James Joyce's Exiles: A Textual Companion by John MacNicholas (review)

Book Reviews 249 the establishment of the independent State of Israel, a new era began for the newly born state and the Habima" (p. 279). Levy has faithfully recorded the Habima's "secularization and transformation" into a theater company of universal concerns once it found its home in Israel. He has presented his findings in a lucid, readable documentary book. No theater company could be better served by its historian. ROBERT LIMA, THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY JOHN MaCNICHOLAS. James Joyce's Exiles: A Textual Companion. New York and London: Garland Publishing [979. Pp. xiv, 208, illustrated. $35. James Joyce's only surviving play, Exiles (191 8), has remained relatively neglected both in literary criticism and on the stage until the last dozen years. John MacNicholas's Textual Companion to the play coincides with the publication of the sixty·three volume James Joyce Archive (edited by Michael Groden, Hans Walter Gabler, David Hayman, A. Walton Litz, and Danis Rose. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1978), which brings together in facsimile all the available Joyce notes, drafts, manuscripts, typescripts and proofs. A. Walton Litz, editor of the Exiles volume, provides a short preface to the working notes, eleven fragments ofdialogue not included in the final play, the only surviving complete manuscript and the galley proofs included in the volume. Litz gives a brief chronology of the composition and publication of the play, but directs the reader to MacNicholas's Companion for more comprehensive information. The Exiles documents are located at Buffalo, Cornell and Yale, but, with the facsimile edition, a scholar may now use the textual information MacNicholas provides with real ease. Because of copyright and other restrictions, no critical edition of Exiles has heen published; however, MacNicholas's book includes a list of emendations from the fair-copy manuscript, allowing a reader to convert a copy of the 1973 Penguin edition into a workable critical edition. In addition to the textual apparatus, MacNicholas includes an extensive account of the background of the play, particularly the autobiographicalevents thatJoyce reshaped into what he called the "three cat and mouse acts" of Richard Rowan's manipulation of Bertha's, Robert's and his own emotions. MacNicholas greatly expands on Ellmann's information about the composition and publishing history of the play. He provides a careful analysis of the early fragments which, although dropped from the play or considerably altered, make the evolution ofthe play, and Joyce's shifting priorities as he composed it, much more complex than had previously been considered. He also links these fragments with Joyce's notes for the play in a convincing argument that Exiles emerged from a long and elaborate genesis. MacNicholas has also published a number of articles on Exiles which further illuminate the play. In "Joyce's Exiles: The Argument for Doubt" (James Joyce Quaterly, [[ [[973], 33-40), he suggests that whether or not Bertha and Robert corrunit adultery is deliberately left ambiguous. By withholding certain knowledge, Joyce avoids sensation and makes the play more static, but he makes a greater appeal to the audience's intellect. In redirecting our attention to Exiles as a demanding intellectual vehicle, MacNicholas aJigns himself with Katharine Worth (Revolutions in Modem English Drama. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1973), who sees the playas a precursor of The 250 Book Reviews Family Reunion, Old Times and The Homecoming. Discussing Harold Pinter's 1971 production of Exiles for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Worth observes the strong resemblances between Exiles and Pinter's own plays - the pauses, the concentration required, the poignant silences and the meticulous attention to stage directions. She argues that Exiles is "s piece essentially theatrical and needing to be seen rather than essentially literary and needing to be read" (p. 47). On the page, she suggests, the humour does not show, the impact of the silences and the frustrations is not so evident: "Joyce seems to be anticipating almost the whole afPiDter. A drama ofsilence and 'not knowing' is contained in Exiles, though it's enclosed in the framework ofa wordier and more knowing kind of realism" (p. 48). She concludes that "in a theatre tuned to Pinter's style it should have better prospects ofgetting produced and given the chance to...