When James Joyce published his seminal work Ulysses the reactions were varied, to say the least. Aside from being banned in Boston, and other ports of entry into the United States, Joyce's fellow writers were divided in their opinions. Although Hemingway is quoted as saying "One Hell of a book" or words to that effect, it's long been doubted he ever even opened the covers, let alone read the thing.
But one of the most damning phrases came from the originator of the run-on sentence herself, Virginia Woolf, when she compared it to "the idle scratching of a stable boy at his pimples." Whether the words were generated by spite, anger, jealousy, or professional opinion is anyone's guess, but if there was ever a case of the kettle calling the pot something only fit for heating water, I don't think we'd have to look much further.
Of course I'm probably prejudiced in that I've always preferred the work of Joyce over Woolf as I've found hers a little too out of touch with reality while, at least in the case of Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Man and Ulysses, Joyce was writing about life among the majority. Woolf lived among the rarefied air of the Bloomsbury intellectual set, and was never lacking for funds, influence, or blind eyes turned to her marriage of convenience.
Joyce on the other hand grew up poor from the time his father squandered the family wealth when he was young and never lived to see any great return from his work. He died poor, blind, and exiled in Switzerland, where he fled to escape the Nazi invasion of France.
I'm sure by now everybody's wondering what any of this has to do with Thomas Pynchon's latest novel Against The Day, which nominally I am supposed to be reviewing. Good question, and the answer lies somewhere amongst some theory of mine that Pynchon is heir to either Joyce or Woolf, or is perhaps even some weird bastard son of them both, a kind of hybrid flower you'd get from the cross-pollination of Joyce's earthiness and Woolf's university intellectualism that's been spiced up with the cynicism of the last 40 years of the 20th century. Pynchon has the same reluctance to participate fully in the world that marked Woolf's life and permeated her work. But he has no problem with writing enthusiastically, one could almost say with idealism, about the American working class and their earthier pursuits.
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