The Varieties of Joycean Experience is a collection of ten essays that display the wide range and diversity of perspectives and critical approaches that can be drawn upon to enrich our readings of James Joyce’s works. With special attention to Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, these essays explore an array of unorthodox problems that these notoriously demanding books pose for readers.
The first two essays offer new ways of tackling those persistent bugbear questions: “what kind of book is this?” and “what is this book about?” The first essay contemplates the relationship of Finnegans Wake to the avant-garde, both those experiments of its time and those that it has inspired since its first appearance. The second looks at the epistemological difficulties faced by anyone attempting to “summarize” Ulysses or the Wake. These essays are followed by two that turn to reconsidering how we understand Joyce’s methods of composition and revision.
The next five essays explore the Joycean ambiguities surrounding consciousness, death, scatology, and the weather to propose new understandings of these phenomena as key ways into Joyce’s works. The concluding essay examines what conceptual limits there might be to the variety of interpretations celebrated by this book: what makes a particular reading unreasonable – not simply debatable, as all readings are, but fundamentally unsound – and why do Joyce’s works seem to inspire far-fetched and even crackpot readings? The cautionary tales collected in this essay cue all readers to question the bases, logic, and agenda of their own experiences with Joyce.
