ABSTRACT
Of Mr. James Joyce’s works I have read, with admiration and profit, the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, several poems, and Ulysses. I have also read Anna Livia Plura-Belle (and listened to Mr. Joyce himself reading from it on a gramophone record), which, though difficult, has left a clear and beautiful picture in my mind. I say this only to show that I approach any new work of Mr. Joyce with a sincere and painstaking desire to understand it. Two Tales of Shem and Shaun, however, is beyond my ken…. [quotes from p. 156]
This is too difficult for me. All the same, I can make something of the following: … [quotes from p. 159]
There is not space here to go into what Mr. Joyce is attempting, not only with words, but with their associations, public and personal. He is a writer of undoubted genius, and any experiment of his commands respect. Even so, I am suspicious of these tales, not because of the much which I do not understand, but because of the little which I do. It seems to me that Mr. Joyce, in his passage from literature to music, has strayed into a no-man’s-land which belongs to neither….
