The Lifelong Habit of Breathing In And Out

Very cheering to find Adam Mars-Jones’ review of Gordon Bowker’s new biography of James Joyce in The Observer yesterday, as I travelled back from Ah-Trieste-ate-I-my-liver and the Joyce school there. Even with that link, the corkers in AMJ’s review are too good not to reproduce here. It would seem Bowker does a good line in historical scene-setting flannel:

‘For the British Empire, as 1882 dawned, it was business as usual. Queen Victoria... had ruled her domain for 45 years, and would reign for a further 19.’ Perhaps there was some sort of floral clock arrangement in public parks, displaying a countdown, so as to keep citizens properly informed of their future.

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He’s also fond of spurious but would-be clinching juxtaposition:

‘John's habit of regular long walks around Dublin and environs, caught by his children, foreshadows the wandering narrative line which snakes through most of his son's fiction.’ It's hard to see how it would be possible to go further in this vein. Perhaps: his father's lifelong habit of breathing in and out, in strict alternation, instilled in the young Joyce an abiding interest in rhythm and pattern...

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Of Bowker’s endless need to read Joyce’s books as straightforward autobiography, AMJ finally declares:

Seeking to extract personal testimony from any novel whatever is like trying to tell the time from a clock in a painting. Doing the same thing with Finnegans Wake is like trying to tell the time from the soft watch in a Dali phantasmagoria, undeterred by the fact that it’s draped over a branch, if not crawling with ants.

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I always dislike the word ‘academic’ as a term of abuse, e.g. in the (inexplicable to me) way that some people spurn James Knowlson’s biography of Beckett in favour of Anthony Cronin’s skimpy and under-researched effort. I say this not because I work in a university, but because getting things right is absolutely not the preserve or the exclusive duty of academics. It is a prerequisite for writing a book about anything, whether James Joyce or the reproductive life of the blue-footed booby.
Bowker’s book though seems to have the intellectual credentials of a Daily Mail weekend supplement article subbed on his iphone by a books editor on holiday in the South of France. I suppose the good thing about the whole saga is that no publisher can point to it as a good reason for turning away a genuine scholar who did fancy writing a proper follow-up to Ellmann’s book. Really though, does Joyce not deserve better?