WHY JAMES JOYCE?

A friend of mine left a comment here asking why James Joyce is considered a great writer. I sent her some e-mails, and I'm going to adapt my response here.

You don't see why James Joyce is great? Lordy. Have you read any of his work? Start reading "Ulysses" aloud and see what happens. Or start "Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man."

If reading him aloud doesn't do it, call me, and we can read a few lines together. His writing is the richest, most powerful, and most full of associations, meaning and allusions of any writer save Faulkner and Shakespeare.

You can read "Ulysses" horizontally, for the story, and you can also read it vertically, meaning you can follow each allusion and association as you read. You can spend hours reading almost any page in "Ulysses."

In short, there's more going on in Joyce than anyone else. James Joyce is the only writer I know, probably the only novelist in English, who completely mastered the craft of fiction. Hemingway said you can never master it. You are always learning and always trying to do more than you can accomplish.
 
But Joyce did master the craft, and he did it all. He wrote masterful realistic short fiction, "The Dubliners." Then a masterful more or less conventional novel, "Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man." Then the biggest, grandest and deepest modern art novel, "Ulysses." The Grand Canyon of art novels. Then the most ambitious and successful avant garde novel ever written, "Finnegan's Wake."
 
In the last two, every phrase and every sentence has more than one meaning. For example, the phrase "Finnegan's Wake" means a gathering to mourn the death of a man named Finnegan. 
 
But it also means the wake a man leaves behind him, like the waves and ripples behind a boat as it moves through the water. A man moves through a sea of friends and relatives and other people and affects them all.
 
So in a way, the title announces the theme, and it's the ultimate theme for a novel: all the results and effects of a man's life.
 
James Joyce taught other writers more than any other modern novelist in English. He was a huge influence on Faulkner, arguably the greatest American novelist.
 
The way to read Joyce is to start at the beginning and read the books in chronological order, as far as you can. I got as far as the beginning of "Finnegan's Wake."
 
I recommend also, "Stephen Hero," an early draft of "Portrait Of The Artist...." You can see how he learned to write, and how much he grew as a writer.
 
I don't think there's any doubt that James Joyce is the greatest writer in the English language since Shakespeare.
He has it all: depth of theme, dazzling technique, richness of imagery, mastery of the elements of fiction, stunning originality.
 
All the rest of us may try to follow in his footsteps, but they are those of a giant.
 

Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle.