A Collideorscape of Joyce: Festschrift for Fritz Senn edited by Ruth Frehner and Ursula Zeller, Lilliput Press, 470pp, 45
From the bibliography in the present volume we gather that Fritz Senn has been prolific as a critic, particularly of the works of Joyce. Back in 1996 Lilliput published Senn's Inductive Scrutinies (edited by Christine O'Neill), a bulky collection of his critical pieces on the master but, as it now appears, a mere taster or smahan of what he has been producing since the late Fifties.
Those who subscribe to the James Joyce Quarterly or any of the other numerous journals devoted to Joyce and/or modern fiction will be familiar with Senn's work, distinguished as it always has been by sanity, penetration and truly uncommon sense. Now, on the occasion of Senn's Seventieth birthday, a crew of critics (would murder be a more appropriate collective?) has been assembled by the editors to offer a revealing montage of the state of Joyce criticism.
In general terms that state would appear to be healthy and vigorous but there are indications of morbid conditions and galloping diseases for which immediate surgical intervention would be in order. These are most in evidence in the section devoted to Finnegans Wake. Nestling among cogent, helpful and balanced contributions from John Bishop, Christine O'Neill and Terence Killeen there is one by Laurent Milesi of such benumbing obscurity (and forty-nine endnotes, to boot) that a quick draught of the pellucidities of the Wake itself are required to restore one's sense of proportion.
As an innocent gracehoper with an incipient sense of responsibility, this reviewer takes the view that the critical enterprise is explicatory, analytical and scholarly; the presiding patron is Ariadne. An irascible Ezra Pound fulminated against the practice of obscuring the texts with philology, and he surely had in mind criticism like Milesi's which is intent on tying its own knots, warping its own woof.
The section on Ulysses (comprising nine essays) is rewarding. Katie Wales's piece on the poetry of the Ithaca episode is distinguished by fine perceptions regarding Joyce's hodge-podge style and its hilarious loquacity. This is criticism that illuminates. Some of the usual suspects are here: Hugh Kenner (undistinguished, for the nonce) and Denis Donoghue are among them. Donoghue's contribution (on the styles of Nausicaa) offers a reference point from which we can map the distance he has travelled as a reader of Joyce. Back in the Sixties he wrote a long piece on Portrait in which he accused the novel of being blind in one eye. It is unlikely that he would stand over that judgment now: the limited vision was the critic's - as a careful, binocular reading of the opening pages of Chapter 5 will ineluctably show.
There are essays on the early works - most notably a scrupulous and detailed reading of "Grace" by Margot Norris - and, to finish, general essays on the totality of Joyce's work and on the problems of translating them. There are even two essays - one by Gabler - which do not appear at all because publication was blocked. Now there is one for the critic's CV - to have achieved an absence of presence in person is no small feat.
These are not the only absences, however. There is nothing on Stephen Hero, nothing on the poetry or Joyce's criticism, nothing on Giacomo Joyce or on the letters. These are not mere apocrypha, to be ruthlessly excluded from the canon of scriptures, but essential documents. In the case of Joyce more is never enough. Imagine the disturbance caused in the critical community by the discovery of a sheaf of authenticated autograph letters from Shakespeare, the chap who writes like Synge!
Gerry Dukes is an academic and critic