James Joyce’s Manuscripts: An Index by Michael Groden

Abstract

cation of The Heart of the Matter. Before that date his novels earned an average of 12 notices a year; after, the yearly average soars to 64. One can also note his progress through the circles of literary esteem as reviews give way to articles, to books, to dissertations. An overview like this permits one to begin to sketch out the history of cultural taste from one decade to the next and on both sides of the Atlantic, judged, for example, on reader response to controversial novels like The Heart of the Matter or The Quiet American. The subject index gives a scale of longer range literary judge­ ments. The Heart of the Matter is the novel that has drawn most critical attention (140 entries), followed closely by The Power and the Glory; A Burnt-Out Case (100) is third; then comes the pack of other major fiction (70-80), followed far behind by straggling entertainments and neglected early novels, none of which has received a quarter of the notice accorded the standard Greenes. Finally, reading synopses of reviews centred on a single novel can be an instructive lesson in critical vagaries and human nature. Does The Human Factor, for instance, demonstrate Greene’s “virtuosity with locale” (Bed­ ford), or show “ a sense of time and place vague in the extreme” (Veit) ? Does the novel err in its “faulty” London topography (Wheatcroft), or shine by its “neurotically accurate topography” (James) ? Is the novel “a master’s homecoming” (Clemons), or “a regression rather than a trium­ phant return to the world of espionage” (Christman) ? Does the novel’s power “lie in Castle’s character” (Kennedy), or is Greene’s hero “curiously opaque and undefined” (Ratcliffe) ? Is the novel a conglomeration of “scraps, homilies, analogies, generalizations” (Leonard), or is it “concise, ironic, acutely observant of contemporary life, funny, shocking and above all compassionate” (Burgess) ? In short, is it a “fatuous, fake, moralizing fable” (Stone), or “ a lean, finely governed piece of work” (Steiner)? Bewildering? So it goes in the great literary carnival, especially when provocative Mr. Greene is master of revels. You buys your ticket and you takes your pick. And with such a spectrum of opinion to choose from, it’s well worth the price of admission. Ph ilip Stratford / Université de Montréal Michael Groden, compiler, James Joyce’s Manuscripts: An Index (New York: Garland Publishing, 1980). xv, 173. $25.00 Rather curiously this Index is not published as an integral part of the sixtythree volumes of photographic reproductions that constitute the James Joyce Archive, of which Professor Groden is General Editor. Nevertheless it is, in 380 fact, the index volume and a guide to the Archive, and it also contains an important gathering of errata in the latter. It is true that the Index goes somewhat beyond the scope of the Archive in serving as a checklist of all the pre-publication forms of Joyce’s work known to be extant; though it does not itemize letters and miscellaneous documents excluded from the Archive. Other materials excluded from the Archive, whether by editorial decision or because they were not made available for reproduction, are listed here; as is necessary in such a guide as this is. A very “ user-friendly” guide it is too: clearly listing materials in ways that correspond to the distinct reasons for which they are likely to be consulted. In the first major index, Joyce’s works (including individual poems in the collections) are listed alphabetically and keyed to the Archive. The Ulysses and Finnegans Wake scripts and proofs are so listed that it is possible to trace through them, fairly readily, either the strictly chronological sequence toward publication of the whole work or the (often interrupted) progress of particular episodes and sections. The second major index lists materials according to the locations of the original manuscripts, of which it is now the most complete published record. It was sensible not to attempt, in this context, bibliographical description, dating, or other elaborations of the listings but to concentrate upon pro­ ducing a very useful set of indices to the manuscript, typescript, and proof versions of Joyce’s work in and beyond the wide boundaries of...