London: Faber & Faber, 1942. Pp. 146; Introductory Note, 5-7.
The reader of the following extracts from the prose works of James Joyce may reasonably ask on what principle the selection has been made. The editor makes no pretence of having chosen what could be called “the best” of Joyce, and indeed maintains that no such principle could be applied, either in a book of this size or a much larger one, to the work of such an author. The later books, Ulyssesand Finnegans Wake, are too closely constructed, and depend too much upon cumulative effect, for any extracts to be more than those parts easiest to grasp in isolation. 1 I hesitated long over the selections from these two books, being impelled to the choice of one passage or another, at different times, according to mood or the desire to exhibit different aspects. It might have seemed possible to choose “the best” from among the short stories contained in the volume Dubliners. My choice, as the finest of these stories, would have been “The Dead” (and I hope that the reader of these selections will have the curiosity to turn next to Dublinersand read that story): but, for one thing, “The Dead” is of such a length as to have upset the proportions to be observed; and, for another, I believe that the story which I have chosen leads on much more directly to A Portrait of the Artist. 2
I decided that the best principle of selection by which to make the reader aware of continuity of development between one book and the next, was to take passages in which the author was present either as child or as young man, either as observer or as protagonist. In “The Sisters” the author is merely observer: but the point of the story would be blunted were it not recognized as having been seen through the eyes of a child – and the first thing to grasp in approaching Joyce’s work is an appreciation of the Dublin that he knew, as child and as adolescent, in the way that he knew it. The family party scene from A Portrait, with its bitter quarrel over Parnell, is executed with the same realism that we find throughout Dubliners, and is also included on its own merits. It is the most nearly self-contained extract that one can make from A Portrait, and might, by itself, almost be another picture from Dubliners: it is also an historical document. Were any rearrangement of order permissible in a volume of posthumous selections like this, it would have been interesting to have followed the scene from the schooldays of Stephen Dedalus (the author) directly by the scene from Ulyssesin which Stephen is himself the schoolmaster. But I believe that with this autobiographical thread the reader will find that the transition from the style of A Portrait of the Artistto that of Ulyssespresents no difficulty.
The task of selection proved more arduous with Ulyssesand Finnegans Wake. The former is divided, as everyone knows, into episodes each bearing some relation to one of the episodes in the Odyssey. Wishing to choose passages as nearly as possible complete in themselves, I have found my choice restricted to the earlier part of the book. The later episodes not only tend to be longer, but are less comprehensible in isolation. Had I followed the principle of making a larger number of shorter extracts, or quotations, I could have followed more closely and continuously the development (as well as the variety) of the writing : but while such an anthology might be interesting and illuminating to those who already know the texts well, it could hardly be anything but confusing as an “introduction” for new readers. There are passages which I should have liked to include, which would have lessened the abruptness of the transition from Ulyssesto Finnegans Wake: but as it is...
