Your Questions for James Joyce

Joyce ponders his answers

In my last post, I asked for your questions about Finnegans Wake to take back, via Time Machine, to James Joyce in Paris.

There are some great questions here, and they're all so varied. No question was repeated. 

I was reminded of Joyce's comment that his book could 'satisfy more readers than any other book because it gives them the opportunity to use their own ideas in the reading.'

The Time Machine (Alfred Jarry model) is cranked up and running, and I'm about to set off, aiming for 34 Rue de Vignes, Paris, on 4 May 1939, publication day.

Here are the questions for Mr Joyce.

Steve Carey:

Are we to assume the prior administration of some kind of truth serum? JJ seems to have been particularly averse to being 'worked out.' If so, I’d ask: what would you wish your reader to know from reading your book?

HenHanna:

I could ask... but Joyce rarely gave simple , straight Answers,
-- Or did he sometimes ?Did he ever give Super-helpful , simple , straight Answers
to Carola G-W,
to Mercanton , ....... ?

In fact, he did give straight answers to questions about Finnegans Wake.

Calum Gibson: 

Did he know he was writing a book that most people would find extremely difficult to read?

(This is one Joyce answered. He told Adolf Hoffmeister, 'I don't think that the difficulties in reading it are so insurmountable. Certainly any intelligent reader can read and understand it, if he returns to the text again and again.')

Neil Burns:

Would you, do you think, knowing that this soundscape novel, being not accepted, generally by those not willing to engage with the text, in a meaningful way, forget the whole project or did you need to get it out of your literary system?

Rob Hardy from fwread (the page a week group) asked:

There are just too many questions about this enormous enigmatical work - I'd be embarrassed to ask for any sort of explanation.

But wouldn't it be fun to let him know that all these years later there were still scads of people puzzling through? And that some of them are using a thing called e-mail ("Speak to us of Emailia," saith the big book) internationally to read together one page a week?

Some asked philosophical questions.

Gavan Kennedy:

Is there a reality beyond 'the reality of experience'?  
 

Bruce Stewart:

'My question would be simple. “Do you believe in the individual human soul, Mr Joyce?” He would probably answer, I do not think I have the right or the means to express my philosophical opinions except through (“sauf que”) the elaborate means of my experimental art.” Ou seja.'

Others had specific questions about the structure of the book.

Alex Gregoire:

With III.1, I’d want to get him more solidly on the record about the backwards stations. How much time do we have with him? I’ll bring a few bottles of Swiss Piss & we’ll make a Saturday of it.

Tim Finnegan:

How are Books One and Three symmetrical?

Lars Johansson:

Is your book supposed to take place on a single night, or series of nights, and if so, on what specific date or dates?

Can you tell me more about the character of Sigurdsen (or whatever his name is). Is he both servant and police man or two different persons? What was the inspiration to him?
And also more about Magrath and father Michael

Walt Heenan asked about HCE's 'crime':

Did he actually do it? And if I could get him to elaborate a bit, then what in the hell, exactly, was it that he done?....Should we acquit him or convict him? 

Graziano Galati:

I guess I would ask:Are HCE and family a red Herring of sorts? Are you not just really completing the portrait? 

Bernadette Gorman, author of Sounds of Manymirth on the Night's Ear Ringing, a new book about Percy French and Finnegans Wake, asked:

What was his problem and obsession with Percy French and why did he so carefully fillet his library of all the Percy French material he manifestly consulted? Also why did he spend months in the UK in 1923 the year after The Chronicles of PF were published? Another question, did he raid his father's files on the Chapelizod distillery, carried from rented house to rented house and did he discover that it was the Chapelizod Distillery that Percy French lost his considerable savings in? In a word, did John Joyce rob Percy French?

Bernadette also responded to the Magrath question above:

"Parsee French writer of annoyingmost letters and skirriles ballets who is Magrath's thug and smells cheaply of Power's spirits and he is not fit enough to throw guts down to a bear..." Some mouthful straight from the mouth of JSJ surely? So who is Magrath???

Dr Anne-Marie D'Arcy, Joycean Medievalist, asked: 

Well, I'm pretty sure of the significance of the date 1132, and attendant dates, so I would ask him about the influence of Edmund Hogan, Daniel Binchy, E.K. Rand, E.R. Curtius and M.L. Laistner on its evolution ...

Bozo Monkey Bear:

interesting game. i would ask if he intended to make the physical book a simulacrum of the globe and how he conceived of the idea and how he managed to get north and south pole exploration references around pages 314 and 628/3 (given printing technology back then it doesn't seem like that was an easy task)? i'd also be interested in how the procession of the equinoxes and other "deep time" elements figure into the work (ala pq's interest in these elements)?

Robert Reister:

I would ask him to elaborate on the “coach with six insides”, tesseract, associations please ?

('The Coach with the Six Insides' appears at 359.24. HCE's 'existence as a tesseract' is at 100.35)

Vincent Altman O'Connor:

"Mr Joyce, why did you visit the graveyard at Sidlesham Church? Were you looking for a particular grave? Who is buried in the environs of Bognor (of all places) that might be of interest to you?" ("Whisht owadat! I was looking for the grave of a famous Dubliner but, well..!")

(The first person to identify this Dubliner will be treated by me to Coddle & Pint in the Gravediggers next Bloomsday.)

Vincent later gave his answer to this one.    

Paul Devine quoted Samuel Beckett's essay in the Exagmination:

 
“You cannot complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something. It is that something itself.”
Did Samuel Beckett discuss this with you, Mr Joyce?

Clint Carroll:

Peter, I'd love to ask Joyce how he muscled through his doubts or troubles while writing this special monster of a book. Mr. Joyce, how did you keep the engine running, the soul floating above water, and the intellect humming for almost two decades? Song? Drink? Prayer? Love? Stubbornness? Belief? Hope? Fun(n)?

What word, line, and/or passage delighted you the most as you wrote it or it occurred to you?

Tim Cotton:

If you had your time over again, what changes would you make in your literary trajectory?

Robert K Blechman:

Since you wrote Ulysses as the first meta novel, was Finnegans Wake intended to be the first post-meta novel?

Diego Pacheco:

Back in the ear1y days, what was it like reading Finnegans Wake in a reading group setting? You (J.J.)seem to believe in the life of soul(s) substance and monad(s) coherence after death. How does Finnegans Wake describe Brunian monadic existence existencially and transpersonally? Did you pick universe building or did universe buildung pick you?

(J.J.) Is your last unwritten novel woven into Finnegans Wake yet to be extricated?

Mary Adams:

Not directly about FW, but could I ask if he remains persecuted by nightmares? I want to help free him. 

El Tel:

Were you on drugs when you wrote it?

Brian Hodge:

How did you get away with the the biggest literary con job for all these years?

Marcin Kedzior:

Could we go for a walk by the river, and maybe you could tell me about the sounds along the way. 

Philip Franklin:

My question relates to JJ creating an act of magic, and assumes he keeps up with recent developments*:

What's your view, Mr Joyce, on the fact that a current well known Irish writer writes a fictional biography of a writer who was more or less a contemporary of yours, and then goes on and calls it The Magician?

I'm in the middle of the Colm Toibin book, and in fact Thomas Mann and JJ have always been paired in my head, from the following experience. When I went to college in the sixties we were asked to read in the summer beforehand the Magic Mountain, in German. Not an easy task. When we got there the professor who had set the reading suggested we should now try something else of the same vintage - Ulysses. Which took me 40 years to get through, with the centenary of Bloomsday providing the final push.

*I will have to take a copy of Colm Toibin's The Magician in the Time Machine back to 1939 to explain this question to Mr Joyce. 

JKB Pacer:

'Lots of possible questions about plot and structure, but one major one: Who dies?' 

Michael Quinn:

'What is wrong with you?'