Of Real Value

One of the many contradictory aspects of my character is the fact that whilst I have very little time for academic literary criticism in general, I can really enjoy and read with enthusiasm odd examples of such on a seemingly random basis. Case in point: a little book fell into my hands a couple of days back entitled How To Read Joyce by one Derek Attridge, Professor of English at the University of York, as it turns out, and I think it's a great read.

I thought I recognised the prof's name when I was passed the book. I checked in the library and he's the editor of the nifty Cambridge Companion to Joyce which I'd been browsing in fairly profitably earlier in the year. There's a particularly good essay on Finnegans Wake in there, but not written by the editor. However, in How To Read... he writes excellently on a few excerpts from the Wake and, in the book in general, every analysis he provides of the passages he selects is both illuminating with regard to the passage in question and the broader work.

The simple notion behind the book seems an extremely useful one to me - look closely at carefully selected passages from the author in question to help explore profitable ways of reading them. I suppose it fits my notion of reading lit in general: read closely and sympathetically and enjoy what you read. That's all the Theory I need.

By the way, on the last page of the short tome the prof identifies what he terms the indispensable values Joyce celebrates in the Wake. These are the fruits of living in this fallen world: generosity, creativity and laughter.

Now there's a list to live by.