An Irish Politician

BOOK REVIEWS pellingly developed. He argues that the relationship between art and commodity culture reveals how prostitution and capitalism share an anti-female ideology. Moreover, "modernist artists were fascinated by prostitutes because they saw in them an image of themselves": both were at once commodity and peddler. Thus, for the male artiste who dominated Modernism, the brothel became a "theatrical space in which to reenact those moments when they were clients for fleshly commodities and to envision both their own positions as caterers to public whims and victims of market forces." This provocative piece locates iteelf within the still-current debate over whether Joyce can be recuperated for feminist criticism, and exemplifies the contemporary trend towards reconsidering the relationship between high art and popular culture. Displaying a forceful and unsentimental ability to revise his critical assumptions, this essay proves that Scholes has never allowed his intellectual arteries to harden. Scholes humbly avers that he never succeeded in "pinning [Joyce] down," as if that protean maker of labyrinths changed shape with each encounter. On the other hand, his assertion that Joyce did not write discrete works so much as a single, enormous text implies a unity that now seems so obvious that one is embarrassed never to have recognized it. Ultimately, then, the reader emerges from the book with both a firmer sense of James Joyce and a renewed recognition of his elusiveness. Still, Joyce's potentially frustrating elusiveness, and the simple fact that his life and work have proved continually fascinating to a scholar of Scholes's stature over thirty years testifies to the very greatness that Scholes has come to question. Perhaps the "ironic respect" at which Scholes has lately arrived is as much a result of his own scholarly maturation as of any property in Joyce himself. In any case, one closes this book with a grateful sense of having been granted an audience with two masters—an Irish and an American. Mark Osteen Loyola College in Maryland An Irish Politician JohnKendle. Walter Long, Ireland, andThe Union, 1905-1920. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1922. xi +246 pp. $49.95 JOHN KENDLE'S book about British Unionist Walter Long should rernind us that history, too often the story of Carlyle's great men and women, depends on the efforts of the less-than-great, too. Walter 277 ELT 37:2 1994 Long is mentioned on occasion in works such as A. T. Q. Stewart's Ulster Crisis, John D. Fair's British Interparty Conferences, and Alan J. Ward's "Lloyd George and the 1918 Conscription Crisis," but he was no Balfour, Asquith, or Churchill. He was a member of Parliament for forty years, typical of the landlord class in defending the rights of property and Empire, and a typical Conservative in fighting a losing battle against political change. He was even typical of the muddled representational system of the late nineteenth century. An English gentleman, he once represented a Dublin constituency and was, until 1906, chief spokesman for Irish unionism in the House of Commons. At this time, he was elected representative from London and surrendered leadership of the Irish party to Edward Carson, representative from Trinity College, Dublin, and later spokesman for Ulster Unionism! Kendle's focus upon Long and his politics, his sometimes confused relations with Ireland, and his efforts to retain Ireland in the British Empire helps to shed light upon the current dilemma facing Ireland north and south. It also furnishes examples of the deviousness of professional politicians. While he was prepared for his future role by birth and class (e.g., Irish mother, English father, and estates in Wales and England), Long had only average intellect and the prejudices which might be expected of a Victorian Protestant. Despite shortness of temper, he managed to rise in prominence in the Commons and ultimately became advisor to three Prime Ministers—H. A. Asquith, Arthur Balfour, and David Lloyd George. In an advisorial capacity, rather than as speaker or drafter of legislation, he seems to have been most effective. As a Unionist Conservative in coalition governments he was a force to contend with. And yet he failed in his life's mission. He wanted the...