VIEWS ON MR. JOYCE
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] S1R,—I am surprised to read the impertinent note in your last issue which is offered as a review of Finnegans Wake. I fully appreciate the impossibility of writing a satisfactory notice of this difficult book in the short time since advance copies were issued, but surely even a pre- liminary note—which I hope Mr. Verschoyle's is—might have been more respectful to the author of Ulysses and more useful to your readers.
If Mr. Verschoyle found himself quite incapable of under- standing the book, he might have gone to some such well- known source as Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle, where he would have learnt something of the plan of the book and the reasons for its peculiar language. Your readers are entitled to know that Joyce is not merely playing the fool.
I have not yet read the book, though I have had my copy for some days. I have, however, read in it sufficiently to realise that the language difficulty is not so serious as it appears at first sight, and I have aheady found a great deal that is significant and beautiful. I believe that it is a book that demands from such a paper as yours, Sir, a more critical and authoritative opinion than Mr. Verschoyle offers.
There are many of us who consider Mr. Joyce the greatest writer and influence in English literature today, and we cannot be satisfied that The Spectator should dismiss his latest work with less than a column of apparently complete antipathy by a writer who has not even troubled to explain what the book is about or why it has its particular texture.
I am not suggesting blind reverence for a great name ; but I am suggesting that a book should be judged in relation to its aim and that Mr. Verschoyle either has not grasped that or has deliberately and contemptuously refused to take it into consideration. At least the great name should protect Mr. Joyce from such cavalier treatment.—Yours faithfully, ANTHONY BERTRAM. Manor House, Bignor, Pulborough, Sussex.
[The fact that "there are many of us" who consider Mr. Joyce "the greatest writer and influence in English literature" is a very insufficient reason for imposing silence on competent critics who happen to take a radically different view of Mr. Joyce.—En. The Spectator.]
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