"TO live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life," wrote Joyce and he might well have been referring to the problematic publishing history of his great urban epic.
By now the controversies, argu~ments, outrage and red herrings, which continue to surround the vagaries of a dense literary text written by a man with poor eyesight and a habit of writing over his corrections, revising from memory, not to mention his flair for rewriting and losing notes, manuscripts and galleys en route - as well as careless typists and typesetters - have created an industry bulkier and busier even than that surrounding Shakespeare.
But good grief it must be Bloomsday and here comes another new edition of Ulysses. Yet again, readers will find themselves clutching their again officially denounced flawed texts. Shades of the arrival of the Gabler Corrected Text in 1984, which became the Bodley Head edition in 1986. Readers cast selfish personal fears aside: how about the Joyce scholars who have passed among us, are now dead and are known to have gone to their graves having read, taught, explained and speculated about the wrong text?
This Reader's Edition edited by Danis Rose and published by Picador at £20, offers, says its editor, "the cleanest version of the book". According to Rose, "no matter how close a reading you apply to it, this text remains intact."
The Garland Critical and Synoptic edition appeared in 1984. At that time it had a price tag in excess of $360. It had taken a team headed by Prof Hans Walter Gabler seven, years to produce it. The Bodley Head/Penguin then published mass market editions.
Rose also intends his reader's edition for readers, not for scholars. "I want to make the book reader friendly," he says. "I want to help people, general readers, to read the book." Surely such views are liable, to alienate those who have read it? "I don't believe people have read, Ulysses," he says. He also wants readers to read it faster. How can we do that if we are reading it against another edition, or two, as I did the 1937 Bodley Head edition, the Gabler Corrected Text, Bodley Head 1984 and his own? "Readers do not collate."
True, but how else to spot the often tiny corrections such as the insertion or deletion of a comma? Still playing devil's advocate, it is important to ask Rose who is going to notice his changes which vary from, punctuation and standardising Joyce's use of it, to altering spelling - as well as more radical procedures such as changing words?
"Textual scholars will see the differences, the changes are there to, help the general reader." He believes, that the introduction of hyphens into the compounds favoured by, Joyce make the text easier to read. But why bother putting a hyphen, "into "snot green?" "Because it is correct. It makes it easier to read."
Rose went to UCD to study, maths, but left. Having worked as an artist, he discovered "it would be," very difficult to make a living from it" and by then he had become increasingly drawn to the work of James Joyce. Rose has already completed a four volume edition of Finnegans Wake which is still caught in a lengthy legal battle with the writer's family. It was his Wake, project which indirectly led Rose to Ulysses.
Central to any debate concerning textual variations in Ulysses is the problem posed by Joyce's style - many genuine mistakes have proba~bly slipped through because of the possibility that they were seen as examples of deliberate Joycean trickery and punning. Rose, however, has approached his copy editing with an exactitude normally reserved for applied maths.
"Above all, a book must be logical," he says. But fiction does not have to be logical. "It does, Joyce wanted his book to make sense," says Rose. He points to the scene where Bloom in late night, early morning conversation with Stephen prepares to fill the kettle. According to the Gabler edition, it reads: "What did Bloom do at the range? He removed the saucepan to the left bob, rose and carried the iron kettle to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to let it flow."
Rose directs this reporter to read's aloud. "What does that mean?" he asks. I can hear the coffee passing down the throat of a man sitting across the lobby. What does it mean? It means Bloom filled the kettle. "No it doesn't. Rose doesn't make any sense. It doesn't say he was sitting, does it?" No. But the reader gets the general idea. "It's wrong, insists Rose, who has changed "rose" to "raised" in his version.
THIS devil's advocate doesn't fed meaning is in any doubt. Rose says "rose" is wrong. Elsewhere he has substituted "Molly?" for "Welly?" because of his own interpretation. Spellings are also altered, "booze" for "boose" and so on. The text has become clean, but maybe too clean. Even the most diligent subeditors searching for flaws would be left teaming their hair. However, while thousands of slips have been caught, none of these changes alters the tone or the meaning of the book.
"Looking at my book, then look at the Gabler, my typeface is darker. The print is bigger," says Rose, but such changes are technical, not textual. He does not seem interested in or convinced by the multiplicity of possible interpretation of any text. Joyce was not worried that he would not be understood, but he was worried by typographical accuracy.
In a letter written to Harriet Weaver in November 1921, he expressed these concerns: "Since the completion of Ulysses I feel more and more tired but I have to~ hold on til the proofs are revised. I am extremely irritated by all those printer's errors. Working as I do amid piles of notes at a table in an hotel I cannot~ possibly do this mechanical part with my wretched eye and a half. Are these to be perpetuated in future editions? I hope not." According to Rose, Joyce was also insistent that all the mathematical calculations and scientific data be checked. This Rose has done, but at the expense, perhaps, of some jokes. Having studied the text so closely it seems he may have denied himself the sheer fun of the book.
The picture of Joyce which emerges from the conversation with Rose is of an extremely conscientious novelist, rather than as the revolutionary artist he was. "Detail is important to Ulysses" he says, "it is a book about detail." Perhaps, but it is also far more. In 1986, a year before he died, Joyce's biographer Richard Ellmann said to me of the Gabler edition: "Five thousand corrected errors in such a famous work does sound a lot. But as there were ~millions of possibilities, I guess it's not so bad."
How much longer will scholars fret and fuss over Ulysses? How long is a piece of string? The most important things to remember are - it remains an hilarious, singular linguistic feat, a daring work of art and the novel which led the way for Dublin, Faulkner, Gaddis, Pynchon, Perec and others. Finally, regardless of who cleans up the grammar, the spelling, the typos and the other confusions - James Joyce wrote it, which ever edition you happen to find yourself holding, consulting, reading, being read to from, and enjoying, today.
