In the previous chapter, the workings of the concept of autonomy in James and Joyce’s work was examined, particularly in how it appears to suggest the impossibility of solipsism, of a virtually complete autonomy whereby a person’s mind would be absolutely independent from the existence of the minds of other people. Taking this as a fundamental notion for our understanding of James and Joyce, in what follows, the importance of other people’s thoughts and ideas to William James and James Joyce’s notions in relation with figuring oneself out will now be further addressed. We will see that James and Joyce believe that people do not fully understand each other. Nonetheless, they show that we need other people (and other minds) to figure ourselves out. This is somewhat paradoxical. While Joyce appears to simply shrug his shoulders before the fact, and appears to accept that we live in a world of misunderstandings, James seems to have a strategy to protect himself from absolute chaos, while still questioning the consequences of our not fully understanding each other; and that strategy is to argue for tolerance (even though, as we have been claiming, he often has trouble accepting what he does not understand).
Furthermore, one could argue that the absence of worry about this matter could be the reason why Joyce wrote fiction, whereas James chose to dedicate himself to Philosophy. The problem is not that fiction rids us of anxiety or frees us from worry. James and Joyce both suffered from anxieties concerning identity, even if the different types of anxiety experienced by each of them may have been important when it came to writing novels or essays. What will interest us, however, is not why one is a philosopher and the other a writer of fiction, but that, for both, people appear to be condemned to navigate a foggy world. Especially when looking inward is so dependent on looking outward and we understand so little of what we see. For James and Joyce, anxiety — either expressed by the fear of losing oneself to God or to one’s potential successors — is always present, and it is, most of all, a type of anxiety that concerns itself with identity, with affirmation, with, given the chance, understanding what one sees when one tries to figure oneself out. Regardless of
whether one’s self is a composite of misunderstood similarities (in Joyce’s case) or a set of differences that we find between ourselves and other people (in James’s). And this is why, even though identity is fluid and a permanent work in progress for both, Joyce does not seem to find that any single quality of his character is fundamental to recognise who he is, whereas James does.
Regardless of shocks or new experiences, that can make us rewrite how we see ourselves and therefore who we are, Joyce portrays a world, in Ulysses, where change is potentially never-ending.
However, contrary to what seemed to be the case, James does not consider that change can be endless. When looking at himself, there is a limit beyond which his idea of fluidity and pluralism cannot go — the limit of personal will and intellect. After all, and adapting Winston Churchill’s famous words about democracy, we will see that for James, “Pluralism is the worst form of Philosophy — except for all the others that have been tried.”
Because both James and Joyce owe their thoughts, ideas, and even their perception of who they are to others, the concept of “other minds” will be useful to us. Therefore, first it is important to clarify what it will mean in the context of our argument. Anita Avramides remarks that
Textbooks in philosophy often refer to the problem of other minds. At a superficial glance it can look as if there is agreement about what the problem is and how we might address it. But on closer inspection one finds there is little agreement either about the problem or the solution to it. Indeed, there is little agreement about whether there is a problem here at all.
What seems clear is that there was a period in philosophy, roughly around the mid-twentieth century, when there was much discussion about other minds. The problem here has most commonly been thought to arise within epistemology: how do I know (or how can I justify the belief) that other beings exist who have thoughts, feelings and other mental attributes?
(“Other Minds”)
Even though we are told that the epistemological problem concerning the existence of “other beings (…) with thoughts, feelings and other mental attributes” is a mid-twentieth century concern — therefore one that cannot have, at least formally, affected our two authors — throughout this chapter, the idea that not only both James and Joyce did not consider solipsism, they also
considered the thoughts of other people at the same time existing and crucial for the formation of their own, will continue to be addressed. In this sense, what is proposed is not a philosophical
discussion about a philosophical issue, but rather a discussion around the idea that even though we may not fully comprehend other people, not only do their minds exist, but they also are crucial for our understanding of our own. In this sense, both James and Joyce assume a priori that other minds are real, and this assumption is as fundamental for their relationship with the world as it is for self-knowledge.
As we have been indicating throughout, William James and James Joyce deal with similar problems in different ways. In this case, it is possible to assert that James is more concerned with the differences between minds, whereas for Joyce this type of differentiation is not an issue. If, in the first case, what counts to how one sees oneself is the idea that each person has a unique experience of the world, in the second, the ability to figure oneself out is dependent upon the idea that an experience is often more shared than not. To begin, short passages from Ulysses, as well as from Joyce’s short story “The Dead” will be read. This will be followed by an examination of James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, as well as his essays “Stream of Thought”, “The Consciousness of Self”, and, once more, “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”.
Frank Budgen contends that Joyce’s inspiration for the main character of Ulysses would not only have to be a “common man”, but also a “complete all-round character” (15). After a discussion exploring which character could best fit the role of being Joyce’s inspiration — in which Hamlet, Faust, every character in Tolstoy, Flaubert, and Dostoyevsky are considered — every hypothesis is rejected, for Joyce considers that these characters are “exciting, wonderful, but not complete” (15).
Joyce had already told Budgen about his intentions for writing a novel based on Odysseus, as he is presented to us by Homer, and so the debate ends as such:
“What about Faust?” I said. And then, as a second shot “Or Hamlet?”
“Faust!” said Joyce. “Far from being a complete man, he isn’t a man at all. Is he an old man or a young man? Where are his home and family? We don’t know. And he can’t be complete because he’s never alone. Mephistopheles is always hanging around him at his side or heels.
We see a lot of him, that’s all.”
It was easy to see the answer in Joyce’s mind to his own question.
“Your complete man in literature is, I suppose, Ulysses?”
“Yes”, said Joyce. “No-age Faust isn’t a man. But you mentioned Hamlet. Hamlet is a human being, but he is a son only. Ulysses is son to Laertes, but he is father to Telemachus, husband
to Penelope, lover of Calypso, companion in arms of the Greek warriors around Troy and King of Ithaca. (…)
“What do you mean”, I said, “by a complete man? For example, if a sculptor makes a figure of a man then that man is all-round, three-dimensional, but not necessarily complete in the sense of being ideal. All human bodies are imperfect, limited in some way, human beings too.
Now your Ulysses . . .”
“He is both”, said Joyce. “I see him from all sides, and therefore he is all-round in the sense of your sculptor’s figure. But he is a complete man as well—a good man. At any rate, that is what I intend that he shall be.” (16-18)
For Joyce to view any man as an inspiration for his character, he has to consider him a complete man, and Faust, e.g., does not meet the requirements.1 We do not know how old Faust is, and he is never alone. Joyce is looking for a complete man, someone who is often alone, someone about whom we know enough. Only then, which is to say only when a character is built according to his idea of what a complete man is, can Joyce regard it to be worthy of inspiring him. If a man is not complete, he is not a man at all, at least not one to be considered to be a valid inspiration for the work he is proposing to undertake.
Erich Auerbach’s argument concerning Homer’s style, in his influential essay “Odysseus’
Scar”, is useful to look into this. According to Auerbach, Homer’s style leaves nothing concealed from view:
Clearly outlined, brightly and uniformly illuminated, men and things stand out in a realm where everything is visible; and not less clear — wholly expressed, orderly even in their ardor — are the feelings and thoughts of the persons involved. (3)
Joyce could only make the affirmations he made about Odysseus because Homer tells us everything about him. As such, Joyce is looking for an ideal character, which for him means that it should represent a good man (as he adds), but mostly an “all-round” man, about whom we know
everything, including his faults. Joyce’s Ulysses, like Homer’s, is a husband, a father, a widower, has a job, has physical and platonic desires, and is astute. Leopold Bloom is just as human, and travels through Dublin much in the same way as Odysseus journeyed back to Ithaca, and they both
1 Joyce also did not consider Jesus Christ as an inspiration. Not only because the New Testament does not tell us particular things about Jesus’ life but also for a more “anecdotal” or mundane reason: “‘He was a bachelor,’ said Joyce, ‘and never lived with a woman. Surely living with a woman is one of the most difficult things a man has to do, and he never did it.’” (191)
made use of their intellect, observed things, and eluded particularly tricky situations by recurring to their wit.2 These are mere observations about Joyce’s choice for his main character, but what is interesting for the argument I intend to draw here relates to one of the major reasons why the choice for the main character of Ulysses had to fall on Odysseus. In Joyce’s novel, every man is somewhat similar to Leopold Bloom. Every person is not that different from their neighbours, in the sense that everyone’s identity is built in the same way; everyone shares everyone else’s thoughts at some level, and each character often recognises something of themselves in others.
Furthermore, by introducing readers to such a complete man as Bloom, Joyce is making us look at ourselves in the mirror. People pick their noses, go to the toilet, curse, and have not-so-nice thoughts about other people, but they are also kind, friendly, generous, forgiving, and loving. For Joyce, an all-round character is a character through which we are given the chance of looking inwards.3 Yet the way this is shown in the novel is through the idea that people see themselves in the mirror whenever they look and speak to each other, and, paradoxically, through the difficulties each character has when they try to understand one another, especially when it comes to Joyce’s
complete man.
To choose a complete man, to choose Ulysses — going back to Auerbach’s main argument concerning the Odyssey — means to choose someone about whom we know as many things as possible, including about their relations. The reason for this has to do with what we hinted at earlier:
Joyce does not discard other minds, nor does he discard the importance of other minds when it comes to how one looks at oneself. Nonetheless, the underlying idea of this chapter — which in one
2 However, as again Auerbach reminds us in “Odysseus’ Scar”, Homer’s characters belonged mainly to the class of kings, gods, and heroes: “these two characters [Eurycleia and Eumaeus] are the only ones whom Homer brings to life who do not belong to the ruling class. Thus we become conscious of the fact that in the Homeric poems life is enacted only among the ruling class — others appear only in the role of servants to that class.” (21).
This does not correspond to the description of Leopold Bloom who, like we have been claiming (alongside Declan Kiberd), is an everyday man with whom anyone can become identified. Yet, it does not seem to affect our affirmations concerning this subject.
3 E. M. Forster famously described round characters as characters that are capable of change and catching the reader off-guard. After looking into examples and declaring that a round character had been defined by
implication, Forster adds that “The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat. If it does not convince, it is a flat pretending to be round. It has the
incalculability of life about it—life within the pages of a book.” (81) Joyce searched precisely to bring life into Bloom, to show us a man who is capable of surprising us even when performing the most common of actions.
For example, by showing us his thoughts on the process of writing, while going to the toilet, as we saw in “A Problem of Experience and Metempsychosis.”
way or another was also present in all previous chapters — is the notion that in spite of our need of other minds in order to be and become who we are, it is impossible to fully know other people and, more importantly, that in that impossibility lies a fundamental issue: if we cannot fully know others, and if, simultaneously, we depend on them to be who we are, then what counts when it comes to knowing oneself is what we think we know about others, regardless of whether it corresponds to the truth or not.
The claim is that Ulysses depends on an important notion of misunderstanding or even, to use Harold Bloom’s term, misreading. In this sense, when it comes to what we are describing here concerning Joyce’s particular relation to the minds of other people, we will again argue that how Ulysses was written is related to particular ideas concerning literary influence. However, we will mainly look into those ideas through what is described in A Map of Misreading. Even though we are not directly concerned with influence itself (or with who influenced Joyce’s writing the most and how this influence manifests) there is something illuminating in the ideas present in Harold Bloom’s book that is useful for our argument. Yet, we need first to look into “misunderstanding” (or
“misreading”), according to Bloom, as it will be crucial for our understanding of particular passages in Ulysses, as well as “The Dead.”
In “A Problem with Autonomy”, we began by seeing that Joyce had a particular way of relating to his predecessors. We described his cannibalisation of certain authors as indicative of that relation, in the sense that that was his way of dealing with his anxiety of influence. However, there was a crucial point in Harold Bloom’s theory of influence that was not addressed, namely the importance of misreading one’s predecessors, which is fundamental here. According to Bloom, a poet can only become a strong poet if he misreads his main influences and, paradoxical as this may seem, it is this misreading that will allow us to encounter a later poet in the writings of a previous one (which is one of the main ways for us to confirm that poet’s strength). About this, and right in the introduction to A Map of Misreading, Bloom writes the following:
Influence, as I conceive it, means that there are no texts, but only relationships between texts.
These relationships depend upon a critical act, a misreading or misprision, that one poet performs upon another, and that does not differ in kind from the necessary critical acts performed by every strong reader upon every text he encounters. The influence-relation governs reading as it governs writing, and reading is therefore a miswriting just as writing is a misreading. As literary history lengthens, all poetry necessarily becomes verse-criticism, just as all criticism becomes prose-poetry.
The strong reader, whose readings will matter to others as well as to himself, is thus placed in the dilemmas of the revisionist, who wishes to find his own original relation to truth, whether in texts or in reality (which he treats as texts anyway), but also wishes to open received texts to his own sufferings, or what he wants to call the sufferings of history. (…)
What is revisionism? As the origins of the word indicate, it is a re-aiming or a looking-over-again, leading to a re-esteeming or a re-estimating. We can venture the formula: the
revisionist strives to see again, so as to esteem and estimate differently, as as then to aim
“correctively.” (Map 3-4)
This already explains much of what Bloom proposes to do in his book, and that is to show 1) that every text depends on there being other texts that relate to it; 2) that poets misread or misapprehend each other, which implies that there are constant misunderstandings when it comes to reading; 3) because his readings will matter to the strong reader (or poet), he or she will feel the need to find what may be their relation to the truth that they see in what they read, which will imply that what is being read will end up being revised according to their feelings and aspirations; 4) consequently, the revisionists will intend to see things in a different way and will ultimately want to ultimately correct what they read.
As such, it could be argued that Ulysses worked, at least partly, as a correction of previously used literary styles and themes. Therefore, in the process of cannibalising his predecessors, Joyce intended to show how those styles and themes should in fact be used, by ameliorating them somehow, by bringing them closer to how he viewed the topics treated in those texts, and even by correcting their style. It could also be said that one of the most evident examples of this process would be “Oxen of the Sun”, chiefly because Joyce’s technique is made very evident through his use of a great many number of styles that had previously been used in English literature. Not only is Joyce showing his knowledge, but he is also showing how capable he is of revising what he had read. However, the idea of misreading goes beyond literary styles, and all through Ulysses, people misunderstand each other.
One of the most tragicomic examples of misunderstandings in Ulysses is the famous
“throwaway / throw-it-away” incident. This misunderstanding is particularly interesting for us here because it entails wordplay, prejudice, and pure all-too-human distraction; in this sense, as in many other cases in the novel, it is both a misunderstanding and a misreading. Our first encounter with this (which will then become useful for how we see other people read Leopold Bloom) begins by seeming somewhat commonplace. In “Lotus-Eaters”, Bloom is walking with his Freeman’s Journal rolled under his armpit, like a baton, when he is called by Bantam Lyons, who is interested in looking at the odds for the horse races in the newspaper. Because Bloom does not particularly enjoy the company of the man he meets, he tries to get rid of him in the most polite way he can find, which is by offering to give him the newspaper because, he claims, he was about to throw it away:
He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit, the coolwrappered soap in his left hand.
At his armpit Bantam Lyons’ voice and hand said:
— Hello, Bloom, what’s the best news? Is that today’s? Show us a minute.
(…)Bantam Lyons’ yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. (…)
— I want to see about that French horse that’s running today, Bantam Lyons said. Where the bugger is it?
He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar. (…) Better leave him the paper and get shut of him.
— You can keep it, Mr Bloom said.
— Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum the second.
— I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said.
Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly.
— What’s that? His sharp voice said.
— I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going to throw it away that moment.
Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread sheets back on Mr Bloom’s arms.
— I’ll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.
He sped off towards Conway’s corner. God speed scut.
Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the soap in it, smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of it lately. (U 105-106)
Here, what we learn is that Bantam Lyons bets on horses, but Bloom does not. However, Bloom does not understand why Lyons leaves so quickly, nor does he comprehend the reason for his smile, which is described as his having “silly lips”. Something has clearly happened, something that