Realism, the novel, Joyce, philosophy
The Ulysses reading group is still going strong (five weeks? left), and we've some of us agreed to continue on to Beckett's prose works afterwards. I'm also reading The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert in my own time (and have read a fair few contemporary novels recently, as well webcomics, poetry, graphic novels, etc.), reading and writing philosophy, and thinking as I'm always thinking about my own desire to do something like write a novel. What I've been bashing my head against a lot recently is the suggestion so insisted on by one of the reading group members that the literary tradition has singularly failed to respond to Finnegans Wake (with the exception (I think he thinks this) of Beckett).
The natural response, that I'm in the habit of making, is that not everyone has to be up to the kind of thing that Joyce is up to, all the formal experimentation, self-reflection, universal scope, musicality/poetry, density of meaning and so on that make the Wake so miraculous and important. One thing Joyce is doing is telling a story - does that mean all stories now have to 'respond' to the Wake? Surely not; so why then is it supposed to be different with regard to another thing Joyce is doing, viz., writing a novel?
I'm finding that response less convincing now, not least because I'm finding the novels I've been reading recently hamstrung by what they have not learnt from Joyce. It's most obvious in the little ways you notice in the reading: wasted words, unpleasing rhythms, meaningless names, missed jokes, etc. But what's really missing is of course deeper. I think it's that novels lie, and that Joyce uncovered this and showed us how to respond to it; and that to not respond to the Wake is to lie openeyedly, which is as bad in literature as it is in real life. I suppose the point I'm making here is close to the point Adam Kelly (in 'Dialectic of Sincerity' (2014)) says is one of the idées fixes of modernism: that the novel is trying to get deeply into something, to present it as it really is - be it someone's psychology or a social order or a conversation - but that the norms and conventions of the novel get in the way of its doing so by forcing what it's trying to capture into certain shapes, unnatural to what's being represented (and, in some cases I suppose, changing it). I agree with this, but I think there's something else too, perhaps simpler and perhaps more general. It's that everything in literature is significant; perhaps it's been so for a long time, perhaps Joyce made it so, perhaps it was always so but Joyce found new levels of significance, upset everything, so that no-one can ever again say, 'oh that's just always been that way'. Names were always significant, I suppose; but now even the language you write is significant, now even how you spell a word is significant, now even whether your writing is clear is significant.
And so I'm reading The Signature of All Things or whatever, and I'm enjoying it very much; but then something stands out at me, and I ask why it's the way it is; and time and again I'm disappointed: there's no reason for it being that way. But you can't make something insignificant once it's been made important as Joyce has so made it: now, the novel can only suggest a false significance, or can only pathetically attempt to hide a significance. Gilbert tells us that Prima shouted at Secunda, say; and that, Gilbert arrogantly or nervously insists, is final. But it's not final, because nothing is ever so simple. There's a divine iridescence to the encounter as there is to every encounter, something beyond any capturing which affects the situation and its reception by the various parties like a drug. Gilbert wants to stomp her foot and say that no there isn't - she's writing in a style or tradition that would have mentioned it if it was there, and she hasn't, so it isn't - but to say that is to lie, because the iridescence is ubiquitous. The Wake forces this question, and tried to answer it by making everything unclear and perspectival, and refraining from absolute statements, and trying to let the iridescence shine through with its multilingual dense musical punning. I won't say whether it's succeeded - I barely know what's happening most of the time - but at least it's faced up to the problem. What has since? The only thing that comes to mind is Lynda Barry's What It Is. I wonder if it's not a coincidence that this is a graphic novel: the combination of the two mediums - and such different mediums - perhaps allows for greater density.
Sometimes I can forgive the cowardice or laziness: Imogen Binnie's Nevada is just telling a story, but it's telling a story from a perspective that historically has been scandalously and tragically silent, and perhaps a perspective needs a realist novel before it can have a Wake. (Although Joyce is hardly heteronormative or even cisnormative!) And The Signature of All Things is not so bad as I've been suggesting (my choosing it as an example is perhaps slightly unfair, but it's what I'm reading at the moment): scenarios are returned to later and untold aspects told; but it's never remotely as serious or thorough as the Wake.
I wonder, by way of post-script, whether it's just novelists who have to face the Wake. I suppose poets do too, but I also get the sense (though I don't know poetry) that they've always faced it. I suppose it's the same for music; Beethoven and Bach are as rich as Joyce. How about philosophy? My feeling there is that philosophy strips away everything iridescent - 'ceteris paribus' is its cry - but whether this is legitimate or not I don't know. It is abstract enough that one might suppose that we can treat all else as equal: we don't need to imagine a world like we do in literature. But perhaps in becoming honest and accurate, philosophy that doesn't respond to Joyce also becomes irrelevant. I just don't know. I can only say that I don't feel any particular qualms in doing philosophy this way. This is unsatisfying, but I suppose one can only put one's ear to one's mind and listen as hard as one can for sounds of strain. I'll keep listening, and try to listen better.
The natural response, that I'm in the habit of making, is that not everyone has to be up to the kind of thing that Joyce is up to, all the formal experimentation, self-reflection, universal scope, musicality/poetry, density of meaning and so on that make the Wake so miraculous and important. One thing Joyce is doing is telling a story - does that mean all stories now have to 'respond' to the Wake? Surely not; so why then is it supposed to be different with regard to another thing Joyce is doing, viz., writing a novel?
I'm finding that response less convincing now, not least because I'm finding the novels I've been reading recently hamstrung by what they have not learnt from Joyce. It's most obvious in the little ways you notice in the reading: wasted words, unpleasing rhythms, meaningless names, missed jokes, etc. But what's really missing is of course deeper. I think it's that novels lie, and that Joyce uncovered this and showed us how to respond to it; and that to not respond to the Wake is to lie openeyedly, which is as bad in literature as it is in real life. I suppose the point I'm making here is close to the point Adam Kelly (in 'Dialectic of Sincerity' (2014)) says is one of the idées fixes of modernism: that the novel is trying to get deeply into something, to present it as it really is - be it someone's psychology or a social order or a conversation - but that the norms and conventions of the novel get in the way of its doing so by forcing what it's trying to capture into certain shapes, unnatural to what's being represented (and, in some cases I suppose, changing it). I agree with this, but I think there's something else too, perhaps simpler and perhaps more general. It's that everything in literature is significant; perhaps it's been so for a long time, perhaps Joyce made it so, perhaps it was always so but Joyce found new levels of significance, upset everything, so that no-one can ever again say, 'oh that's just always been that way'. Names were always significant, I suppose; but now even the language you write is significant, now even how you spell a word is significant, now even whether your writing is clear is significant.
And so I'm reading The Signature of All Things or whatever, and I'm enjoying it very much; but then something stands out at me, and I ask why it's the way it is; and time and again I'm disappointed: there's no reason for it being that way. But you can't make something insignificant once it's been made important as Joyce has so made it: now, the novel can only suggest a false significance, or can only pathetically attempt to hide a significance. Gilbert tells us that Prima shouted at Secunda, say; and that, Gilbert arrogantly or nervously insists, is final. But it's not final, because nothing is ever so simple. There's a divine iridescence to the encounter as there is to every encounter, something beyond any capturing which affects the situation and its reception by the various parties like a drug. Gilbert wants to stomp her foot and say that no there isn't - she's writing in a style or tradition that would have mentioned it if it was there, and she hasn't, so it isn't - but to say that is to lie, because the iridescence is ubiquitous. The Wake forces this question, and tried to answer it by making everything unclear and perspectival, and refraining from absolute statements, and trying to let the iridescence shine through with its multilingual dense musical punning. I won't say whether it's succeeded - I barely know what's happening most of the time - but at least it's faced up to the problem. What has since? The only thing that comes to mind is Lynda Barry's What It Is. I wonder if it's not a coincidence that this is a graphic novel: the combination of the two mediums - and such different mediums - perhaps allows for greater density.
Sometimes I can forgive the cowardice or laziness: Imogen Binnie's Nevada is just telling a story, but it's telling a story from a perspective that historically has been scandalously and tragically silent, and perhaps a perspective needs a realist novel before it can have a Wake. (Although Joyce is hardly heteronormative or even cisnormative!) And The Signature of All Things is not so bad as I've been suggesting (my choosing it as an example is perhaps slightly unfair, but it's what I'm reading at the moment): scenarios are returned to later and untold aspects told; but it's never remotely as serious or thorough as the Wake.
I wonder, by way of post-script, whether it's just novelists who have to face the Wake. I suppose poets do too, but I also get the sense (though I don't know poetry) that they've always faced it. I suppose it's the same for music; Beethoven and Bach are as rich as Joyce. How about philosophy? My feeling there is that philosophy strips away everything iridescent - 'ceteris paribus' is its cry - but whether this is legitimate or not I don't know. It is abstract enough that one might suppose that we can treat all else as equal: we don't need to imagine a world like we do in literature. But perhaps in becoming honest and accurate, philosophy that doesn't respond to Joyce also becomes irrelevant. I just don't know. I can only say that I don't feel any particular qualms in doing philosophy this way. This is unsatisfying, but I suppose one can only put one's ear to one's mind and listen as hard as one can for sounds of strain. I'll keep listening, and try to listen better.