A new word

Feb 10 2011

Daedal comes from Latin daedalus, "cunningly wrought," from Greek daidalos, "skillful, cunningly created."

This entry makes me chuffed I signed up for a daily dictionary-derived insight.Not only have I added to my Joycean vocab, I have increased my vowel-dependant Scrabble skills somewhat.

The Creative Department: a poem (Feb 7 2011)

In amongst my reading of Joyce-related Australian criticism I have found a variety of Joyce-inspired poems.

A poem by Peter Steele caught my eye, it is on Eureaka Street online and can be found here.
It's a grand little bundle of verses that conducts a private conversation with the ghost of Joyce, asking the ususal time lapse questions of a "what on earth would he make of all this modern stuff?" nature. The poet walks Joyce around a jazzed up modern day Dublin, rubbing elbows, as it were, with "the cubs of the Celtic tiger". Another nice line conjures the fleshly world of the Wake:

"the mouth of your mind as fluent as the traffic by Trinity’s walls.",

a further reflection on my reading of the Joyce, whether solo or with the FW reading group - that to read Joyce is to get "mouthy" in the way that the text demands, and that the narrative is indivisible from speech.

Beginnings February 7 2011

Austlit, meet Joycelit (How d'you do?)

One the strands plaiting along here is the resonance between a European writer like Joyce and his faraway counterparts in Australia. One of the more interesting ones I find is Joseph Furphy and of course that most Euopean of influenced pianists, HH Richardson. I've read her novels apart from 'Maurice Guest' which is, ironically, her first.

Susan Lever has written extensively on HHR and here are her words on the novelist's reaction to the Joyce influence:

Maurice Guest explores the internal lives of its characters—the kind of exploration which  James Joyce and other writers would develop into a full-blown modernist style. Joyce's work provides an appropriate reference point for Richardson's fiction because his first book, Dubliners (1914) developed, like her earliest work, from a naturalist impulse; and his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) has similarities with The Getting of Wisdom (1910) which she was pleased to see noted by critics.⁴

 In this chapter of her book A Kind of Romance: Henry Handel Richardson's ‘Maurice Guest’, Lever is arguing that HHR's books bridged 19th century realism and the psycholigical introspection and self-awareness narratives of modernist literature. It's quite a neat bridge, but steers me back to Such is Life which is on neither side of that chronologically sound bridge, but splashing about in the river below. Furphy's "novel" is as much about experimentation as it is a romp through colonial Australian literary landscapes. It's a kind of pastorale circus, and an unusual precursor, in terms of the newish national voice, of the serious books of HHR which emerged later.

Book One continues Feb 6 2011

FW 1:7:176 Redux - Shem's games revised!

January 30th, a Haunted Inkbottle.
We the engathered enjoyed a hearty feast of Wakefulness. Looking back on what transpired at our June meeting of last year, I'm made aware that we have overlapped a little. Last time we appear to have arrived at the list of games (p176); this time, we backtracked to remember the lay of the land, but stopped again at The Games. This time round was a lot more fun for various reasons. A new member has joined (Welcome, LM), and there were no planes to catch post-pikelets.

Thus we plunged again into the world of Shem and his 'scriptural arguments' (172). We discussed how Shem the writer (penman) could be in his "bardic memory low" - has he forgotten on his poetry? The phrase is also prescient of our modern reliance on RAM. We also thought there may be a clue to Joyce's age on p173 and thought to check his age at the time of writing Shem (was he 'furtivefree yours of age'?)

Interesting in all things Indian, I was curious about "tamileasy" (173). I also liked the reference to bungled language and writing: 'the various meanings of all the different foreign parts of speech he misused". We all had the energy to dig into the rhythm of "the rigmarole", and the ink-marked pages of my copy of FW are testament of the excitement of the moment: discoveries, revelations and ludicrosity.

Book One (June 2010)

 June 20 2010

FW 1:7:176 A List of Games

Chapter 7 of Book 1 of Finnegans Wake is all about Shem, the twin brother of Saun. Shem is known as the 'penman', and suffers much caricaturing as a debauched writer, no doubt in an extended twisted tribute to the author's own self-image. The early part of the this chapter shows Shem asking young boys and girls a riddle, which is: "when is a man not a man?" The resulting answer is, "when he is a ... sham."

Shem is a fun and interesting character, interpretable in a number of different directions. His name is the Hebrew word for "name", and I'm sure semioticians have written about him being a self-describing sign. Shem's main quality in this section is "lowness", with references to his appearance, tastes and behaviours and there's a sense of him being deservedly ridiculed. It turns out that his main problem is that Shem is "in his bardic memory low" - that he suffers from some kind of writer's block.

A second problem occurs when Shem is caught up in a brawl between two warring teams. I am still researching the detail which result in this "personal violence", and why a list of children's games is brought up. Some of those games are clearly rendered punfully, like "Heali Baboon and the Forky Theagues", and "Fickleyes and Futilears". The game listed which mentions boots is "Here's the Fat to graze the Priest's Boots", with "graze" instead of "grease". The inspiration came from an article about boot-polishing, as boot polish was said to be used in the city whereas country people apparently used goose fat. A popular ballad about greasing the priest's boots was noted and the gloss for this detail is available here.

Bloomsday bloomed (June 2010)

June 17 2010

Our event went off "like a shot off a shovel" at our preferred venue in Glebe. Our event was promoted via our website and a few newspaper announcement and a radio spot. The upstairs room at the Friend in Hand Hotel was packed with standing room only by kick-off at 7pm. There were only minor changes to the program, with the omission of "The Ballad of Joking Jesus" reading and a change of readers for the 'Wandering Rocks' (comets) reading. Our understudy of choice was contact only hours before the event and read a fine rendition of the excerpt, getting laughs in all the right places, to wit, Lenehan on Molly, "She's a gamey mare and no mistaking it." That reader is a young actor named Zoe Norton-Lodge who will be performing in a one-woman 'Under Milkwood' at the Sidetrack Theatre in July.

Hosty introduced the night with a dedication to her mother who passed away last year, and also to Randolph Stowe, the great West Australian writer who died just recently. I have read a stage adaptation of his book 'The Merrygoround in the Sea' which is moving.

Then Bloomsday began in earnest with two readings based on Stephen Daedalus in those early chapters of Ulysses. I introduced all the readings bar the penultimate which was a duologue drawn from the Washerwomen chapter of Finnegans Wake. With the two of us reciting, it was difficult to use the basic, unidirectional microphone and not treat the performance as a real bit of stage shtick with full projection. Either way the audience responded positively to what Hosty jokingly called 'the easiest bit in Finnegans Wake', which is not far off the mark.

The audience became performers when many took a one-line part in our 'Circe' reading. This is a great bit of fun that we do a different version of every year. My general approach when adapting Circe for a group reading is to focus on Bloom getting himself in and our of trouble, and to explain how the chapter is written in the form of a surreal screenplay.

The night was a roaring success with folk coming from all over the city to celebrate Joyce, Ulysses and literary culture. Most drifted off into the chilly night inspired and contented to have travelled some familar and also undiscovered paths through 'Ulysses' and some also stayed behind to join in a singalong of the usual Joycean tunes, 'Down By the Sally Gardens', 'Love's Old Sweet Song' and 'Danny Boy'.

Bloomsday Approacheth (May 2010)

May 23 2010

This year our have Finnegans Wake Reading Group will produce a Bloomsday event. A pair of Joyceans managed to find Hosty and band together with her as producers. It will be a fine night packed with readings from Ulysses and a little bit of Wakean goodness. I myself with pair up with Wrist Strap McPhee to read the duologue of the washerwomen who turn into a tree and a stone by the riverside.