English literature overview and key works

Ulysses: An Odyssey of Errors

Critics of James Joyce call his work cryptic and rambling, not easily followed by most readers. They proclaim that it lacks plot and classical elements of modern literature. However, Joyce did not intentionally write a bad novel, rather he was experimenting with a new literary style, one which broke almost all of the rules of modern literature. None the less, there have been those in society who have attempted to "correct" and "improve" upon Joyce's works. These attempts at "improvement" are to be the subject of this research. This research will approach the controversy surrounding Ulysses in reference to its place as a piece of art. In such a context, it is doubtful whether later versions of Ulysses have succeeded in clearing up the obscurities in the original novel, but rather have served to further confuse the issue.

Joyce was the first to use the technique of interior monologue1. Through this technique he attempted to bring the reader more in touch with the feelings of the character and give the piece greater depth. Joyce drew from a wealth of familiar symbolism in an attempt to make the internal ramblings more coherent and familiar to the contemporary 1920s person. He used many invented words, allusions and puns to add interest for the reader. James Joyce relied upon the assumption that all of his readers would be familiar with the references that he used. His work was written for an audience of well-educated and well-rounded individuals. Some of the confusion surrounding this work may stem from people reading it who were not from the target educational audience for which Joyce had written. To a less educated audience, his references would seem unintelligible and cryptic.

Some of the later "improved editions" of Ulysses may not have been an attempt to correct these obscurities, but may have been to either intentionally or unintentionally, bring it to the level of knowledge of the general population at the time. If this is truly the case, it can be argued on the basis ethics, that it is not improving the work, but destroying it. To alter the original work and inherently change the target audience would be to alter the original intent of the work. In this sense, it would change the fabric of the original work to one that only loosely resembled the original work. This is the dilemma faced when analyzing the works surrounding the Gabler/Kidd argument. Which, if either of these is the best rendition of the original work? To better answer this question, we must first examine exactly what the original intention of the work actually was. We must know the audience for which it was intended and place the work in the proper historical context.

From 1902, Joyce led a life similar to Odysseus. He spent time wandering in Paris, Trieste, Rome, and Zurich. It was his homeland in Ireland, which always remained close to his heart and was the backdrop for all of his novels. James Joyce was born in Dublin, the son of a poor man. His father owned a failed distillery business, and spent his life wandering from profession to profession. Joyce's mother was a devout Catholic2. He himself attended Jesuits at Clongowes Wood College, at Clane. He credits his education at this institution for teaching him to think logically3.

Joyce began his work on Ulysses after World War I forced him to move his family to Zurich for safety4. The first chapters of Ulysses were written with World War I as the backdrop. The book takes place in one day in Dublin (June 16, 1904) and reflected the works of Homer.

The main characters of the novel are Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser, his wife Molly, and Stephen Dedalus, a hero from one of Joyce's earlier novels. They are intended to be modern counterparts of Telemachus, Ulysses, and Penelope. The story, using stream-of-consciousness technique, parallels the major events in Odysseus' journey home. Many of the elements are borrowed, for instance the famous Sirens are barmaids. Bloom's adventures are less heroic and his homecoming less spectacular than that of Homer. The paths of Stephen and Bloom cross many times thoughout the day. Bloom makes his trip to the underworld by attending a funeral at Glasnevin Cemetary. The parallels between Ulysses and The Odyssey are intentional. The novel would stand alone, even if the reader had not read Homer. However, Joyce obviously meant the novel for those who had read Homer. Ulysses was revolutionary in the use of stream of consciousness literary technique. This technique was experimental and had not been used prior to this time. This technique may have been responsible for some of the confusion reported by some readers. They did not follow it, because they were more accustomed to classical literary techniques.

The controversy which boiled in the 1920s over the publication of Ulysses was not about the unusual literary style, but over the racy content of the novel. Later controversy focused on Joyce's "inaccuracies" regarding the Homerian epic. They attempted to correct the plot by making it more fluid and coherent. In doing this they strayed from Joyce's original intention. By reading Joyce's novel, it was not the intention of Joyce to rehash Homer. He uses Homer to add an element of satire and humor. It can be argued as to whether the differences between Ulysses and Bloom are mistakes and oversights, as later critics would have us believe, or if they truly served their purpose. Joyce may not have intended to strive for complete accuracy, but rather to allude to the comparison between Ulysses and this poor lower-class Dubliner.

It is the chapter of Ulysses entitled Circa, which served as the judge and jury in the issue surrounding racy content. Circa takes place in Dublin's red-light district. This chapter contains dream-like images of Blooms innermost fantasies. These are the types of fantasies, which many may have, however are considered to be best kept to one self. This was even more true in the 1920s when the novel was released. Joyce stepped out of bounds in expressing these types of feelings openly. No one will deny the existence of the red-light district as Joyce describes it. However, the 1920s mindset would not consider it to be a topic of public conversation and therefore a proper topic for a novel.

Joyce, not only broke the ideals of classical literary structure and social norms of the 1920s, but also those of elementary grammar. The last chapter, Penelope, contains only eight sentences. It runs on for forty-six pages of unpunctuated internal monologue. This technique was used by Joyce to mimic the way in which our minds ramble constantly inside our heads throughout the day. Out mind clutter contains no periods, or commas, it just goes on and on. Some critics have even tried to correct this horrible run-on sentence and obvious "mistake" in the printing. In doing so, they have taken away from the artistic form of the work, by their unsuspecting lack of knowledge and understanding of the author's intention.

Ulysses is a parody and was not intended to be taken as a serious historically correct work. The unconventional techniques are not mistakes. The reader of Ulysses must have a wide base of knowledge in order to absorb the full meaning behind the work. When read in the content of which it was written, it is hardly conceivable, that other than spelling and grammatical errors that Joyce acknowledged himself, that a contemporary writer could attempt to improve upon, much less convey the same meaning as the original work.

The first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses was published in Paris on February 2, 1922. It was first published by Shakespeare and Company, an English-language bookstore and lending library. An American named Sylvia Beach was the owner. Sylvia Beach was a supporter of contemporary literature of the era. She made it an attempt to meet the authors of the books that she carried. Joyce moved to Paris in 1920 and it was here that he met Beach. Ulysses was considered to be obscene in many countries by 1920s standards and in some cases was said to violate strict laws forbidding its publication. This was the case in England and America. However, laws on obscene materials in Paris were not as strict and it was this avenue that Beach used to publish Ulysses, thereby circumventing English and American censors. Beach was to sell Ulysses at her own shop in Paris, exclusively5.

There were many circumstances surrounding the publication of the first edition of Ulysses. As a result, the text was not as refined as it had first been intended. There were many typographical errors, so many in fact, that Beach dedicated an entire page in an apology to the readers for the extreme number of errors6. Joyce was aware of these errors and in a letter to his wife, he stated that,

The edition you have is full of printers' errors. Please read it in this. I cut the pages. There is a list of mistakes at the end" The edition you have is full of printers' errors. Please read it in this. I cut the pages. There is a list of mistakes at the end"7 (Ellmann, p. 540).

Joyce himself, compiled lists of errors which were later to be included in editions of the text published in England, Germany, and the United States. With each new re-print, new errors were found. With time, Joyce began to devote his time to the publication of his book Finnegan's Wake. Although he continued to work on the errors in Ulysses, he devoted less and less time to it. During Joyce's lifetime, six editions of Ulysses were produced8.

Ulysses celebrated its 80th birthday this year, and is still no wiser for the wear. The U.S. copyright of Ulysses is now under review and may open the door for even more corrected and improved editions. Recently, there has been a revitalized interest in publishing Ulysses again. There have been many competing non-copyrighted editions of the text.

For a time, copyright on the text had lapsed in the UK and Canada. However, upon review, copyright status has been returned. The copyright status in the U.S. is questionable and a source of debate. It seems as it new editions will continue to be issued in the United States. This new serge in interest in the publication of Ulysses may not be in response to growing demand, but rather due to self-interest of the publishers themselves.

Gabler published a three-volume Critical and Synoptic Edition of Ulysses and its trade counterpart published by Random House, which later became known as the "Corrected Text." Gabler's methods have been a source of debate for many years. There have been many issues raised over Gabler's theoretical orientation, involvement with the Joyce estate, and copyright interests. Gabler was once so bold as to suggest that his edition would eventually "replace the text made public in the book's first printing and every subsequent printing since 1922."9 Gabler supported his position by stating that "the claim can only be as good as the critical scholarship on which it is based."10 Gabler credited some of the most renowned Joycean scholars as advisors on the double-title Page of The Critical and Synoptic Edition.11 In this way he attempted to gain acceptance and credibility by association.

One of the chief objectors to Gabler's text was John Kidd. After four years of criticism, John Kidd's analyses of Gabler's text was published in 1984. In 1988, the New York Review ran a scaled-down version of Kidd's arguments as Kidd first presented them to the Society for Textual Scholarship conference in 1985. The article was entitled " The Scandal of Ulysses," and appeared in the June 30m 1988 issue.12 Kidd based his early post-doctoral work on the 1922 first edition, however demonstrated a working knowledge of all available versions of the printed text. Gabler's critique challenged the reader to judge the edition by the quality of scholarship, upon which the original work was based. Kidd demonstrated that Gabler's usage of facsimiles of the original manuscript combined with sloppy collation of significant compositional and transmissional documents produced an inferior version which reported linguistic and bibliographical variants unknown to Joyce and unsupported by examination of the actual manuscript materials. In response to Gabler's challenge, Kidd's conclusion in "The Scandal of Ulysses" was that "The Corrected Text" should be withdrawn from circulation. Furthermore, he recommended that Random House should reissue its 1961 Modern Library edition in its place. Kidd's attack on Gabler's texts have been a source of heated debate.

There have been those who ignored Kidd's arguments altogether, including some of the people listed on the Title Page of Gabler's edition. The James Joyce Quarterly, a journal in the field of Joyce studies ignored Kidd's monograph in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America entirely, and published Michael Groden's response to Kidd's PBSA piece instead, without ever covering or reviewing Kidd's critique on its merits.13

When sifting through the multiple available editions of Ulysses, it is important to realize that from the June 16, 1986 publication of "The Corrected Text" until June of 1990, all other versions of the novel were withdrawn from circulation worldwide14. By this means, Gabler's texts came to be accepted as authoritative without question. Gabler's editions did indeed embody the definitive text of Ulysses, but only by default. There has been a movement who wishes to re-issue the original unedited texts of the 1922 version. However, others argue that this is unnecessary as Gabler's version should stand as a suitable replacement. Kidd has argued that Gabler's text could not and should not replace the original text.

The debate has broken into two camps. The Editorial Board of the James Joyce Quarterly fervently dismisses the arguments of Kidd. However, Kidd has gained the attention of Jacob Epstein, who was at the time the Editorial Director for Random House, Gabler's publisher in the U.S.A. In June of 1988, Epstein told the New York Times that the Gabler edition appeared to be "seriously flawed," and appointed a committee chaired by famous critical editor and textual scholar, G. Thomas Tanselle to look into the question of whether or not Gabler's text should be withdrawn from publication15. Bruce Arnold's 1991 study of what has been termed the "Joyce Wars" describes the various interesting results of the Epstein/Tanselle inquiry into Gabler's text.

The Kidd-induced self-examination by Random House led to the 1990 reissue by Random House subsidiary Vintage International of the "classic" 1961 version of Ulysses. Professor Kidd has boasted that:

won the Joyce wars when Penguin decided it wasn't worth having Gabler's name on their edition of Ulysses." 16

From this point forward, Gabler's edition would no longer be the authoritative version of Ulysses. It seems that Kidd had successfully unseated Gabler's acceptance by association. As a further slap in the face, along with reissuing the 1961 text of Ulysses, Random House also set about the task of downgrading the Gabler text's cover-blurb, to less complementary language.

Kidd definitively won the American Joyce wars when Random House decided that readers could not be expected to accept its "definitive" edition as the replacement for all other previous versions of the text. This opened the stage for a series of similar changes of the Gabler text in the UK and Canada. This movement was helped by Jeremy Treglown, editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He news of the "Scandal" had the similar effect of spoiling the general reading public's taste for a so-called "Corrected Text" of Ulysses.

Most library copies published between 1990 and the present do not contain the original art or blurbs. Now most copies reflect an acceptance of Kidd's challenge to Gabler almost as readily as they accepted Gabler's "Corrected Text." Many texts published since this time have attempted to monopolize on the controversy in an attempt to boost sales. Marketers know that controversy breeds increased sales revenues.

In the UK/Canada Penguin edition, Gabler's name is conspicuously missing. This edition features an eyepatched and dapper Joyce seated just below the legend "The Scandal of Ulysses," an obvious reference to Kidd's original work. Other publishers, such as Flamingo/Pallidin have followed with similar actions.

The Oxford University Press' edition of Ulysses seems to be the least willing to exploit Kidd's version. The front-cover is primarily pictorial, and it isn't until the middle of the last paragraph of text on the back cover that the edition establishes its position in the larger textual debate by stating that:

today critical interest centres on the authority of the text, and this edition republishes for the first time, without interference, the original 1922 text." 17

The Oxford University press announces its edition of the book as "the only edition available of the 1922 text Joyce proofread and approved for publication." 18

John Kidd's Dublin Edition of Ulysses is still listed in Forthcoming Books but has yet to be released either in the U.S. Or abroad due to the continuing dispute over copyright. The initial publication was supposed to have been on February 2, 1992 in Dublin, Ireland, to commemorate 70 years after the publication of its first edition in Paris. It is based on a survey of the physical forms of the book released during Joyce's lifetime, and draws from no other sources. Kidd did not make the mistake Gabler made and call his edition "definitive." However, the press release described it as "the ideal first edition."

Danis Rose's "Reader's Edition" of Ulysses takes a different approach toward editing an improved text of the novel. This approach seem contrary to ideals of the school which he has been associated with since joining the Gabler editorial team in the early 80s. Here again we see the same claim to authority. He said of his own work,

Before now, no one has thought to look at whether a particular sentence made sense. Joyce sought lucidity. He did not try to make his work foggy and obscure. Yet previous editions force the reader to make textual decisions throughout... This text is cleaner, lighter and less threatening. It is meaningful rather than obscure and the nuances there are those Joyce intended."19 wonder if Joyce himself would agree with this.

Rose attempted to discover what Joyce actually wrote. Earlier versions had been focused on what he meant to say. Only Joyce can truly know what he meant. Any other interpretation by any other person would be influenced by that person's own personal experiences and values. Societal values change over time and we are all slaves to our own generation. By this token it is doubtful whether a writer of the 1980s or 1990s could truly know what a 1920s writer meant. We, as human beings are limited to our own personal experiences and knowledge. We are a planet of persons, none of which, have had the exact same experiences in life. Writers and artists perform in their own medium as a form of personal expression. It is therefore difficult for one person to complete another's work, as they have not had the same experiences as that originator of the work.

Rose's interpretation stands as the most highly criticized and lambasted of all editions. Many feel that his renditions is the most inaccurate of all. As Rose has attempted, the only "improvement" that can truly be made to the original text is that of grammar and spelling. To do anything other than that would be to alter the work. Maybe, we should alter the nose of the Mona Lisa too, because any plastic surgeon would agree that it is too large. Modern readers are intelligent and capable of making decisions for themselves. They do not need someone else to simplify the reading for them or guide them in forming their own opinions. Rose tried to stay away from the editorial freedom that earlier versions had taken.

Kidd criticized the Gabler version primarily on the basis of inadequate and poorly handled original manuscript. This is certainly an issue, however he did little to prove that his own methods were any better. Both versions do little to support their points and it would seem as if the argument between Gabler and Kidd is a draw. The works of Johnson have recently brought into light some of the same credibility issues that Kidd at first associated with Gabler. It will be interesting to see id Johnson displaces Kidd from his currently held position as "king of the publishing mountain."

This controversy has had the effect of making Joycean readers less likely to accept one person's version of the text as authoritative. There are strong arguments on both sides of the argument. It would seem as if Kidd has won the war, at least for the time being. However, we must not forget that Gabler was readily accepted in the same manner when it was first published as well. It makes us wonder if sometime in the future another "authoritative" version will appear, readily replacing Kidd, as he did Gabler.

This argument will inevitably effect future publishings of Ulysses. Readers will undoubtedly be less willing to accept Gabler on as the acceptable replacement for the original text. They will also be tempted to question Kidd in the same manner. Controversy has often been used as a marketing ploy to boost sales. However, when the controversy is credibility, as in the case of Ulysses, it may serve to make readers turn away from any version which proports to be authoritative. The readers are likely to have one of two reactions to this scenario. They may be tempted to buy the controversial versions of the book in order to form their own opinions of the text. On the other hand, they may be skeptical of any version of the text, regarding them all as merely unsupported opinion. A third effect that may yet occur, is that the controversy may cause a renewed interest in reading the original text, typos included.

Many versions are now available for modern readers. Mason has suggested that "the best means of experiencing the novel currently is by acquiring two of the available versions?" 20 Mason suggested that the best way to experience Ulysses was to purchase two versions of the text and compare them. His preferences are an edition of the 1961 text for reading purposes, and also an edition with textual notes such as Johnson's which explains certain variations of versions of given passages in the novel. However, it still remains to be seen whether general readers are so engrossed by the controversy that they will bother to read two versions of the same book.

It is not certain which of these paths the majority of readers will choose to follow. However, one thing is certain, publishers will have to make their best attempt to predict their reactions so that they can produce the appropriate number of books for the prevailing scenario. In the end, the final disposition of Ulysses lies not in the hands of scholarly arguments, but in the readers, who in the end, will vote by their dollar bills.

The case of the many revisions of Ulysses brings up an interesting question. The question is, "is it ethical to improve upon the work of another?" If literature is a form of art, then can one improve on the original art form? Would it be acceptable if a modern painter claimed to release an improved version of the Mona Lisa, would it be accepted as the Gabler version was so readily accepted? Many would call it absurd and disrespectful to be so arrogant as to "improve" a classical masterpiece. By the same token, Ulysses is a piece of 1920s period literary art. In its time the question was not criticizing its content and historical accuracy, but rather its decidedly "risque" content. The many editions with all of their typos were not even the issue, maybe an embarrassment to the publisher, but it was the content which was the topic of speakeasies and garden parties. All versions, including the Gabler version were written out of period. They criticized the text on technical aspects, rather than on the content, which was the topic of original controversy surrounding the original work. Even so, could Gabler, Kidd, Oxford University Press, or anyone else truly write an "improved" version of a classical 1920 period work?