Ulysses tops Modern Library's list of
100 best English-language novels
In 1999, the Modern Library declared James Joyce's Ulysses the twentieth century's greatest
work of English literature. This acclaim recognized the novel's groundbreaking
foray into new techniques of narrative writing and the profound influence
it has exercised on subsequent Western literature.
The Rosenbach Museum & Library is home to the manuscript for Ulysses,
and a portion of the manuscript is always on display. The Rosenbach's
founder, Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach, was one of the most visionary collectors
and dealers the world of rare literary books and manuscripts has ever
known. Rosenbach, holder of a Ph.D. in English literature from the University
of Pennsylvania, was well enough aware of the importance of Ulysses
that he purchased the manuscript immediately when it was offered
for sale in 1924.
The Rosenbach celebrates the Joycean tradition with an annual Bloomsday
celebration on June 16. Bloomsday, the only international holiday in
recognition of a work of art, brings scholars, devotees, and the general
public together at 2010 DeLancey Place for hours of dramatic readings
from the novel. The Rosenbach also produces a special exhibition related
to Joyce, drawing from its substantial collection of modern literary
materials.
Why Read Ulysses?
When the editorial board of Random House’s Modern Library division
voted James Joyce’s Ulysses the best English-language novel
of the twentieth century, the reaction among readers was mixed. A renegade
group on the Internet conducted their own vote and announced their winner
as Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Oddly, many people assume that Ulysses
endorses elitist values similar to those expounded in The Fountainhead;
that it, too, is a celebration of genius and privilege and a denigration
of mediocrity. This superficial but widespread misconception is supported
by the book’s reputation for being not only unread but also essentially
unreadable except by longhaired intellectual malcontents like Stephen
Dedalus.
How could this riotously funny, inventive, irreverent yet serious book
be so misunderstood? Misreadings have abounded since Ulysses was
first published in Paris in 1922. The most famous of these was the charge
of obscenity that caused it to be banned throughout the English-speaking
world. The ban was lifted in the U.S. in 1933 by Judge Woolsey, who,
cautioning that "Ulysses is not an easy book to read or
to understand," historically concluded that while its effect on
readers was often "somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be
an aphrodisiac." On the whole, Woolsey argued that what some saw
as obscenity was simply realism, a realism that made Ulysses "a
somewhat tragic and very powerful commentary on the inner lives of men
and women." Joyce had dared to present bodily functions as natural,
even commonplace, but that was not the point of the book. As Woolsey
perceptively observed, "Joyce has attempted -- it seems to me, with astonishing
success -- to show how the screen of consciousness with its ever-shifting
kaleidoscopic impressions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpsest,
not only what is in the focus of each man’s observation of the
actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past
impressions." Ulysses has a psychological and sociological accuracy
that many readers have experienced as an affront to the more highly
polished and flattering self-images they prefer. Paradoxically, a book
of fiction exposes our conception of reality as the greater fiction;
it revels in the grimy and glorious reality most readers would prefer
to sanitize and contain.
The charges against Ulysses are familiar ones: it is difficult,
long, allusive, and vulgar (if not obscene) in its matter-of-fact attitude
toward the body. But what arguments might be made in favor of its literary
and cultural importance? Is Random House’s high evaluation of
it justifiable, and if so, on what basis? Judge Woolsey alluded to the
book’s delicate tracing of unconscious desires and fears, projected
through its deliberately crafted language. As critics have sometimes
noted, language is the real hero of Ulysses. Hugh Kenner once
wrote that "language is the Trojan horse by which the universe
gets into the mind," meaning that the mind is a besieged citadel
infiltrated by words that are pregnant with hidden and perhaps unwelcome
possibilities. What isn’t immediately apparent is that Kenner’s
view of language, like Joyce’s, is a theological one, since spiritual
realities enliven the profane world in the same way that language brings
the universe into the mind unexpectedly, through gifts that have a double
power to delight and destroy. The exquisite precision of Joyce’s
language resembles that of sacred scripture, even while its bawdy vibrancy
evokes pub talk. At its best, the language of Ulysses takes
on a life of its own, provoking, teasing, and inspiring the reader over
the heads of the characters.
What does the language of Ulysses prompt readers to do? The
answer, on one level, is simply to choose life over the deadness of
habit, to choose community over the idolatry of self-interest, to elect
heightened consciousness over the blindness of instinct, and to accept
personal responsibility for one’s choices. The reward for such
choices is joy (a word that, like Ulysses itself, enacts and celebrates
a union of "jew" with "goy"). This is the same challenge
that Moses presented to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 30:19: "I
have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose
life." What aligns Joyce so closely with the Judeo-Christian tradition
is his awareness of how difficult it is to differentiate a blessing
from a curse, justice from devastation; in the Hebrew language, they
are often only a letter or pen-stroke apart. As Isaiah wrote in his
parable of the vineyard, when the Lord looked to Israel for justice
(in Hebrew, mishpat), he found bloodshed (mispah); when he looked for
righteousness (zedaqah), he found a cry (ze’aqah; Isaiah 5:7).
Isaiah warned that "Woe [comes] to those who call evil good and
good evil" (5:20), a confusion that that is much easier to fall
into than it might seem to be. For Joyce, as for the Hebrew prophets,
care with words can make a world of difference.
Ulysses is an ebullient, compassionate, raucous, radically
democratic, searingly honest yet full-of-blarney anti-narrative. It
is far longer than you would like until you’ve read it once; then,
suddenly, it seems way too short. It can seem daunting, even ponderous
if you approach it with awe tinged with resentment, but if you hear
it as a repeated injunction to "choose life" as it is, as
it was, as it can be, it turns into a verbal and emotional thrill-ride
where the only thing to do is to let go and enjoy the journey. And it
is about journeys, or homeric odysseys, here compressed into a single
day. Like baseball, it is about Homers, but the homers in Ulysses are
not unmixed triumphs of skill and luck; instead, they are bittersweet
moments when a physical return to home is plotted against the inability
to turn back the clock, so that every homecoming is simultaneously a
recognition of renewed exile. Every addition to the scoreboard signals
a loss somewhere else, because success is a zero-sum game. Ulysses is
about failure, disappointment and yearning, aging and betrayal, but
unexpectedly, even magically, it also captures the humor of these multiple
disjunctions between the imagined and the real. It reminds readers of
the variety and unexpectedness of life, prodding us to develop our endurance,
curiosity, compassion, imagination, and sense of humor; to increase
our humility and our daring. It is not about the virtue of selfishness,
but about the pathos of walling oneself off from the fun-house and temple
of life. It is indeed an alternative to The Fountainhead in its conviction
that a fuller experience of life is available not just to a privileged
elite but to everyone, and that words—which live in all of us--can
light the way.
Vicki Mahaffey
Professor of English Literature
University of Pennsylvania
June 1999
