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Danis Rose & James Joyce & Michael Wood

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n24/michael-wood/quashed-quotatoes


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Philip Harvey 
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:53:49 +1100
Subject: Fined Again Wacked
To: Max Richards

Dear Max and Alan,

thank you for the review of the new Danis Rose FW. I have just read it over lunch.

The reviewer, Michael Wood, has given some excellent descriptions of the process of reading the book and of the types who get into Joyce's type. I recognise myself and others in a number of his portraits. The review helps to update us on the general history of reception.

I also like the tempting theory that Joyce was not really interested in the cyclic Vico view of history, even though it is unquestionably one of the identifiable bases of the creative performance. 

Personally, I think Joyce believes in repetition and that every time something repeats itself in time, it's different. Did Stephen Dedalus ever wake from the nightmare of history? When I read FW it seems he is still hard at work waking up, all in a state of Tossmania. The more I readFW the more I notice what Joyce describes in a loving way, e.g. the Book of Kells, and it is these passages that guide my sense of his values.

Joyce valued the inventiveness of the language artist, which is not
something we can say about Danis Rose. Rose's Ulysses is a disgrace, if you ask me, and not because I stand by Joyce's grandson. Simply put, Rose is not a literary person, has no feel for what Joyce is really doing, displays a literalmindedness about the dictionary meaning of words that Joyce would have found conservative, and gives himself permission to change the original text  of the book as though he is on a higher, superior wavelength to the rest of us. The most original thing in Rose's Ulysses of 1997 is the copyright statement, which effectively claims that the text of his edition belongs to him, Danis Rose, and not Joyce. Apparently love of money is the root of all evil and Rose no doubt would get the gist of this saying, even if he couldn't turn it into a series of outrageous puns like Joyce. In fact, it wouldnt occur to him to do such a thing. Michael Wood is too nice about Danis Rose. It would be interesting to know why he is being so nice.

The grandson succeeded in the British High Court in having Rose's
Ulysses pulped.

Regards,

Philip

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