DUBLINERS, by James Joyce: "Two Gallants"

I almost didn't read this story.  If it weren't for this blog, and the duty I feel to follow through on what I say I'll do, I likely would have put this back on the shelf and let it go for a long time.  But I read it.  And I'm glad I did!

Sundays are parties on the streets not only in the cities of Italy but, apparently, Dublin, too!

Of all the things I miss about Italy, the weekend extravagance might be the biggest.  Not that I'm a partier--quite the contrary, in fact; I hate crowds! --but there was always something quintessentially satisfying about taking a spot on a bench on the sideline of an especially buzzy piazza (maybe with a street band and some sidewalk artists), grabbing a slice of pizza, cup of hot chocolate, or an aranciata and watching.  Not even busy airports can compete with an Italian Saturday or Sunday night for the avid people-watcher.  This--this conflux of bodies, noise, music, and foggy effluvia (human and city) --was my first impression of "Two Gallants."  (I wonder if my objectivity has been tainted--and after just the first paragraph!)

Further, the description of the two young men (so not gallant!), beginning in just the second paragraph,  reminds me uncannily of a man I regularly saw while out and about the city of Modena--one Pimp-Daddy Man, immortalized here (sorry--no picture), and a pillar of slouch humanity.

As I mentioned just a second ago, I'm concerned for the sake of my objectivity.  And I wouldn't be so concerned if the last story I'd read of Joyce's weren't "After the Race," and if I didn't like this story so much.  It is my favorite of the Joyce stories so far.

At the technical level, "The Gallants" is very much alike the others up to this point in the collection.  "The Gallants" is complexly layered, heavily Irish, and fraught with Ugly.  We even get back to a taste of Joyce's old penchant for lasciviousness.  While it's not as complicated or layered as "Araby," there's yet a great deal of metaphor and allusion here and all as brilliant as usual; but I'm not going to take the time and space to set them all up for discussion.  As I said, most are typically Joycian, and why waste space discussing the same thing over and over again?

When all is said and done, this is a story about the young men of Dublin: lost, aimless, mooching, and impotent.  As Joyce sees it.  And he doesn't pull any punches.  He has very little good to say about his people, no matter the potentially positive outlook to be presumed by the colorful, though muted, first paragraph and the momentary hope we (I) feel for Lenehan.

Here are a few things I picked out that happened to help pull the whole thing together for me (in no particular order):

• gallant:  I'm curious about whether Joyce was aware of the etymology of this or not.  While the immediate impression of "gallant's" usage here is ironic, look instead at the "probab[le]" background of "gallivant."
• the lamps:  In the first paragraph of the story, the lamps through the city are described as "illumined pearls" atop their posts.  Pearls have intrinsic value, and these, all the more so by way of with their brightness so stark against the city's gray, are treasures beyond the common reach of Dublin's citizenry.
• age:  In each story, the protagonists get a little older.  Young boys, pre-teens, a teenage boy, a late teenage girl, collegiate young men, and now a couple of early thirty-somethings.
• women:  If ever a story (or its characters) were misogynistic, this is it!  From the general objectivization of the female characters to that of the sex in general, to the specific treatment of the "slavey" at Corley's direct hand to the more passive "handling" by Lenehan: notice the girly carving of the harp's base and column, and the suggestive state of its clothing.  The notes--musical--of the harp seem to chase after Lenehan, who ends up tapping them out with hands and feet, sweeping his fingers along the railings as if the metal were a harp and he the musician at her back.  It suggests a parallel to Lenehan's general impotence; it's not really a harp, he not making any music, and that harp isn't even a real girl anyway.
• Lenehan walking:  Speaking of Lenehan's impotence, notice the position of his feet as he walks with his so-called friend.  He is regularly shoved from the sidewalk to the street--one foot on, one foot off.  If there is a "true path," which may be the direction of his ambition for comfortable hearth and home, then he is equally afoot the other, less savory road.
• peas and ginger beer:  As with other characters through the first five stories, Lenehan and Corley (more the former, as far as I can tell) are types for their countrymen in general.  The colors of Lenehan's meal are the colors of his flag, and worth no more than the most meager of pocket change.

While I appreciate all these fine and nuanced details (of which, like I said, there's a lot more!) --as powerful and ingenious as those of any other story thus far--they are not the reason I love this story.  Finally, and much more so than even for dear Evaline, I have a character I am rooting for.  Again, it's possible that this is derivative of my misplaced nostalgia within the context of the gray, late-summer evening, but I don't think that's all of it.  The reader--if I may so speak--wants Lenehan to make something of himself.  His end is not predestined here.  He is capable of making the change!  You can feel that--sense it--somewhere, no matter how deep, within him.  He does have one foot on The Path.  The most powerful device of this effect is that of Corley and Lenehan's secret and despicable plan, which we don't fully get until the very last sentence (such timing!).  We know it's probably not very nice, we know that Lenehan thinks he wants the plan to succeed, but you, Reader, get the inkling that some part of him wants it to fail, as if he's aware of his reputation and he wants an out--like the shoplifter who wants to get caught, or the closet alcoholic who wants his bottles to be discovered.  Unfortunately, this is Joyce, and as far as he, as the author, is concerned, these stories have all already been written, and they are nothing if not tragedies.  Right along those lines, this story would only require one additional sentence (which, by the way, I'm infinitely glad is not there) to concretely reveal what we already suspect: Lenehan, though relieved, is also--even equally--disappointed that the plan succeeded.  

You want proof that there is spark, finally, to a Dubliners story (and maybe--though I hope not--it really is just me, so I'll favor the change of you/we to I)?  I was disappointed.  I was sad (not surprised) that Lenehan didn't stand up, didn't push Corley out of the way and walk firmly on the sidewalk, and far from the edge.  I am empathizing with a Joycean character!  Maybe it's the optimist in me, but I honestly thought that maybe--just maybe--Joyce was going to give us something positive and even happy.  

Well, no.  He didn't.  But he gave us--me--a spark of hope, as well as evidence that there might yet be a spark of hope--a spark of life--somewhere in Dublin--and in Dubliners.

And with that--with "Two Gallants," that is--I'm no longer turned off this book.  

*

Please excuse the zealous use of italics in this entry.  Consider it typographical affect of my enthusiasm for this story.

J.D. Salinger -- More, Please!

I had a thought.  (And what is a blogger to do with his thoughts if not write them out for the world, or his three readers, wherever they are, to see?)

So, first, by way of context:  We at The Wall have just recently finished Lewis Carroll's two Alice books, the second of which provided the opportunity to briefly examine an excised "episode," relatively recently discovered and published.  Over the weekend, I picked up my battered copy of Salinger's Seymour, and Introduction and took to enjoying it yet again.  Salinger, like Carroll, is dead.  Also like the Carroll, Salinger wrote something--a lot of somethings, if the news is to be believed--that he never published. 

The day Jerome David Salinger died, I had the same thought had by so many, and it was a greedy, unkind one.  Part of me, I'm ashamed to admit, was happy he was gone.  After all, now, finally, we might actually get the potential mountains of genius material with which he never deemed to grace the world.  The literary cannon would expand!

Maybe I was wrong. 

If I'm honest with myself, I (and I speak for me alone, though, again, if I'm being honest, I think I might even be qualified to speak for the literary world at large here, at least in this case) don't need "The Wasp in a Wig."  Don't get me wrong, I love the episode, but I think I love it more because I love Carroll and Alice; not so much for its intrinsic value (which, as it happens, is not null, but yet pales--nearly disappears! --alongside the glaring brilliance of the rest of Looking-Glass).  Is Carroll a better writer for having penned it?  Are we better scholars ("scholars") for having read it?  Does it benefit its source material?  At all?

Well ...  *sigh*  ... no, maybe-but-not-by-much, and no.

In my little collection of great writers and their great works, I've got Salinger on a pedestal similar to Carroll's.  Both have relatively little fiction available to the public (contrast this to someone like Steinbeck, who's got tons), and their ratios of near-/perfect to largely-flawed works are both impossibly high.  If I apply a friend's scale for rating literature (upon which I give Wonderland a 4.5/5 and Looking-Glass a 5/5), I would give a portion of Salinger's fiction the same: Catcher in the Rye -- 4.5/5; Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters -- 4.5/5; "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" -- 5/5; "For Esme' -- with Love and Squalor" -- 5/5.

My impression of Carroll didn't change when I read "The Wasp in a Wig," and it didn't change when I finally admitted to myself that it was far, far from the more-or-less perfection of the Alice books.  Why?  Most likely because he didn't publish it!  Would the same be the case with Salinger's alleged 15 un-published novels if they ever come to light?  Would my love of Salinger and every word he's written (well, published) remain untainted?

I don't know.  Is it worth the risk?

MARTIN GARDNER: Thank You!

I would be remiss if I didn't thank the late Martin Gardner (1914 - 2010).  It was his first edition of The Annotated Alice that attracted me to Alice in the first place.  It's a pretty thing.  I thought I knew Alice well enough, as I'd seen the movie.  But the book called, on, appropriately, a mid-November afternoon, lazy and snowy.  I stretched out on the couch to read.  It was the first book I read in one sitting.  I didn't read the notes that first time through, but eventually I got around to them, and then burgeoned my love and a substantial appreciation for Lewis Carroll's writing.

Interestingly, Carroll and Gardner were very similar.  While I'm no genius, as they both were, I can't help but feel some affinity toward both.

Thank you, Mr. Gardner.  Thank you, Mr. Carroll.  Your books and thoughts crackle with life.

Sunday Poetry XVIII -- Through the Looking Glass: CARROLL'S TERMINAL POEM

For its appearance and lilt that suggest but the purest of simplistic beauties, and its genius technique and allusions, this poem is perhaps Lewis Carroll's greatest piece of poetry.  It also represents everything that Carroll thought and felt of/for Alice Pleasance Liddell, the inspiration, subject, and protagonist of the two Alice books.  While it is certainly the opposing end-paper to Looking-Glass's introductory poem, it is, I believe, far more doleful, and in that regard, much more reminiscent of the melancholy winter outside the windows of chapter 1, kissing at the panes, but forever distant.  The first poem appropriately and artfully introduces the book, and also sets well the tone of this new distance yawning between him and his Alice; the closing poem indeed closes it all, shuts the book, but dog-ears the corner.  After the crowning, after the fireworks, after her waking, he steps back, sits, and allows himself the nostalgia of watching her distantly, under the clouds.

Of course, the poem is most famous for being an acrostic featuring Alice Liddell's full name.  Notice also that "Alice" begins the central line of the poem, and more, this is where she is moving "phantomwise," "under skies."  Some believe that the meter, if not the tercets (which serve the 21 letters of Alice's name), and the renewed reminiscence of rowing, matches the anonymous verse of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."  If you hold this thought and go all the way back and reread "All in a Golden Afternoon," you'll see that the girls there are referred to, appropriately, as a "merry" crew, but this masterpiece is far from merry.  He longs for the past, when things were so.

Finally, consider the last line.  Hold it up against the Red King and Alice's predicament remembered at the end of the final chapter.  What do you think?

A BOAT beneath a sunny sky,

Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:

Echoes fade and memories die:

Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

Alice moving under skies

Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —

Lingering in the golden gleam —

Life, what is it but a dream?

East of Eden BONUS -- Mumford and Sons: "TIMSHEL"

I am new to Mumford and Sons.  I have an old friend to thank for posting this on FB.  I put it here for it's poignant pertinence to the book, East of Eden.  Thanks, Allen.