Naked Lunch/The Wasteland

Naked Lunch Book Review (with a couple of brief allusions to The Wasteland)

Naked Lunch, the famed work of the controversial American post-modernist writer William S Burroughs, was interesting to read to say the least and is perhaps the most testing novel I have ever read (at frequent points I considered burning the work and tearing it apart I was so appalled initially at its obscene and fragmented nature). Halfway through though, in order to obtain my sanity, I decided to give up attempting to read it for pleasure and turned on the ‘critic’s mindset’ as it were, and it is predominantly with this mindset that I construct this review. The novel follows the often-absent author Bill Lee's trek through various continents and wastelands, the presence of drugs and addiction being rather overwhelming. The places described furthermore make Eliot’s The Wasteland seem like a description of some heavenly paradise they were so destitute, barren, diseased and despair-ridden, the places and the events that unfold being based on Burroughs' years in areas such as Tangiers, though they are exaggerated to a surreal level. As I have said, from the point of view of an individual reading for pleasure there were few redeeming features in the work however, despite this dislike, from a critical perspective I can SOMEWHAT appreciate its worth.

One of the main themes of the novel itself is its damning condemnation of the lifestyle of ‘old, dirty and evil’ America and her quintessential characteristics. Her position on matters of moral contention is patronised through the ugly image of individuals ‘performing cut-rate abortions in subway toilets’ whilst the typical personality types of the alpha-male husband and the beauty queen are decimated in the following two images: ‘the Salvation Army of sincere, homosexual football coaches [singing]’ and the ‘[decapitation of] the American Girls’. The strong position of religion in American culture is equally mocked through the line ‘Emmanuel prophesises a Second Coming’ (which given the context of the novel and its salacious nature has little to do with religion). Burroughs' outlines in his afterword that one of the aims in the novel was ‘to reveal capital punishment {which even now is legal in 32 states of the country} as the obscene, barbaric and disgusting anachronism that it is’ and this is accomplished through a series of pornographic and primitive scenes in which individuals are hung for sexual enjoyment, severely degrading the principles of the practice. The whole ideal is thus mocked decisively along with those who watch on and take no political stance against the scandalous injustice as seen in the lookers-on who ‘shush each other, nudge and giggle’ amidst the spectacle. Burroughs also ridicules American capitalism and vanity as seen in the ludicrous portrayal of an individual who ‘since he has nothing to do…saves all his pay to buy fine clothes and changes three times a day in front of an enormous magnifying mirror’. Equally the description of ‘One Night Stands’, a means through which an individual can prop up their appearance for one more night of desirability before dying instantly afterwards has stark resemblances of the pub talk of The Wasteland and the destruction the birth prevention pills do to an individual’s body. Through attempting to stop normal biological processes we are destroying ourselves. American propriety is equally shamed through the line ‘ten prominent citizens – American, of course – subsequently died of shame’, this especially had resonance in a work that aims to open doors and expose hypocrisy, indeed its name originating for the wish to look into that ‘frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork’ and all facades fall apart. Indeed Burroughs’ mission is perhaps best exemplified through the image of ‘flesh [turning] to viscid, transparent jelly that drifts away in the green mist, unveiling a monster black centipede’, the images of corrupt politicians, doctors, sheriffs and the like expose the black immorality that lies behind their clean exterior. To conclude, perhaps the best image to showcase Burroughs’ hatred towards his country is that of the ‘decayed, corseted tenor bursting out of a Daniel Boone costume –…singing “The Star-Spangled Banner”’, America, in his opinion, is little more than a rubbish heap. This utter thrashing of the country’s ideals and morals does indeed add a rather bitter tone that underlies most of the work, however several key, valid points are made by Burroughs, supporting the claim of two of his fans over the ‘insight and prophecy’ of the work. One also gets a sense of an individual who clearly does not fit into his society (Burroughs being homosexual and a renowned drug addict) and that Naked Lunch in part acts as a means for him to unleash his frustrations over this fact. The sense of condemning this lifestyle often viewed as the norm also suggests another message from Burroughs, that of needing to question everything, not taking for granted patriotism, religion, expectations and traditional morality and being sucked into the void of convention, but actively analyzing the way the world is and challenging convention if need be. Burroughs, according to his biographer Barry Miles, indeed believed that the only way to challenge convention was through immorality, perhaps explaining the intensity of immoral images and events in the novel. 

The principle theme of the novel however has to be addiction, something that all the varied individuals described in the work have in common. It relegates them to complete desperation and shame, one individual noting how he’d do ‘anything’ to have another shot of junk (note the italics), the drugs taking an almost maternal role through their comforting influence as seen in ‘the kicking addict nursing his baby flesh’. The junk has a complete hold over the addict’s life and is the only thing that they live for, as seen in the effective imagery of ‘days glide by strung on a syringe with a long thread of blood’ and all this is done despite the material, economic, social and mental destruction that addiction brings about. Perhaps the most effective phrasing in the work to reflect this utter dependence comes in the line ‘home is the heroin’, the changed order of words (it not being the more grammatically sound and expected ‘heroin is the home’) reflects how the drug has taken the place of any physical source of refuge or comfort. Indeed Burroughs’ describes addiction to junk as being a ‘metabolic addiction’, something that is almost unwilling, but a biological need for survival. For me, one of the critical strengths of the work is how a complete picture of addiction is painted, despite the fragmented and disconnected structure that elsewhere predominates.

To be honest I was personally repulsed by the vulgar, vomit-inducing, salacious, contaminated and uncomfortable images that Naked Lunch brought to the forefront and I have to admit that this is the first book when I have ever quite frankly understood the case of the courts that prominently opposed it at its early inception. Indeed, despite the critics Barry Miles and James Grauerholz noting the hilarious tone of the work, personally I think ‘horrifying’ would be a more fitting description. Certainly regardless of its critical value, in terms of reading for pleasure there was no such thing with Naked Lunch for me personally. Furthermore, especially with the capital punishment argument Burroughs ingrained in the work, the pornographic segment aimed to display it, after inducing shock and repulsion then became rather dull and repetitive as successive sexualised hangings occurred, the argument rather losing its power and effect through the presentation. In comparison to works such as Nabokov's Lolita, which addresses similar issues of discomfort and moral backwardness, the over-the-top and blatant approach seemed rather superficial and was far less effective. However, having read the more human after-notes I have since somewhat retracted from my staunchly opposed stance to the work, which at one point had led be to add ‘this is not literature’ to my annotations, and now I can partially understand its position on the literary canon. Moving on from the content to the style, the fragmented tone certainly took adjusting too. Despite at first maintaining a slight sense of coherence, the novel, towards the end became increasingly difficult to decipher before fading into nothingness (this incoherence is somewhat explained by the nature of the book's composition, it originated as letters written by Burroughs to his former lover Ginsberg who then realised their literary merit and so, with writer Jack Kerouac, came to Burroughs to help him compile and edit the mass of content)…it certainly is not the ideal book for those looking for an easy, casual read.... In Burroughs own words, ‘[the sections of the novel] atrophy and amputate spontaneous like the little two amputates in a West African disease confined to the Negro race’ and indeed it is true that the traditional idea of a fixed text is completely rebelled against in Naked Lunch and I did find there to be certain literary strengths through such an approach. The disconnected style added further to the confusion and dismay of the wasteland described and also mirrored the presumed sense of being under the influence of drugs (the world that surrounds the addict disappearing into a disordered void of intangible activity). There was also a sense, in many areas, of the form being reminiscent of note-taking along with the suggestion of a voyeuristic narrator, perhaps explaining the inconsistency. What interested me most about the writing style has to be however Burroughs’ insane obsession with using ellipses, to a level such that Dickinson’s addiction to the dash was almost superseded. Indeed, fellow writer and friend of Burroughs, Ginsberg once alluded to Burroughs in one of his poems as an individual ‘obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipsis’. In terms of what it added to the work, undoubtedly the frequent ellipses accentuated the atmosphere of confusion evoked by the fragmented style itself. They also had a mocking, dare I say humorous purpose, of ridiculing the boring ennui of the American lifestyle whilst also allowing the disjointed sections to somewhat sync together, acting as a welcome bridge. Thus, despite my personal objections as a reader, as a critic there is much to be said for Burroughs' style and imagery. 

Therefore to conclude, despite on a personal level finding Naked Lunch to be a nightmare read, on a critical level much has to be said about the effects of Burroughs’ unique approach to the text along with his success in portraying a sense of despair, horror and absorption that comes with addiction. This is however certainly not a read for the lighthearted or those with weak stomachs....

Lolita

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita, is a novel that in many ways superseded my expectations but also which failed to meet the image unfounded popular belief surrounding the work had implanted in my mind. I expected it to be a work filled to the brim with vile, uncomfortable sexual scenes with even more revolting language and it was to my surprise and relief that I found Lolita to be hardly obscene at all, despite the expected sense of discomfort to come with exploring such a subject as paedophilia, there was no unnecessary excess. Indeed, in one of the early sex scenes between Humber Humbert (HH), the narrator protagonist, and Lolita, his abused step-daughter, HH emits that ‘[he is] not concerned with the so-called sex at all’ and so completely emits it. I was also not prepared for the frequently comical tone that came with the work, especially given the subject at hand. HH, who is writing the collection of papers with a judgemental audience in eye (spawning all kinds of debate on the reliability of the narrator among critics) incessantly uses tools such as irony and humour, as exemplified by the following…

‘we all wonder if anybody in the family has instructed Dolly in the process of mammalian reproduction’ – as said by a naïve teacher regarding Lolita’s lack of interest in sexual matters when she has been far more than instructed by HH already

and the passing quote:

‘since I had disregarded all the laws of humanity, I might as well disregard the rules of traffic’

The question of whether using such a comical tone towards such a damaging and pressing issue is something that I shall be exploring later on in this article. To conclude this intro of sorts, I would like to emphasise how great a read I found Lolita to be, writing extraordinarily well and powerful through its portraying the issue of paedophilia through a different lens and so being even more successful in pressing forth the evident moral that other works on the same subject.

Lolita in many ways challenges the stereotype of the paedophile that seems common knowledge almost nowadays, that of the ‘glum repulsive fat introvert’, taken from the description of Humbert’s ‘friend’ Gaston. It also challenges this stereotype in terms of the reasons towards paedophilia through Humbert’s opinion on Lolita. To start with, Humbert is by no means a ‘glum repulsive fat introvert’ instead (admittedly these words are from his own mouth) noting how ‘[he] could obtain at the snap of my fingers any adult female [he] chose’, except for the fact that he doesn’t want an adult female….  Furthermore, Humbert’s reasons for pursuing Lolita are not out of a rapacious lust towards any child he can get his hands on. Instead, it lies with his essential wish to recapture the past (something mirrored in Nabokov, the author’s own life, who having been forced out of Russia in the Bolshevik Revolution longed to recapture the scenes of his early childhood, though knowing it to be all too impossible). Humbert had lost the love of his life, Anabel, at a very early stage of his youth, and so seeing Lolita, an almost exact replica of Anabel when he last saw her all those years ago, an uncontrollable lust overtakes him, this whole concept being surmised by the line ‘Lolita began with Anabel’.  Furthermore, his love for Lolita is far more than a mere bodily lust; it almost obtains a note of purity for its all-encompassing, absolute nature. This, for instance is seen in Humbert’s stating that, ‘[Lolita’s school list] is a poem I know already by heart’ and how, when he is with her he finds himself to be ‘above the tribulations of ridicule, beyond the possibilities of retribution’. Lolita belongs to a different species of being called the nymphets, these are, according to Humbert’s definition, sporadically appearing young girls between the ages of nine and thirteen, whom certain men would be ‘ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch’, with this feeling multiplied by say a thousand (due to Lolita’s stark resemblance to his past love), one can only start to gain a sense of the expanse of Humbert’s feelings. His complete and utter, undying infatuation is perhaps at its most extreme in the following line:

‘[a wish to] turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys’

…where his wish for complete possession of this goddess-like figure is accentuated.

In addition to challenging the general convention of the unfeeling, ugly, introverted paedophile, at many points in the novel Humbert Humbert attempts to challenge one’s sense of morality in general. At frequent intervals he looks to examples of foreign cultures and their general sense of acceptance of a ‘love’ such as his and Lolita’s, as conveyed by the line ‘amid a civilization which allows a man of twenty-five to court a girl of sixteen but not a girl of twelve’. Furthermore, he strikes the argument that his ‘abnormal’ feelings are not so abnormal as one would like to think, highlighting the commonality of paedophilia among men, at one point using a statistic as high as 12%. Indeed, a passing remark made along his and Lolita’s seemingly endless road-trip is ‘what frolics, what twists of lust, you might see from your impeccable highways if Kumfy Kabins were suddenly drained of their pigments and became transparent as boxes of glass!’ and the image of ‘children and old men’ standing outside a cinema to watch a kid’s film adds him to one of many. Furthermore, and more specifically to his case with Lolita, he suggests that she had already been morally stained and corrupted long before he turned up on the scene suggesting that ‘she had been coached at an early age by a little lesbian’ and also portrays her as the instigator of the relationship in the first place. Indeed, at their earliest sexual encounter, Humbert claims that it was Lolita who ‘seduced’ him. Equally, he uses Clare Quilty, in many ways his mirror through their mutually paedophilic ways to paint himself in a positive light through their contrast. Whilst he settles for one young girl, whom he happily devotes his whole life to Quilty has mass orgies with the youth, having an even greater effect of corruption. However, as events in the novel pan out, Humbert’s case is duly dismissed. This is done through the gradual increased occurrence of predatory motifs describing him (e.g. ‘my tentacles moved towards her’), stark reminders of Lolita’s youth and juvenility (e.g. ‘conventional little girl’) and the inappropriate mixing of sexual images with childish ones (e.g. ‘my muscular thumb from reaching the hot hollow of her groin – just as you might tickle and caress a giggling child’). Equally, as the relationship sours and Humbert becomes more and more like a father figure, in Lolita’s eyes, rather than a lover, he starts prostituting her in effect, as seen in the line, ‘her weekly allowance, paid to her under condition she fulfil her basic obligations’. The damage that his actions on her have done also become increasingly apparent as events unfold. Following a sexual encounter HH notes how it was ‘as if [he] were sitting with the small ghost of somebody I had just killed’, viewing her playing tennis he notes how ‘had not something within her been broken by [him]…she would have had on the top of her perfect form the will to win,  and would have become a real girl champion’ and how a teacher makes the remark that her ‘biologic and psychologic drives are not fused’. Indeed, his last face to face meeting with her is perhaps the most effecting, Lolita, who is noted as being ‘hopelessly worn at seventeen’, ends up being pregnant, meaning that her life is in effect completely over. In the afterword, in fact, it is revealed that she eventually dies from a stillbirth a few months after these events, further installing the sense that Humbert has destroyed her life. Furthermore, Humbert’s using Quilty as a means to somewhat deflect the reader’s scorn off him is crushed by the Lolita’s emission that ‘[Quilty] broke her heart’ whilst ‘[Humbert] merely broke her life’. On another note, HH’s actions also defile his opinion of his once-loved country, as seen in the line ‘I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country…’.Thus, despite Nabokov’s determined statement that he is ‘neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction’, the novel does firmly end on a moral, strongly condemning Humbert’s actions. However, it doesn’t scream out this moral, nor relentlessly repeat it, instead the reader sees HH gradually reach this conclusion through the self-evaluation that must have come with ‘writing’ the work.  Even if Lolita is the temptress-like character whom Humbert portrays her as, what he has done is wrong on many levels and he comes to repent for this. 

As aforementioned, there is the question as whether the frequently comical tone of the novel, when discussing such a topic as child molesting, is appropriate. Though there is a strong case for this being improper and unfeeling towards such an effecting and widespread issue, I found the comical tone to be used in the right places of the novel, leaving emotional realisations such as Lolita’s pregnant ruin to have the feeling and emotional impact that they deserve. Furthermore, through using a comical tone I found the novel to be on the whole more effective, rather than appearing relentless didactic, it gave the morals expressed greater weight and power. Furthermore the use of irony and satire in the novel, as one critic expressed, can also have the effect of outlining how ludicrous it is that this criminal is still able to portray the abuse of such an innocent little girl on the terms of her being a temptress and his being the victim, the starkly childish images of Lolita (as aforementioned) evidently contradict Humbert's vision of her as this lustrous nymphet, as Nadel notes '[HH] persists, willfully oblivious of the fact that Lolita is no nymphette'. Equally this comical tone can be seen as reflecting the ridiculous nature of American civilization at the time, a society which continues completely unaware of the horrific events behind closed doors. As Nadel notes Nabokov is making fun over 'everything about the 1950s - from its relentless normativity, its self-serving worship of young girls...its dogmatic belief that father knows best...its blindness to closeted behaviour and its trust in the concepts of progressive education (as seen in the ludicrious '4 Ds' of Lolita's school)', which indeed acted as a 'paradise' for him, in terms of the vast abundance of material to use. 

Moving on, in terms of my few criticisms for the overall excellent work, as a reader I would have liked to have heard Lolita’s side of events, despite clearly knowing that this may have weakened the story as a whole, through self-narration the young girl would most likely have lost her magical aura, but would also be more instantly sympathetic. Furthermore, with the issue of an unreliable narrator, I believe that Humbert’s insanity would be all the more shocking when compared to the notes of the young, innocent girl who he were abusing who is far from the evil temptress he portrays her as (though of course this whole idea of Lolita’s narrating completely contradicts the whole means for the works existing in the first place). Equally, merely in terms of the plot, I found it to be an opportunity missed that Humbert never took Lolita to his homeland of Europe (this merely being discussed as an option in his mind), the place where he and Anabel frolicked all those years ago. Personally, I felt that some scenes of beauty almost could have been created as Humbert’s wish to recapture the past, in terms of both the people and setting, could have been, at least for a moment, complete. This would also take away the novel for a while from the subject of physical lust and admiration as his true motive, as it were, would be starkly unveiled. However, despite these small and (for the most part unrealistic, I admit) critiques, I found Lolita to be exceptionally well written, with an excellent use of symbolism, and its position on the upper half of so many of the ‘best books ever written’ lists to be wholly deserved.

As aforementioned, the defining motive for HH is his wish to recapture the past, or more specifically, achieve a sense of immortality. Lolita represents this, as seen in the line ‘the word “forever” referred only to my passion, to the eternal Lolita as reflected in my blood’, Humbert’s love for Lolita (the reincarnation of his past love Anabel) is everlasting, though he soon realises that their love, in the plural sense, cannot be so (as seen in the fretful ‘oh my Lolita, we shall never get there!’. However, at the end, there is a sort of happy ending, for the evil protagonist at least, through the immortality the collection of papers that Lolita is offers him. This is seen in the ending line:

‘the refuge of art…is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita’

Thus to briefly conclude I would thoroughly recommend Lolita to anyone who wishes to be morally stretched and receive the version of events from the wrongdoer rather than the victim. 

The Waves

The Waves Book Review

The Waves (publ. 1931 in the midst of Woolf’s decline into the irrevocable madness that eventually led to her eventual suicide) was, I must say, one of the most difficult reads I’ve been faced with in a long time. Its dense structure entails a consistent use of the stream of consciousness technique throughout by each of its six principle characters as they try to cross the sea of life, one of the most difficult seas there is. Accompanying this main section is a reoccurring metaphor, that of the sun’s rising and setting (meant to illustrate the path of life) and the life that it brings until darkness (death) conquers all,  ‘[abrading the] pinnacles of the mountain where the snow lodges forever’. This extended metaphor is often inferred to in the main text, the main characters often likening their circumstance to ‘[a] flocks of birds migrating to see the summer’ for instance, a group of birds being secondary subjects somewhat of the metaphor. Woolf also employs a frequent use of leitmotifs (which according to Wikipedia are “short, constantly recurring musical phrase" associated with a particular person, place, or idea,”) meaning that the six protagonists are easily separable with distinct personalities. Examples of these in use are phrases such as ‘I cannot boast, for my father is a banker in Brisbane, and I speak with an Australian accent’, Louis frequently repeated phrase of his deep shame and humility, and ‘come’ for Jinny reflecting her promiscuity arising from her insatiable need for something fresh, something new and inability to stay focused on one object for long. Despite the difficulty I found in reading the experimental novel (there was A LOT of page re-reading) on the whole I found it a heavily rewarding read which, like all of Woolf’s novels, posed some interesting questions.  

One of the main sources of contention in The Waves is the question of whether the creative mindset and process benefits or is hindered from interactions with others. The characters of Rhoda and Louis support the argument of hindrance somewhat (being described by Bernard as ‘authentics’ for their fitting the traditional norm of the solitary artist) whilst Bernard stands on the other side, placing great emphasis in his soliloquys on the ‘stimulus of other people’. Indeed Bernard goes so far as to claim that ‘to be [himself]…[he] needs the illumination of other people’s eyes’, posing the argument that without people around us we are nothing, we don’t really exist, we’re merely in a state of limbo. Through having people around him Bernard believes his creative ventures to be distinctly benefitted noting how ‘different people draw different words from [him]’ and indeed throughout the novel Bernard is constantly viewing the ordinary people around him making up their stories, people are the fruits, the compulsory tools for his art. Whilst it is true that ‘authentics’ such as Rhoda and Louis may still yet achieve artistic greatness, Bernard noting how ‘when Louis is alone he sees with astonishing intensity, and will write some words that may outlast us all’, it is notable how Rhoda ends up committing suicide in the novel whilst Louis lives a sad life of solitude and depression like a ‘great beast’ whose ‘foot is chained’. Although they might be able to achieve a greater sense of artistic greatness that artists of the people such as Bernard, the ultimate fact is that they get no sense of joy or passion for their art thanks to their solitary lifestyles and thus ultimately their creative process is stunted and undermined. Woolf further enhances her supporting of ‘team-Bernard’ as it were through using the first person plural in phrases such as ‘we make this day’ and ‘we make life’, together, only together, can we as humans garner meaning from this life.

Another frequent theme in the novel is the desire for order, the desire for something concrete. The character who perhaps defines this sense is Neville. For instance his decision to devote much of his life to the study of Latin results from his love of the language’s ‘exactitude’ and he is constantly noting his wish to ‘oppose the waste and deformity of the world, its crowds eddying round and round disgorged and trampled’, in other words he wants to calm the waves of confusion. This thus somewhat explains his falling in love with the character of Percival, described by the critic Winterson as ‘the hero, the sun-god’ through his perfect, almost theistic, singular one track mind, something that Neville ‘whose mind is far too complex to be roused by and single activity’ longs for. However Woolf’s frequent demands for a sense of order throughout the book are by no means one-sided, lines such as ‘what a symphony with its concord and its discord, and its tunes on top and its complicated base beneath’ link to the occasional sense of wonder that disorder can bring about, meaning that disorder in the right amounts is almost desirable. I was also particularly taken by the presentation of the creative process in the novel, as epitomised by Bernard. For years he struggles to gain his own sense of an identity as an artist, often being noted as Byron or ‘Tolstoi’s young man’, he also struggles to create the definitive work, something that all creators must fear and despair over, as seen in the line ‘I who am perpetually making notes in the margin for some final statement’. As old age approaches and he begins to look back on his life he is also faced with the inevitable question that must face all of those that chose a career in the arts as he notes  how ‘[he is] not an authority on law, or medicine, or finance. [he is] wrapped around with phrases, like damp straw’, the impact of the arts in life being less clear than say that of creating a new medicine or entering the world of politics.

Critic Jeanette Winterson noted The Waves to be ‘a book of constant reorientation’ through the prominence of the themes of transience and death throughout. This is seen in the landscape, as well as the characters, the ‘great clouds’ being noted as ‘always changing’ and perhaps most blatantly showcased by the blunt quote ‘life passes’. The character for whom this sense of ageing and decay affects the most has to be Jinny, an individual whom relies on the admiration of others almost as if it is the needed nutrition she lives on. Thus the line ‘there is my body in that looking glass. How solitary, how shrunk, how aged!’, has an extra poignancy for the reader. Jinny eventually challenges this sense of decay and transience by, despite her reduced physical state, joining the ‘triumphant procession’ of older women showcasing pride in her looks and adding a rather feminist note. Death arises as a theme early on in the novel as Neville, overhearing a conversation about death in his young years whilst staring at some foreboding apple tree, comes to associate the piece of nature with death leading to his frequent leitmotif of phrases along the lines of ‘we are domed, all of us, by the appel trees, by the immitigable tree which we cannot pass’ and indeed death is one obstacle that try as we might we as humans are unable to conquer. Ultimately however, as previously exemplified by Jinny’s ‘triumphant’ stance, the characters do try to tackle death, the ending words being those of Bernard noting how ‘[he] will fling [himself], unvanquished and unyielding’ against the common enemy that is death. How is this to be done, perhaps through his literature by which a sense of immortality can be gained, perhaps through his children and family by which a part of him will always live on? On another note, through their reactions to the death of their mutual friend Percival one is able to further identify the character’s distinct ways, Neville mourning the loss of his one true love begs pain to ‘bury [its] fangs into [his] flesh’ whilst the only mater on Jinny’s mind was whether the recently deceased loved her. Bernard on the other hand, never wishing to isolate himself from the circle of life, makes the point that ‘one cannot live outside the machine for perhaps more than half an hour’.

The crashes of waves are heard throughout the novel and thus the question becomes what quality of these domineering forces did Woolf aim to accentuate through this? There is the sense that waves act as a sense of immortality, a sense of continuity, something that Bernard in his ending defiance towards death seeks to attain, after all the last sentence of the novel involves the waves continuing on as they always will in ‘the waves broke on the shore’. There is also the suggestion that the waves represent death itself or at least a means to meet the end, as seen in the sad news that ‘last Christmas a man was drowned sitting alone in his cart’. They could represent this constantly shifting nature of life as aforementioned as seen in the line ‘it seems as if [they] were flowing and curving’ or a tool to measure to mental stability, hence Rhoda the least stable of the characters ‘feel[ing] the waves of [her] life tossed’. Furthermore some will be able to ride the waves of life whilst others will sadly sink, as exemplified by the contrasting sentence ‘Jinny rides like a gull on the wave…but I lie, I prevaricate’. Perhaps the waves are meant to represent all of these facets and many more, representing life with all its difficulties, dangers and joys.

Woolf, in her novel A Room of One’s Own criticises those who write literature ‘[merely] for the sake of breaking’ rather than ‘the sake of creating’ and the question becomes whether she practices what she preaches. Did I find the novel to be overtly experimental just for the sake of experimenting or did I find this exotic approach to the novel refreshing and worthwhile? The novel admittedly was extremely dense and difficult to read, the stream of consciousness technique being rather non-tangible and I venture to say frustrating. However as Winterson notes, although as the reader we somewhat yearn for a solid passage by a solid character such as Percival, ‘which one of us can say that our emotions are solid things which we can hold in our hands?’ meaning that despite its difficulty to read, the technique is realistic and the right way to portray matters. Indeed I found Bernard’s passage right towards the end when he became ‘selfless’ for a brief while, magical rather than needless and thus even though The Waves is overtly experimental, it does so with a firm goal in mind, to explore all the ways and whims of the human mindset throughout the process of life, something that the experimental structure suits. A slight critique I would have in addition to this however is the overall predominance of Bernard as a character, meaning that intriguing individuals such as Jinny and Louis were not given the full time to develop and be explored as individuals and at times the tale did border on repetition what with the incessant use of leitmotifs and the turning back to early events in Bernard’s soliloquy at the end. These are however minor complaints for yet another astonishing work by Woolf.

I will conclude with evaluating the interesting primary source of contention of the novel, that of whether it is a book with six principle characters or whether it only follows the tale of one who has six multifaceted personalities. Critic Gillian Beer notes how 'the Waves was imagined as the story of a single woman ‘a mind thinking’’ so surely it would not be too much to assume that it still is the story of one individual. Throughout the novel several hints as to this being the truth as dropped, Bernard (the principle individual to whom these six facets would belong if it were to be true) often notes how ‘[he is] not one, but complex and many’ and how he has ‘to cover the entrances and exits of several men who alternately act their parts as Bernard’. Indeed, one gets a sense through the occasional meetings of all six in the novel that it is as if several parts are returning into the main body, ‘the globe whose walls are made of Percival’, Percival being mutually adored by all six. Indeed there are many interweavings between the main six characters such as their literary mindsets and overall lack of confidence that make this possible. Furthermore, many of the characters are complementary as it were, Louis’ isolation and Bernard’s need for people around him, Rhoda’s abstract nature and Jinny’s being a slave to the norm, Susan’s desire for the rural lifestyle and Jinny’s love of all things in the main city, Bernard’s empathy and Louis’s coldness, Neville’s desire for order and Jinny’s love of the disorder of the ballroom…seeming to suggest that together they can form one well-rounded whole. Towards the end these implications become more and more overt, Bernard noting the sensations felt by the others in ‘here on the nape of my neck is the kiss Jinny gave Louis. My eyes fill with Susan’s tears. I see far away…the pillar Rhoda saw’ and even more clearly stating that ‘[he is] not one person; [he is] many people; [he does] not altogether know who [he is]– Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda or Louis; or how to distinguish [his] life from theirs’. I found it even more revealing when the image of ‘an elderly man, rather heavy, grey above the ears’ was mentioned, feeling as if the master of all these personalities had at last been uncovered. Therefore to finish, although one of Woolf’s more difficult reads, The Waves is an interesting insight to the workings of the human mindset and the definition of the self. 

To The Lighthouse/A Room of One's Own

To The Lighthouse Review (incorporating some of the teachings from A Room of One’s Own)

To The Lighthouse (publ. 1927) is perhaps the most autobiographical of Woolf’s novels, strongly based upon her childhood holiday at St Ives, Cornwall (recalled as the happiest days of her life) and her two parents. Some critics have added further to this autobiographical sense by noting how the lighthouse itself, in its ‘fitful, sudden [and] remote’ nature is symbolic of Woolf’s intimate friend Vita Sackesville leading Hermione Lee to conclude that ‘the writing of To The Lighthouse was the closest that Virginia Woolf came…to undergoing psychoanalysis’. The novel itself takes the form of a modernist tragedy employing a stream of consciousness style, allowing for a vast understanding of the thoughts and wishes of those described, along with the constant use of sea imagery throughout, allowing the reader to practically visualise this place described, thus illuminating Woolf’s passion for her former childhood holiday home at St Ives. Personally, I found it to be the easiest Woolf read so far (typing this at a time when my Woolf book count is at the humble number of four), somewhat due to its flowing and pure nature, and found the various teachings very beneficial.

Many of the characters in the novel are rather acknowledging of the transient nature human life in general and find different ways to challenge this in order to achieve a sense at least of immortality. This imminent sense of transience is perhaps most evident when Mrs Ramsay notes, having just left the room of her dinner party, that the party itself was ‘already the past’ or equally in her passing remark of ‘how could any hand have made this world?’, inferring an absence of religious belief and so no hope of an afterlife after the physical body recedes. Mrs Ramsay herself tries to tackle this overbearing transience through basing her life on social contact, relationships and her children. This is seen through her metaphysical attachment to her household as seen in the passage when she suddenly notices an imbalance in the building before realising that the explanation is the halting of a nearby conversation. All seek some kind of guidance from Mrs Ramsay during her tenure in the novel as showcased by the responsibility-ladling line of ‘the others stood looking at Mrs Ramsay’ and she also shows great emotional initiative frequently in the novel as seen in the line ‘for he wished, she knew, to protect her’, her psychoanalytical skills show no abound. Woolf herself would take the view that these qualities were practically inevitable for a 19^th/early 20^th century housewife noting that ‘all the literary training that a woman had in [this period] was training in the observation of character, in the analysis of emotion’ in A Room of One’s Own. Mr Ramsay, in contrast to his wife, attempts to achieve this immortal sense through his work and studies. This difference in viewpoint to his wife is perhaps most evident in the contrasting parallel structure of ‘he should be very proud of Andrew if he got a scholarship, he said. She would be just as proud of him if he didn’t, she answered’ relating to their son Andrew. Mr Ramsay is constantly noted as being in a state of great discomfort when away from his books and studies for too long as seen in the telling line of ‘three hundred miles from his library’, the library being the focal point of his life. However, it is not these academic studies that Mr Ramsay lives for, it’s the appraisal that they can result in as seen in one observer noting in horror how a man ‘could depend so much as he did upon people’s praise’. The other way in the novel through which immortality is attempted at is through the medium of art, as exemplified by the character Lily Briscoe. She is often portrayed as desperately ‘grasping onto her paintbrush’ almost as if it is her choice of weapon against the main enemy that is death and does ultimately succeed in defying time in the novel itself. Her painting, something that appears in both the first and third sections of the novel, is able to cross the time boundary that the second section accomplishes as seen in her ‘tunnelling her way into her picture, into the past’ in her second attempt at the impossible picture, through art she is able to relive emotions and memories that would be otherwise laid to rest. Therefore it would be inferred that Lily Briscoe’s path to challenge transience is the most successful, the novel’s last image after all is that of this painting. Certainly Woolf does by no means praise Mr Ramsay’s choice of lifestyle noting how he seems to be constantly ‘absorbed in himself’ and so disconnected from the process of living in general. Furthermore he is constantly wavering over how ‘he [will] never reach R’, the letter R being a symbol for intellectual intelligence, the closer to Z one is the greater their intellect, and this worry that he will never achieve greatness consumes him whilst it does not for the more laidback approaches of relationships and art as a choice of lifestyle. However, I believe Woolf’s stance on Mrs Ramsay’s choice of path is decidedly more positive, following her death in the second part of the novel her absence is decidedly felt by the reader along with the characters (as seen in the confusion resulting from the lack of maternal guidance over ‘what [to] send to the lighthouse’) and is, I would say, generally missed, thus indicating a success in her being remembered through the relationships and friendships she makes.

Another clear theme in To The Lighthouse is male-female relationships and the clear indications towards feminism that the book includes. Mr Tansley acts as the opposing force towards feminism and greater forces of equality in the novel being a more repugnant version of Mr Ramsay through their joint search for intellectual greatness and superiority, as seen in the line ‘he was Charles Tansley…one of these days every single person would know it’, and acting as a barrier to many of the creative interests of the women, most noticeably Lily Briscoe whom he chants to ‘women can’t paint, women can’t write’, this phrase acting as a barrier to her artistic ventures for many years to come, indeed Woolf herself in A Room of One’s Own notes how ‘a man’s figure came to intercept [her]’ in her literary wanderings. As a character Tansley fulfils Woolf’s analysis perfectly in A Room of One’s Own of the male, thirsting for any sense of superiority he can find. Men are said to use ‘women …as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size’ hence his frequently belittling nature. Although there are suggestions of practical subservience on the part of many of the female characters in TTL, such as Mrs Ramsay’s noting that her husband is ‘infinitely more important’ than her there are many oblique and blatant portrayals of the feminist ideology throughout. On the more oblique side of things is through the story Mrs Ramsay tells to her son James throughout much of the first section, where at one point one female character is noted as bravely stating that ‘if [her husband] won’t be king, [she] will’ whilst more overt examples include Mrs Ramsay’s noting the faults in the male equipment in the line ‘she pitied men almost as if they lacked something’ and the revealing quote of ‘she did in her own heart prefer boobies to clever men who wrote dissertations’, which is not necessarily inferring towards lesbianism but merely the sisterhood of women and the gender’s greater emotional intuition and warmth compared to intellectual, but disconnected, males who replace people with ‘dissertations’. Thus in reading both these two books I found Woolf’s stance to be unquestionably feminist.

Two smaller themes and ways of thinking in To The Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own are the effects of beauty and the importance of wealth on creativity. To start with the former an obvious, immediate effect of the beauty of characters such as Mrs Ramsay is envy, as seen in the stark quote ‘beauty offended people’. Beauty is portrayed as having wider effects as well however, restorative effects following pauses of admiration for the book’s beautiful characters as seen in one individual’s noting how Mrs Ramsay has ‘stars in her eyes and veils in her hair’ conflict can be crushed. This is seen in the protagonist’s early mutual dislike towards Mr Tansley being healed when he admires her looks. This in essence can be summed up by the line ‘[beauty] stilled life, froze it’, as one forgets practicality and the issues surrounding them in its stead. The importance of wealth on creativity is a key teaching from A Room of One’s Own, indeed the title arising from how ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’, an indeed it is true characters in To The Lighthouse such as Mrs McNab, a poor housemaid, would by no means be able to pursue the artistic realms in such a way as Lily Briscoe the rich maid can, ‘intellectual freedom’ after all ‘depends on material things’. Woolf also makes the point in her essay that with greater wealth woman comes to hate man less, thus explaining Mrs Ramsay’s decidedly hushed and quiet feminist stance, for after all ‘[she] need not hate man, [as] he cannot hurt [her]’ with her relative financial stability.

Symbolism is also a key part of To The Lighthouse including Miss Briscoe’s painting, the pig skull in the children’s room and the lighthouse itself. To start with, the painting can be merely seen to symbolise the feminist stance that underlines this book overall, however through reading A Room of One’s Own it seems Woolf would view such an approach towards art, as a means of vengeance, is unhealthy and ultimately unsuccessful. Indeed, Woolf notes in the collection of essays that ‘it is fatal for anyone who writes [based] on their sex’.  Thus although the painting might have started off with that intent, as mentioned in a previous paragraph, it comes to symbolise the immortality of art, as ultimately Lily is able to leave it for ten years or so, and upon returning to it experience the same emotions that she did all those years ago. The painting could also be seen as Lily’s substitute for a husband or lover, her celibate status throughout the novel being rather clear along with a means to defend herself, upon facing an impossible conversation with Mr Ramsay she turns to her painting as a means of escape. The pig skull, I believe, has a more clear symbolism, a stark reminder of death throughout the novel which ultimately is rather based around that theme, as seen in the numerous such deaths of the second section. Also, Mrs Ramsay by covering it with ‘her own shall’ showcases her maternal practicality and importance towards her children, the reassuring nature of her shall nulls the fear that the skull would cause. Finally, the lighthouse, I believe, symbolises impossibility as seen in the ethereal and distant imagery of the following section:

‘lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst…fading and falling, in soft, low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited by men’

The soft, fluid fricative alliteration, along with the foreign imagery of ‘some moon country’ and the mystical sense of its being ‘in the midst’ surely supports this. But impossibility towards what? This sense of impossibility can differ depending on which character it is staring off at the lighthouse but I believe most evidently, it is the impossibility of immortality. This is supported by how, in the second section, as a holiday house begins to decay more and more ‘only the lighthouse beam enter[s] the house’ indicating its continuity and eternality.

I definitely found To The Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own to be some of Woolf’s easiest reads (especially now since having read The Waves) and have heaps of praise for both books, though some slight critiques also. To start off with To The Lighthouse praise most certainly has to be given both to Mr and Mrs Ramsay as characters. The former’s tale was a rather melancholy one as the futility of his lifestyle, achieving immortality through his studies and dissertations became more apparent. However ultimately there was a sense of hope as near the end he finally praises his son James, something very alien to him, praising others that is, and this possibly hints to next few years of his life being more encompassed in relationships than solitude. This also suggests another meaning for the lighthouse, its cleansing nature when reached. Mrs Ramsay, however, was the star character for me. Her wandering thoughts as she does rather menial processes through the first half, noted as the ‘tune’ accompanying the ‘bass’, are wonderful and I found the stream of consciousness technique here to be truly effective as one got a real sense of the wandering mind of the bored housewife, clearly she will not focus all her time on her children and hosting, though externally this may be so. I found it rather humorous the interruptions of her wandering thought processes back to practicality and responsibility as showcased by the line ‘realising that James [her son] was tugging at her’ and found her mind to be deeply fascinating, her occasional disconnect from the world around her being illuminated by the line ‘became part of that unreal but penetrating and exciting universe’. Mrs Ramsay certainly fulfils Woolf’s requisite in A Room of One’s Own that ‘fiction is like a spider’s web attached ever so lightly…to life at all four corners’. I also found her lapses into momentary depression due to the dull repetition that surrounds her to be rather relatable and understandable. Though these lapses weren’t overt and were only short-lived they were nonetheless incredibly powerful. The most powerful example would certainly be the following passage which occurs during the dinner party of the first section.

‘as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, she would have whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea’

The sea imagery evoked makes this wish for relief, for death and an end to all this duty and responsibility all the more vivid. Stream of consciousness is also effective as a technique I find in showcasing how repetitive the human mind can be, constantly returning to the most tedious of worries, as seen Mrs Ramsay’s frequent return to ‘(the bill for the greenhouse)’. This also showcases one of the many use for brackets in the novel, others being the sharp reveal of a death in the ‘Time Passes’ section. This is the section of the novel I had most difficulty with reading, it is rather abstract after all and with an overbearing sense of death and decay, however despite this I found it nevertheless integral to the novel’s power. Through To The Lighthouse one gets a real sense of Woolf’s presence among the characters along with the sea air almost being tangible, this latter strand is added to by the stream of consciousness technique as the flowing nature of the waves is reflected. My slight critiques would be the early exit for Mrs Ramsay (I felt that her character still had the potential to be thoroughly explored even more before her exit) and towards the character of Charles Tansley, who although rather humorous was rather too predictable and stereotypical for my liking. He had no breadth to him, merely being a stark opposition to all things feminist, though perhaps this is a general comment of Woolf’s towards the type of person universities were producing at the time, however in essence I can fully understand why many would call the novel ‘Woolf’s masterpiece’. A Room of One’s Own I found to be generally humorous and appreciated how Woolf managed to delve into the world of non-fiction and essay without losing the sense of magic and the otherworldly that comes with her fiction. Now having had a hands on reveal to the wanderings and ways of Woolf I feel that future readings will be benefitted enormously. Several interesting comments were made on the role of women and fiction, comments which for the most part I found great reason to agree with though there was one that I found slight reason to differ with. Woolf claims that the reason many of the early women writers were not successful is because they wrote with a vengeance towards the inequality of the time, something that poisoned and polluted their works. However surely writing with such a passion and retaliation, if dealt correctly with, can make a novel all the more powerful. Dickens, for example, writes with a stark social conscience in hand rather successfully I find equally Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry was a rewarding read for me early on this year, the sense of injustice being rather aggravating. However the ending moral I strongly agreed with, that ‘to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worthwhile’ and that only through the strives and persevering of today’s generation will a greater say for women writers be achieved. 

Joyce vs. Carver

James Joyce – Dubliners

A review and a comparison to the works of Raymond Carver

‘Dubliners’, often deemed Joyce’s most ‘accessible’ publication, is a set of stories that follows a vast array of characters who for the most part only share one commonality between them, the city of Dublin. I felt reading the majority of the tales to be a rather cathartic experience as they often ended in a sudden realisation or a sense of cleansing as exemplified by A Little Cloud, in which the protagonist feels ‘tears of remorse’ after upsetting his child and more generally envying a more exotic life, and Eveline, in which the lead ends up ‘like a helpless animal’ as she realises she cannot leave her homeland and the responsibilities that lie with it for a second chance in the Americas. Indeed, despite early on taking a rather negative approach to the collection (which is more likely just a result of my overdose with the short story format of late) I grew to appreciate and I dare say enjoy the diversity of the collection and the interesting culture Joyce paints and would happily recommend casual grazing of the book to most.

Upon reading I could not help but draw similarities in style and substance to the works of Carver which lay fresh in my mind following my ‘Carver binge’ earlier this month. For instance, both Carver and Joyce (at least in this collection) convey the emptiness of human converse frequently, as seen in the generic observation in The Sisters that the deceased has ‘gone to a better world’*. Equally both portray a general sense of dissatisfaction with life as seen in ‘the disappointed man’ of the same tale. Both writers often portray man at his most animalistic as seen in the ‘conqueror’ of women in The Two Gallants and the bleak prediction for the future as two boys ‘[chase] a crowd of ragged girls’ rather predatorily in An Encounter. Furthermore both authors use the language of the people, phrases such as ‘up the dodge’ and ‘up to the knocker’ making regular appearances in Dubliners, and follow the lives of the common people (following a general shift in literature at the turn of the century from the aristocracy and landed interest to the middle and working classes). Indeed The Boarding House has a ‘butcher’s daughter’ as its protagonist and ‘nobody’ notices the main character of A Little Cloud as he crosses the streets of Dublin. These are people who have practical, relatable concerns, the lead of Clay for instance ‘nearly [crying] outright’ after the loss of her two and fourpence. There’s also a general sense of frustration and entrapment among the characters for their rather stagnant, restrictive lives, the individual in A Little Cloud feeling a ‘prisoner for life’, the central character of A Painful Case noting the ‘adventureless tale’ that just happens to be his life and the lead of Counterparts ‘[aching] to do something, to rush out and revel in violence’. As seen in the latter example, this ennui drives man to a primitive state of desperation. There is an even greater sense of stagnation in the relationships described as exemplified by the lead of A Little Cloud observing the eyes of his wife and noting that ‘they repelled him and defied him: there was no passion in them, no rapture’, the eyes after all being ‘portals to the souls’. Furthermore, alcoholism, an issue that affected the lives of both Joyce and Carver respectively (Joyce’s father being an alcoholic and Carver in fact being one himself) also takes the forefront of both of their collections as seen in Counterparts where the protagonist and his group of comrades waste away their funds, income rapidly evaporating away. Indeed the tale of Grace centres on the reforming of an alcoholic who has taken a step too far. Finally, for both writers there is often an underlying sense of nastiness in there tales, something the critic Budford, taking a more negative approach to Carver, was quick to point out. A prime example of this occurs in Clay. At first, I assumed the fact that ‘none of the young men [in the train carriage seem] to notice [the protagonist], but an elderly gentleman made room for her’ was a bleak comment on our hostile future full for indolence and selfishness. Later on however, the reader learns that this ‘gentleman’ in fact ended up robbing her, making the world portrayed seem even crueller and sombre. This is very much the same for Carver’s tales filled with domestic violence, murder and infidelity. I found this following passage from Two Gallants particularly summative of the general aim of both writers in their minimalist collections, trying to bring beauty out of everyday life:

‘the grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city and mild air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets...like illumined pearls the lamps shone from the summits of their tall poles upon the living texture below, which, changing shape and hue increasingly, sent up into the warm grey evening air an unchanging, unceasing murmur’.

The sublime imagery of streetlamps as ‘pearls’ shining from their ‘summits’ (bringing imagery of mountain tops) and the fluid variety of life they look down on is rather stunning and thus is a prime example of what Joyce seeks to portray in his collection and Carver wishes to get out of his dirty realism.

Thus the ultimate question has to be what sets apart Carver and Joyce (in Dubliners) and furthermore which approach to the short story do I find to be more successful and preferential? This is a question that almost suffocated (METAPHORICALLY!!!) me by its difficulty, but I feel I have at last managed to come to a sound conclusion. But first, in terms of the differences between the two, I found Joyce’s turn of phrase rather more poetic when compared to Carver’s often blunt style of writing, phrases such as ‘I felt my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region’ as found in The Sisters would indeed be a rarity, if found at all, in Carver’s works. I also found Joyce more successful in portraying a distinct culture than Carver. The Dublin Joyce painted one that is a centre of Irish patriotism, political and religious contention, a city of contradictions (despite Christianity being at the forefront of life in general, much of the acts of the characters are distinctly non-biblical, indeed Gallaher of A Little Cloud making the point that ‘every city is immoral’, some just have better facades than others) but also a rather stagnant, claustrophobic place. Examples of the last remark can be seen in phrases such as ‘Dublin is such a small city: everyone knows everyone else’ and the shining example of dental alliteration that is ‘dear, dirty Dublin’. The last quote particularly sums up the portrait Joyce makes in Dubliners that of a city full of ugliness and conflict yet still being a warm shining beacon of family and community to many. There’s little sense of this in the three Carver collections I’ve read so far, although American suburbia is somewhat portrayed most of the tales can be quickly transferred to much of the world they are so relatable and unspecific. I also found that Joyce’s collection was far more varied than Carver’s, in the latter I gradually grew more and more frustrated as the same themes of divorce, infidelity and domestic violence sprouted up again and again and again, thus somewhat losing their power. Although Joyce does explore these themes he looks into strains of life such as politics, religion, wealth…as well, meaning that each tale is that bit more powerful as they do not seem to be rewrites of earlier ones. I also found each tale of Joyce’s collection to be rather essential to the whole collection as a whole, in short there were no ‘spare parts’, something I am afraid cannot be said for Carver’s. However, although I preferred Joyce’s collection as a whole, in terms of individual tales, I still find that Carver at his best supersedes Joyce. This is somewhat because his tales are so believable and applicable for so many that they evoke more emotion when read that Joyce’s which firmly lay in Dublin, a place I must admit I rather knew little about (before receiving an education thanks to Joyce that is). Equally, I felt that there were no moments of genuine beauty between the characters of Joyce’s collection, whilst tales such as Cathedral and A Small, Good Thing by Carver do showcase this tender nature to the human race. Genuine beauty here is not the same as mere catharsis (as it is merely a cleansing from something that was ugly) and besides this most of Joyce’s characters were as unpleasant and ugly as the majority of Carver’s.

To conclude, certain tales from Dubliners do deserve a specific mention and recommendation. First of all there is An Encounter in which the bizarre old man who cropped up ‘midstream’ was particularly interesting and amusing to me. His rather sadistic manner (at one point he fantasises over a ‘nice, warm whipping’), disconnect (he is noted as ‘repeating his phrases’ many a time), vulgarity (he randomly gets up and walks away for a period to, as it is inferred, masturbate) and inconsistency (despite earlier on encouraging young boys to have multiple girlfriends later on he changes his mind ‘seem[ing] to have forgotten his recent liberalism’) clearly would traumatise and deeply affect the poor young souls who have the displeasure of his acquaintance. I found Counterparts to be a moving tale of fragility, the fragility of the mentally unstable protagonist, the fragility of his marriage and the fragility of his child who he viciously attacks to unleash his frustration at life. The main reason Clay stood out for me was the moral of the tale, that wealth stands for little compared to human relationships, whilst A Painful Case interested me through its challenging to traditional Catholic morals, the protagonist regretting his decision to not initiate an affair to one woman he grew especially close too, after her death hearing ‘the laborious drone of the engine reiterating the syllables of her name’ as his remorse encompasses him. Finally, the famed blockbuster that is The Dead did not fail to live up to its hype, the temperamental emotions of the lead Gabriel made for compulsive reading as he descends into a very dark place indeed.

Thus to finish off, I would recommend Joyce’s Dubliners for anyone who is looking for an easy way in to the world of the famed novelist or just to find out more about Dublin as a place than the pictures and non-fiction books can tell you. Reading Dubliners one becomes immersed in a specific culture and the lives of the real people who are components of it.  

*please note that all textual references in this comparison will come from Joyce’s Dubliners, if you wish to see evidence in Carver’s writings please refer to my earlier writings about just