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News & ArtsMonday, August 2, 2010
Arts / Books When Critics Knew How to Criticize (Part Four in a Series)
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:44 PM
In Joyce's unrelenting examination of the tiniest details that constitute consciousness, he stops the flow of time and defers its movement with a pacifying gesture contrary to the impatient goading of the English drama, which encloses the life of its heroes in the narrow, thrusting rush of a few crowded hours. If Shakespeare—to use his own metaphor—invested in the turning of the hourglass the exploits of many years, Joyce inverts the procedure and unfolds his hero's single day into many days upon the reader. (I haven't said many naps.)
Jorge Luis Borges on Ulysses, 1925. But the most perfect, succinct sentence in this short piece of criticism, the sentence that holds the meaning of all the others combined, is this one:
He is a millionaire of words and styles.
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I guess there aren't any surprise collections of Gilbert Seldes, Edmund Wilson, James Agee or Robert Sherwood resting on editorial desks. The staffers would automatically suspect you; that is, if they read your SLOG posts.
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