Rejoyced
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
The Joyce lecture was slightly disappointing. There was little insight into Joyce or the writing but I suppose, to be fair to Staley, that's not the purpose of the talk. It surprised me how much I remembered of Joyce's life as Staley recounted his own peregrinations in search of new material for his archives.
The whole notion of gathering a writer's papers and any related material (however obtuse) is slightly disturbing and I'm not sure what it says about our relationship to the work. In Joyce's case, thanks to the excellent biography by Ellmann, I'm sure the life is better known than the writing. Readers of the critical paraphernalia and the memoirs and the outputs from colloquia and symposia must surely far outnumber those who have braved Finnegans Wake.
The lecture was in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, a rather dismal room that is surprisingly shoddy for its age. It smacks of an old university lecture room that has been tarted up with a bit of colour and modern textiles. Badly. Which is, strangely enough, exactly what it is.
The bulk of a large audience matched the room, I have to say, and there was a general sense of a meeting of the last members of a once-dominant cult. Not a lot of young blood. With the two women either side of me our three seats must have held almost two centuries worth of flesh. I was the least colourful.
The introduction and closing remarks by Roy Foster were more enlightening and entertaining than the lecture. I'm glad I went, though. It takes more and more effort to stay involved - however tangentially - with anything culturally stimulating.
The whole notion of gathering a writer's papers and any related material (however obtuse) is slightly disturbing and I'm not sure what it says about our relationship to the work. In Joyce's case, thanks to the excellent biography by Ellmann, I'm sure the life is better known than the writing. Readers of the critical paraphernalia and the memoirs and the outputs from colloquia and symposia must surely far outnumber those who have braved Finnegans Wake.
The lecture was in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, a rather dismal room that is surprisingly shoddy for its age. It smacks of an old university lecture room that has been tarted up with a bit of colour and modern textiles. Badly. Which is, strangely enough, exactly what it is.
The bulk of a large audience matched the room, I have to say, and there was a general sense of a meeting of the last members of a once-dominant cult. Not a lot of young blood. With the two women either side of me our three seats must have held almost two centuries worth of flesh. I was the least colourful.
The introduction and closing remarks by Roy Foster were more enlightening and entertaining than the lecture. I'm glad I went, though. It takes more and more effort to stay involved - however tangentially - with anything culturally stimulating.
