Whoop whoop, James Joyce action all up in here. Maybe this could be a tradition. (It was about this time last year that I was reading Ulysses). I mean, I did just buy The Dubliners... And there's only so much Joyce I can take in one sitting, I guess. It's funny, I loved almost all of Ulysses, but I found a lot of this book as fairly tiresome. Of course, it's possible that that is because Ulysses is so crazy and random and utilizes a million different techniques and spontaneous prose and all of that--actually, if I recall, I didn't like the chapters on Stephen Dedalus too much either (the first two or three). They're damned slow compared to the rest of the book, too, and a lot tougher than most of the rest of the book. This book was a lot easier--but the style is more the same. That could be because they're dealing with the same fellow, but I don't know...
Anyways, this is about Stephen's early life. Childhood through college. First of all, there is his name. For those of you unfamiliar with Greek mythology, Dedalus (Daedalus) was an incredible architect--he designed the labyrinth the Minotaur (a half man half bull beast--whole other tangent for that one) was trapped in. Anyways, he had to escape imprisonment and he made wax wings to fly away. With him was his son, Icarus. His son flew too close to the sun and his wings melted and he fell to his death--but Daedalus lived. This implies a somewhat optimistic outcome for Stephen. Apparently Stephen is named after St Stephen as well--St Stephen was stoned to death after making the local Jewish community mad.
So--before I start out still, I just want to point out that apparently HG Wells really liked this book. Or at least he thought it was great. Also, the cruelty and unfairness described in the schools is almost exactly the same as what Roald Dahl dealt with during his school days (as described in Boy, specifically the sections on the canings and captain Hardcastle). And lastly, while I'm thinking of it, I picked this up at my aunt's Cape house. The last time I went was three years ago, and I remember coming across this book and thinking that it looked incredibly boring and stupid. How foolish I was! Anyways, let's go.
First note comes from when Stephen is most likely in his elementary years--first stint in the boarding house, I'd imagine. (Are schools like that still the norm over there?) Oh, by the way--Joyce omits quotation marks and all of that, so I'll be adding them in on quoted conversations just to make life easier. "'What's up? Have you a pain or what's up with you?' 'I don't know,' Stephen said. 'Sick in your breadbasket,' Fleming said, 'because your face looks white. It will go away.' 'O yes,' Stephen said. But he was not sick there. He thought he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place" (13).
Second note is on the next page--some bigger boys tease Stephen because they ask him if he kisses his mother every night before bed he says yes, then when he tries to renege so they won't make fun they continue to laugh. Ugh, that's pretty much the worst thing ever, because he gets all confused and everything, and everybody knows how awful that situation is. Unless if you were the sort of person who enjoyed causing those situations, in which case, you are/were a terrible person.
"Was it right to kiss his mother or wrong to kiss his mother? What did it mean, to kiss? You put your face up like that to say goodnight and then his mother put her face down. That was to kiss. His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces?" (15).
Ah, so I marked the page that I said was like Roald Dahl's recollections of school. Stephen, like Joyce, wears glasses (and since Stephen is supposed to be Joyce--his Kilgore Trout, if you will--there's a very good chance that this is based on an actual occurrence). He breaks them and when explaining how he very legitimately broke his glasses he is made out for a liar and his wrists are buffeted by a pandybat.
My next note comes on many pages later--Stephen's father drags him to the bars. Mr Dedalus gets very drunk, embarrassingly so. That hardly matters--an old man there drinking is "tapping his forehead and raising his glass to drain it" (95). There's something about the "raising his glass to drain it" that gets me and amazes me. I'm not sure what it is exactly, though.
Ulysses Leopold imagines that he has been turned into a woman after he has drunken far too much in the red light district (where he's going to collect Stephen!). This leads me to believe that Joyce was to some extent curious about what it was like to be female--or at least what it would be like to experience sex as a woman, judging from this scene. To be completely honest, I don't remember much from Leopold's scene other than the part where he spontaneously gave birth to eight children. (Ew ew ew ew ew ew gross EW.) I'm also going to back Joyce and say it's natural to wonder what it's like to be a member of the opposite gender. And if my interpretation is correct, I can't help but wonder what the significance of having Stephen being the female--or submissive--figure is. Perhaps saying that he is a slave to his lust or passions, cannot control them...?
My second note actually plays off from the end of the last quote: "...The cry that he had strangled for so long in his throat issued from his lips. It broke from him like a wail of despair from a hell of sufferers and died in a wail of furious entreaty, a cry for an iniquitous abandonment, a cry which was but the echo of an obscene scrawl which he had read on the oozing wall of a urinal" (100). First, I find it impossible to find that bit about the urinal wall gross. This is thanks to the Hash-Slinging Slasher episode of Spongebob... This would be funnier if I could find the clip on Youtube, but apparently it doesn't exist? What? Okay, fine--but on a more serious note, during Stephen's chapters in Ulysses, he says that God is like a shout in the street. Perhaps it's a somewhat weak and obvious connection--but hey. I'm trying here!
His adventures with prostitutes are cut off short after he hears a sermon about the pains and tortures of hell--he is suddenly stricken with a fear for his soul and repents.
My next note is from later still--Stephen hears his surname called and he imagines he sees someone flying over the waves of the ocean in front of him (he never makes it clear whether he is actually aware of who the original carrier of the name actually was). He then realizes that he is in that body and he is soaring.
"Do you believe in Jesus? I believe in man" (198).
Stephen: "I tried to love God, he said at length. It seems now I failed. It is very difficult" (240).
"'Did the idea ever occur to you,' Cranly asked, that Jesus was not what he pretended to be?' 'The first person to whom that idea occurred to,' Stephen answered, 'was Jesus himself' (242).
"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use--silence, exile, and cunning" (247). This is an interesting idea--we discussed it a lot in Contemporary Lit when we were reading 1984. Winston and Julia do a lot of rebelling (and by rebelling I mean having sex everywhere and anywhere possible). However, they rebel silently and quietly. Until they are sold out, no-one is aware of their rebellion. The idea that we discussed was if such a rebellion should even be considered a real rebellion. Sure, they are rebelling against the norms and thought police and government and all--but their rebellion has literally no effect on the rest of the world. Obviously they can't tell anyone about what they're doing--no-one can be inspired to join them--the society doesn't even allow martyrs to happen (what I mean is, people simply disappear, they aren't made into tragic saints or any of that)--so are their acts real rebellion? Nothing is gained, nothing real is done, and so on... They're still contributing to the world which they are trying to fight as well. So, they might as well be doing nothing... So yeah. Nothing occurs.
"I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world" (251). The last few pages take on a very different form, they become entries from Stephen's diary. This is from one of the entries.
The book doesn't end with real closure--which makes sense. Stephen's story is continued in Ulysses, and if Stephen really is supposed to be Joyce's Kilgore Trout, there shouldn't be.
A note on the text--James Joyce's curious way of writing dialogue and speech is apparently copied from the French model. It was the style which was common in France at the time of the writing, and might even still be popular, though I've never looked at a French novel (in French) dated past 1956.
It was also a little funny while reading this book--though I didn't remember much of the story (though there really isn't much) I remembered quotes that particularly struck me that I did write down (somewhere) almost instantly. For example, reading the bit about being sick in his breadbasket... Immediately I thought of the end of the quote without any real trouble at all. I don't know, I just thought that it was kind of funny. That's not usual for me, especially if I didn't own the book the first time through.
MLA citation information: Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man. Penguin books: Pennsylvania, 1976.
Also, since Emma is too busy to read these and because no-one else reads these, I've removed the mystery lyrics thing (unless if a song particularly jumps out at me, in which case I will simply say that it reminds me of song X). The answer to last post is If I'm Dreaming My Life by David Bowie, by the way... Well, yeah. I'm taking a brief break from all of this to catch up on my writing and to rest my wrist and all, so expect a much lighter load of posts this summer. Have a good one!
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