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Wed Reading Meme...
Jan. 21st, 2015 07:25 pmEh, first a mini poll.
[Poll #1996299]
1. What I just finished reading?
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman - the review can be found HERE.
Weirdly, it and the movie Boyhood reminded me of each other or they shared similar themes, as does the book I'm reading now. All three - have at their core wounded male hero artists who are dependent on extremely strong women to save and nourish their artistic talent - and they do.
2. What I'm reading now?
The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham
Fascinating book - it focuses as much on Joyce and his writings (all his writings) as it does on various feminist and political movements of the time. In particular the fight against censorship and the anti-obscenity laws in the UK, Europe and the US. Britain had passed some particularly stringent ones during the 1800s (those damn Victorians), which various people hadn't taken too seriously because they figured literature would be exempt. Also, when the literary realism movement arrived with French novelist Stendhal, British novelist Henry James, and Russian novelist Alexander Pushkin, it wasn't a problem. These novelists didn't tend to focus as much on the "sex". (Although, I seem to remember quite a bit in Stendhal's book The Red and The Black, but I also read that book in high school, which was a long time ago.)
At any rate, when Thackerary, Dickens, and Trollop arrived on the scene - there wasn't really any curse words or sex in their books. Emile Zola on the other hand got a few printers placed in prison.
Modernism was a reaction to literary realism - and a revolutionary way of thinking, a lot of feminists and anarchists rose up during the Modernist period. James Joyce was amongst the innovators and proponents of this new way of thinking.
Excerpt from The Most Dangerous Book regarding the difference between modernism and literary realism:
Thoughts don't flow like the luxuriant sentences of Henry James. Consciousness is not a stream. It is a brief assembly of fragments on the margins of the deep, a rusty boot briefly washed ashore before the tide reclaims it.
Joyce wanted to strip thoughts and emotions to their essentials. He wanted density, the banes of communication, the sharp utterance, the urgent telegram THE MOTHER DYING COME HOME FATHER.
I almost think you need to be a poet, who lives the rhythm of language, the sounds of it, the soft and at times harsh meaning of simple words - to love Joyce. I have to admit, I'm not a fan of Henry James. While I did enjoy Pushkin and Stendhal, reading James felt like being stuck in black tar. Never understood the appeal - but then as you are no doubt aware of by now, I'm not a fan of long luxuriant sentences either.
I lean more towards post or modernist literature, the romantics and literary realists tend to annoy me. Personal preference - that's all.
At any rate, the book's not about that. It's about censorship. Joyce had issues with authority and government control. He refused to marry Nora, the love of his life, because he was convinced that marriage provided the state and the law and religion with far too much control over the individual - and it was little more than a prison.
He was a philosophical anarchist. Which of course posed issues with getting published back then. Add to this - he felt the need to write the way people spoke, to discuss the life of the actual working man. Who said "bloody hell". Back then "bloody" was considered obscene.
What astonished me - was what happened with Joyce's first book Dubliners - a collection of 15 short stories, one of which, The Dead was adapted into a film by John Houston in 1987. The printer deliberately destroyed the print tablets of the book, and only provided Joyce with one copy. They refused to publish it - because they deemed it to be obscene. When it was eventually published, only 500 copies were sold, and Joyce was not permitted to collect royalties nor did he receive any advance.
In regards to James Joyce's first novel, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man,
this is the withering evaluation that publisher sent back to Ezra Pound who attempted to get it published on Joyce's behalf:
Ezra Pound's response?
These vermin crawl over and be-slime our literature with their pulings. You English will get no prose till you exterminate the breed...Why can't you send the publishers' readers to the Serbian front [this was during WWI] and get some good out of the war.
He went on to state: "If A Portrait couldn't find a publisher, then it was clear beyond all doubt that his primary obstacle was not talent or vision or even money but the rank stupidity of the vermin infesting the publishing industry."
Enter Miss Weaver, who dressed primly, and family restricted dancing, drink and reading. She used reading as a rebellion. And was co-editor of The Egoist with Ezra Pound. She went to every printing establishment in London. One after the other. And each one would censor or cut out blocks of Joyce's words. Stating and rather brusquely:
"We could not for one moment entertain any idea of printing such a production... We are convinced that you would run a very great risk in putting such a book on the market." And they advised her to scour the text and cut any objectionable passages.
Thirteen printers refused to print it in its entirety. Pound came up with the idea of leaving large blank spaces in the text wherever a printer wished to cut words or passages. Then they could just type them in - on quality paper. Joyce loved the idea. The printer's hated it.
The reason for this - was fear. The printers could be arrested and thrown in jail. In the 1820s - The Metropolitan Police Act, which apparently got revisited in the 1900s, and reinforced - resulting in broader powers to the police. Previously they couldn't arrest a printer for printing an obscene book - now they could and did. So the printers were afraid of being arrested for violating the censorship laws.
So they go to The Little Review - a Chicago Literary Magazine produced by Margaret Anderson, who was amongst the first feminists to support gay rights. She "protested the fact that people were tortured and crucified every day for thier love - because it is not expressed according to conventional morality." The modernists had serious issues with convention, and railed against it. She got into trouble over being a bit of an anarchist, which was different back then than it is now.
That's just a brief summary of a handful of chapters. I'm 11 percent through. There's also a rather lengthy section of the women's suffragist movement. The hero's of this non-fiction account appear to be women - many of whom went to prison for their beliefs. Miss Weaver fights to get James Joyce's A Portrait of an Artist published, sweats bullets to do so. When she can't find a publisher, she decides to publish it herself, when the printers she consults - tell her they'll only print it if they can cut out or remove sections, she refuses to use them - determined to maintain the integrity of Joyce's work. She becomes one of his greatest advocates.
It's rather inspiring to me. I find myself thinking - hey, if one of the greatest writers of the past century could go through all of that to get published...And to give Joyce credit - he never listened to the criticism. He didn't change a word. When they critiqued him and slammed his writing, he just wrote more and took even more risks and chances. I look at Henry James, who had it rather easy and barely struggled, while James Joyce fought for every word. Whichever you prefer, it's rather hard not to admire the latter more. Although perhaps, it's not fair to compare - since they were from different periods and James was long dead...when Joyce came upon the scene.
3. What I'll be reading next?
I don't know. Maybe the Alan Turning book. Or the newest Courtney Milan - Trade Me. It's a contemporary romance/new adult though - and it looks rather silly. I'm admittedly not a fan of the new adult romance genre...I find it hard to take the stories seriously.
[Poll #1996299]
1. What I just finished reading?
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman - the review can be found HERE.
Weirdly, it and the movie Boyhood reminded me of each other or they shared similar themes, as does the book I'm reading now. All three - have at their core wounded male hero artists who are dependent on extremely strong women to save and nourish their artistic talent - and they do.
2. What I'm reading now?
The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham
Fascinating book - it focuses as much on Joyce and his writings (all his writings) as it does on various feminist and political movements of the time. In particular the fight against censorship and the anti-obscenity laws in the UK, Europe and the US. Britain had passed some particularly stringent ones during the 1800s (those damn Victorians), which various people hadn't taken too seriously because they figured literature would be exempt. Also, when the literary realism movement arrived with French novelist Stendhal, British novelist Henry James, and Russian novelist Alexander Pushkin, it wasn't a problem. These novelists didn't tend to focus as much on the "sex". (Although, I seem to remember quite a bit in Stendhal's book The Red and The Black, but I also read that book in high school, which was a long time ago.)
At any rate, when Thackerary, Dickens, and Trollop arrived on the scene - there wasn't really any curse words or sex in their books. Emile Zola on the other hand got a few printers placed in prison.
Modernism was a reaction to literary realism - and a revolutionary way of thinking, a lot of feminists and anarchists rose up during the Modernist period. James Joyce was amongst the innovators and proponents of this new way of thinking.
Excerpt from The Most Dangerous Book regarding the difference between modernism and literary realism:
Thoughts don't flow like the luxuriant sentences of Henry James. Consciousness is not a stream. It is a brief assembly of fragments on the margins of the deep, a rusty boot briefly washed ashore before the tide reclaims it.
Joyce wanted to strip thoughts and emotions to their essentials. He wanted density, the banes of communication, the sharp utterance, the urgent telegram THE MOTHER DYING COME HOME FATHER.
I almost think you need to be a poet, who lives the rhythm of language, the sounds of it, the soft and at times harsh meaning of simple words - to love Joyce. I have to admit, I'm not a fan of Henry James. While I did enjoy Pushkin and Stendhal, reading James felt like being stuck in black tar. Never understood the appeal - but then as you are no doubt aware of by now, I'm not a fan of long luxuriant sentences either.
I lean more towards post or modernist literature, the romantics and literary realists tend to annoy me. Personal preference - that's all.
At any rate, the book's not about that. It's about censorship. Joyce had issues with authority and government control. He refused to marry Nora, the love of his life, because he was convinced that marriage provided the state and the law and religion with far too much control over the individual - and it was little more than a prison.
He was a philosophical anarchist. Which of course posed issues with getting published back then. Add to this - he felt the need to write the way people spoke, to discuss the life of the actual working man. Who said "bloody hell". Back then "bloody" was considered obscene.
What astonished me - was what happened with Joyce's first book Dubliners - a collection of 15 short stories, one of which, The Dead was adapted into a film by John Houston in 1987. The printer deliberately destroyed the print tablets of the book, and only provided Joyce with one copy. They refused to publish it - because they deemed it to be obscene. When it was eventually published, only 500 copies were sold, and Joyce was not permitted to collect royalties nor did he receive any advance.
In regards to James Joyce's first novel, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man,
this is the withering evaluation that publisher sent back to Ezra Pound who attempted to get it published on Joyce's behalf:
It is too discursive, formless, unrestrained, and ugly things, ugly words are too prominent; indeed at times they seem to be shoved in one's face, on purpose, unnecessarily. The point of view will be voted "a little sordid." The picture of life is good; the period well brought to the reader's eye, and the types and characters well drawn, but it is too "unconventional." ...At the end of the book there is a complete falling to bits; the pieces of writing and the thoughts are all in pieces and they fall like damp, ineffective rockets.
Ezra Pound's response?
These vermin crawl over and be-slime our literature with their pulings. You English will get no prose till you exterminate the breed...Why can't you send the publishers' readers to the Serbian front [this was during WWI] and get some good out of the war.
He went on to state: "If A Portrait couldn't find a publisher, then it was clear beyond all doubt that his primary obstacle was not talent or vision or even money but the rank stupidity of the vermin infesting the publishing industry."
Enter Miss Weaver, who dressed primly, and family restricted dancing, drink and reading. She used reading as a rebellion. And was co-editor of The Egoist with Ezra Pound. She went to every printing establishment in London. One after the other. And each one would censor or cut out blocks of Joyce's words. Stating and rather brusquely:
"We could not for one moment entertain any idea of printing such a production... We are convinced that you would run a very great risk in putting such a book on the market." And they advised her to scour the text and cut any objectionable passages.
Thirteen printers refused to print it in its entirety. Pound came up with the idea of leaving large blank spaces in the text wherever a printer wished to cut words or passages. Then they could just type them in - on quality paper. Joyce loved the idea. The printer's hated it.
The reason for this - was fear. The printers could be arrested and thrown in jail. In the 1820s - The Metropolitan Police Act, which apparently got revisited in the 1900s, and reinforced - resulting in broader powers to the police. Previously they couldn't arrest a printer for printing an obscene book - now they could and did. So the printers were afraid of being arrested for violating the censorship laws.
So they go to The Little Review - a Chicago Literary Magazine produced by Margaret Anderson, who was amongst the first feminists to support gay rights. She "protested the fact that people were tortured and crucified every day for thier love - because it is not expressed according to conventional morality." The modernists had serious issues with convention, and railed against it. She got into trouble over being a bit of an anarchist, which was different back then than it is now.
That's just a brief summary of a handful of chapters. I'm 11 percent through. There's also a rather lengthy section of the women's suffragist movement. The hero's of this non-fiction account appear to be women - many of whom went to prison for their beliefs. Miss Weaver fights to get James Joyce's A Portrait of an Artist published, sweats bullets to do so. When she can't find a publisher, she decides to publish it herself, when the printers she consults - tell her they'll only print it if they can cut out or remove sections, she refuses to use them - determined to maintain the integrity of Joyce's work. She becomes one of his greatest advocates.
It's rather inspiring to me. I find myself thinking - hey, if one of the greatest writers of the past century could go through all of that to get published...And to give Joyce credit - he never listened to the criticism. He didn't change a word. When they critiqued him and slammed his writing, he just wrote more and took even more risks and chances. I look at Henry James, who had it rather easy and barely struggled, while James Joyce fought for every word. Whichever you prefer, it's rather hard not to admire the latter more. Although perhaps, it's not fair to compare - since they were from different periods and James was long dead...when Joyce came upon the scene.
3. What I'll be reading next?
I don't know. Maybe the Alan Turning book. Or the newest Courtney Milan - Trade Me. It's a contemporary romance/new adult though - and it looks rather silly. I'm admittedly not a fan of the new adult romance genre...I find it hard to take the stories seriously.