Joyce was a writer dedicated to recording human nature with as much authenticity as possible, with all its attendant satisfactions, hesitations, doubts, revelations, joys, delusions, and disappointments; and if that commitment lead him from the opera house to the outhouse, from the cathedral to the brothel, and from the open pub to the open grave, his pen was never reluctant to follow his instincts. But the hand that held that pen was guided by the muse of genius, and Joyce knew that he could do much more than record life, he could try his best to capture it, to pin it down to the page, heart still beating, frail wings undamaged. And if that took some radical rethinking of his instrument, then so be it: prose style, narrative technique, even language itself would all be bent to his will, and he took a fierce delight in playing with his medium – but all to a purpose; in Joyce, there is always a purpose.
So is Joyce difficult? Yes, but so is life. If Joyce's writing is dense, it is because even our most mundane thoughts are surprisingly multilayered. If it is elusive, it is because our minds do not always follow the logic of wake-a-day grammar. If it is filled with obscure allusions, it is because we first learn universal truths through their reflections in the immediate world around us. If his prose twists and turns like a maze, it is because the infinite convolutions of the human heart demand no less an honest account. To read Joyce is, as he himself put it, to read "as human a little story as paper could well carry." And, to return a last time to Shakespeare, like the Bard, Joyce's works are truly meant for everyone – not just professors; but plumbers, printers, and pubcrawlers, too. Anyone who has ever grown teary-eyed over a sad song, fought for a lost cause, or tried to capture their first kiss with a slipshoddy poem written on the back of an envelope; anyone with a desire to say yes to the great question of existence.So why read Joyce? Because in the artful eye of his prose, in the art-full lie of his fiction, Joyce is reading us.
2 comments:
"Because in the artful eye of his prose, in the art-full lie of his fiction"
That sentence sums up the author's authenticity :).
"Anyone who has ever grown teary-eyed over a sad song, fought for a lost cause, or tried to capture their first kiss with a slipshoddy poem written on the back of an envelope; anyone with a desire to say yes to the great question of existence." - may be I need to give his writing a try. If not for anything, just for that one sentence of his!!!
Well, if you are serious, start with Dubliners. These are available on net as well. Just put me a reminder, will send u! :P
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