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Beginnagin
Jul. 8th, 2009 07:37 pmLet me tell you a tale.
It was my senior year in college, and I was in the living room of the cool multi-room "apartment" some friends had in one of the dorms. (That would be Doug Frankenfeld, David Bloom, Dan Nimmo, & Andrew Chittick, all living in Harwood Court.)
Anyway, Andrew had a subscription to The Economist, and I was flipping through it one day.
I read a book review of a selection of James Joyce's papers. It had been edited by an Irish don at the University of Cork whom the Economist described with delicious hauteur as, "undistinguished even in Irish academic circles." Seems when Joyce had died during WWII, somehow his papers wandered back to the Irish National Library in Dublin, where they were promptly put under seal at his behest for 50 years.
That wasn't the fun part, though. The fun part was, said Irish don thought Joyce's papers should be put under seal for an additional 50 years, because he felt their publication would be, "irreparably damaging to the body of modern literary criticism."
That got me to wondering. What on earth would be that damaging? That Joyce, Pound, Eliot, et al. were all sleeping with each others' wives? Nah -- we already knew that. That they were plagiarizing from each other? Nah -- that's known, too.
About the only thing I could think of was a letter that said something along the lines of:
*^*^*
OK, fast forward to 2005 or so. Twenty years later.
I'm between contracts at The Client, and on a 100-day break. I think to myself, "Self... It's been a long time since I saw anything about the Joyce papers. Shouldn't they be out by now? Or shouldn't there have been a decision to lock them up again?"
Such is the world we live in today that I went online to the National Library of Ireland. I couldn't find the book. I went to the library of University College Cork, Ireland. I couldn't find the book. I couldn't find any relevant mention online of the Joyce papers, and the attendant foofaraw.
Hm. What was the name of that Irish don? Only one way to find out...
So I trundled on down to the University of Washington library, where they have a bound set of The Economist on the shelf. I start pulling down the most appropriate years. Turns out The Economist ran semi-annual indexes back then, so I look in them for listings of reviews of books about James Joyce.
Nothing.
Now I'm getting angry. Feeble though my memory may be, I know it's not that bad. I know I read that piece.
I start leafing through every individual issue, looking at the book review sections.
I found it.
March 30, 1985.
The review ends, "The publication date -- the Monday after this issue of The Economist is published -- seems entirely appropriate."
Bastards. They nailed me. It was an April Fool's joke. Not as good, perhaps, as George Plimpton's "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch" (which, curiously enough, was published at the same time -- April, 1985), but... damn.
They nailed me.
I tell you this story for two reasons:
* It was a great hoax, and deserves more coverage than it has received.
* When I find out I'm wrong, even when I've been telling something as an amusing anecdote for twenty years -- if I find out, I'll say so. I'll also be quite diligent in finding the facts, sooner or later.
The piece was written anonymously -- and a hat tip to you, anonymous Economist scribe. It is, as mentioned, not in any index. So here, behind an LJ-cut, is "Beginnagin" (I leave it as an exercise to notice the differences between the "quotes" I used above, and the actual piece):
( Beginnagin )
It was my senior year in college, and I was in the living room of the cool multi-room "apartment" some friends had in one of the dorms. (That would be Doug Frankenfeld, David Bloom, Dan Nimmo, & Andrew Chittick, all living in Harwood Court.)
Anyway, Andrew had a subscription to The Economist, and I was flipping through it one day.
I read a book review of a selection of James Joyce's papers. It had been edited by an Irish don at the University of Cork whom the Economist described with delicious hauteur as, "undistinguished even in Irish academic circles." Seems when Joyce had died during WWII, somehow his papers wandered back to the Irish National Library in Dublin, where they were promptly put under seal at his behest for 50 years.
That wasn't the fun part, though. The fun part was, said Irish don thought Joyce's papers should be put under seal for an additional 50 years, because he felt their publication would be, "irreparably damaging to the body of modern literary criticism."
That got me to wondering. What on earth would be that damaging? That Joyce, Pound, Eliot, et al. were all sleeping with each others' wives? Nah -- we already knew that. That they were plagiarizing from each other? Nah -- that's known, too.
About the only thing I could think of was a letter that said something along the lines of:
Dear Ezra:
Can ye believe they're buying this bullshit? I write a complete piece of crap, slap the title Ulysses on it, and they're hailing it as a "masterpiece of the 20th Century." Balls! Just shows that literary critics will never admit they don't understand something, no matter how incoherently you write it. Put in just enough erudition to tease them, and they'll go hunting for the "real meaning" of a thing for decades.
Tell you what -- I'm going to spend the next ten years working on something I'll call Work in Progress, and then publish it under some relatively innocuous title... Finnegans Wake, or some similar twaddle. I'll try to type it myself, blind as a bat though I may be, and get my illiterate secretary -- have you met him? Beckett? -- to put it in manuscript form. The bastards will never admit they don't understand a word.
Love and kisses,
Jimmy
*^*^*
OK, fast forward to 2005 or so. Twenty years later.
I'm between contracts at The Client, and on a 100-day break. I think to myself, "Self... It's been a long time since I saw anything about the Joyce papers. Shouldn't they be out by now? Or shouldn't there have been a decision to lock them up again?"
Such is the world we live in today that I went online to the National Library of Ireland. I couldn't find the book. I went to the library of University College Cork, Ireland. I couldn't find the book. I couldn't find any relevant mention online of the Joyce papers, and the attendant foofaraw.
Hm. What was the name of that Irish don? Only one way to find out...
So I trundled on down to the University of Washington library, where they have a bound set of The Economist on the shelf. I start pulling down the most appropriate years. Turns out The Economist ran semi-annual indexes back then, so I look in them for listings of reviews of books about James Joyce.
Nothing.
Now I'm getting angry. Feeble though my memory may be, I know it's not that bad. I know I read that piece.
I start leafing through every individual issue, looking at the book review sections.
I found it.
March 30, 1985.
The review ends, "The publication date -- the Monday after this issue of The Economist is published -- seems entirely appropriate."
Bastards. They nailed me. It was an April Fool's joke. Not as good, perhaps, as George Plimpton's "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch" (which, curiously enough, was published at the same time -- April, 1985), but... damn.
They nailed me.
I tell you this story for two reasons:
* It was a great hoax, and deserves more coverage than it has received.
* When I find out I'm wrong, even when I've been telling something as an amusing anecdote for twenty years -- if I find out, I'll say so. I'll also be quite diligent in finding the facts, sooner or later.
The piece was written anonymously -- and a hat tip to you, anonymous Economist scribe. It is, as mentioned, not in any index. So here, behind an LJ-cut, is "Beginnagin" (I leave it as an exercise to notice the differences between the "quotes" I used above, and the actual piece):
( Beginnagin )
