norris, Norton Critical Edition, W. W. Norton & Company, 2006.

Robson, Mark. Who the Hell is David Hume?: And what are his theories all about? Bowden and Brazil, 2020. 

Scholes, Robert. "Semiotic Approaches to a Fictional Text: Joyce's 'Eveline'." James Joyce Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 1/2, 1978/1979, pp. 65-71.

My Penguin Classics 2000 edn of Dubliners is on its last legs - anybody got a recommendation for an edition I can pick up!

'Was a great telling of all the odyssey stuff for about 2/3 and then the final third is incredible!'

My son's view of it. He watched it in Birmingham, UK last night (and we're Nolans)!

We've got to go!

We can but hope! Would love to hear your reviews if youse have seen it.

"One witness, a British lecturer named John Cowper Powys, testified that Joyce's fusion of dialogue and narrative, thought and action, made his style too obscure to deprave and corrupt the public—the average reader would find it repellant."

from The Most Dangerous Book The Battle For James Joyce's Ulysses. Kevin Birmingham.

Is that not the greatest defence you've ever heard - how could he have done it, nobody's got a bull's notion what he's on about?

[Everyone of us is a witness ?]

Can we infer from an absence?

"After the Race" 's aboutness is race, nations, colonialism and how to manage success in the world of the other.

" "After the Race" is of course a story about a race, about a sporting competition; it is also a story about races, about the competition between races ( in the popular usage at the time of "race" as frequently synonymous with both ethnicity and nation). [ Vincent Cheng, Joyce, Race and Empire].

Jimmy Doyle's dad came good ('he had made his money as a butcher') and has inserted his son into the other race ( 'He had sent his son to England to be educated' , ' Then he had been sent for a term to Cambridge to see a little life').

Jimmy was enthralled by the company of the day ( ‘Rapid motion through space elates one; so does notoriety; so does the possession of money’). 

Jimmy is elated at the excitement of being in the car and being seen to be in the car. The acknowledgemment of the significance of breaking into this clique is shared by Mr and Mrs Doyle ( ‘In Jimmy’s house this dinner had been pronounced an occasion. A certain pride mingled with his parents’ trepidation..') 

Even as he is losing at cards he’s getting a kick from being in the group (‘ What excitement ! Jimmy was excited too; he would lose, of course’).

Cheng sheds light on exactly how naive Jimmy has been :

“ In turn , Ségoiun and his friends are present in large part to exploit Mr Doyle’s financial resources” ,

“ so also there is a hint here that the card game has been rigged to relieve Jimmy of his money." [Vincent Cheng Joyce, Race, and Empire].

In other words the wiley continentals have set up a sting on the parochial son of a butcher. We fleece him at cards, we get his money to invest in the motor business and we don't have to pay him back!

Cheng places this outcome into a colonianial setting 

“ The grimmest irony of this “terrible game” lies in this: that not only is Jimmy Doyle fleeced by the sharp play of continental cardsharps (the colonizer once again exploiting the colonized native), but that Jimmy is happy and grateful for the experience, enjoying the excitement and the privilege of their company,  and - at the moment of his greatest loss and exploitation- himself raising the “cheer of the gratefully oppressed.” “

Joyce is saying to Mr Doyle- what did you think would happen,a butcher’s son, really?

Margot Norris [Suspicious Readings of Dubliners]  refers to G Leonard’s interpretation of Jimmy’s behaviour

“ Joyce sets the story at a liminal moment when the young Frenchman’s fortune hangs in the balance of a fictional transaction whose tender is purely symbolic. He will manipulate the metaphysical desire of Jimmy Doyle, his thirst for prestige and recognition, for social status, that Garry Leonard formulated in Hegelian terms as “ Jimmy Dolye’s slavish dependence on the Other to authenticate the myth of himself” “.

This places Jimmy into one half of the master slave consciousness of Hegel. Jimmy can only express Jimmy in terms of the continentals- 

“ In both cases he is striving to hear what it is the Other wants from him so that he can conduct himself according to its desire” [ Reading Dubliners again: A Lacanian perspective, Garry Leonard]. 

So how do we interpret Ségouin’s lack of relationship with Jimmy?

He does very little in the day- drops Jimmy and Villona off in town, calls for a cheer when international tensions threaten the possible hustle and opens a window!

Ségouin is never defined in terms of other.

Peter Striniger sums up the Master Slave relationship -

“ Each person, then, needs the other to establish his own awareness of himself” [Hegel, A Very Short Introduction] and reinforces that it is master and slave who are defined by other-

“At first it seems that the master has everything. He sets the slave to work in the material world, and sits back to enjoy both the subservience of the slave and the fruits of the slave’s labours. But consider now the master's needs for acknowledgement. He has the acknowledgement of the slave, to be sure but in the eyes of the master the slave is merely a thing, not an independent consciousness at all”.

Joyce has given us a blank Ségouin. He is not defined by others but we can infer his motivations by what happens to others. The hiatus which his character is, considering Jimmy’s immersion in others, indicates there is no consideration of Jimmy other than to take him for all he is worth. Ségouin is conniving, devious, successful and planned the whole thing.

Does anybody know if there is material out there which could address the following-

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In JJ's time

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8 Guineas was a very reasonable request for 4 gigs

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8 Guineas for 4 gigs at the Antient Concert Rooms was ridiculously high!

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The answer will help us interpret Mrs Kearney's belligerence as

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A: fugg the lodda dem. You go girl!

B : Why you pushin it ladee!

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[A personal plea:

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My mother grew up in Great Bruswick Street/Pearse Street, starting off above O'Neill's pub. They moved to Pearse Square. I was baptised in Westland Row. A good few moons ago I went to the James Joyce Centre, North George's Street. I asked about the Antient Concert Rooms - the guy said 'it's aiynch'int not 'antee- int'- it's an aiynch'int spelling of aiynch'int!

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I didn't have the wherewithall to query it but can say after summers spent as a kid 'in the square' they would have said 'antee-int'!!! If you're reading 'A Mother' go for it, please hear- ' Antee-int' as flat as you can make it!

'But that time was over. Now it was God's turn: and He was not be hoodwinked or deceived."

Should it not read - : and He was not to be hoodwinked !

I'm 12 pages into Part Three in my edn of Portrait : Penguin classics 2000.