ABSTRACT
For some reason which we shall not try to fathom the publishers enclose a leaflet of Press notices of a volume of short stories by Mr. Joyce. All the critics, big and small, seem to have tumbled over themselves in their haste to acclaim a genius. It is, of course, very impressive, and it behoves us to be cautious and to remember that in a review there are often reservations that liberally discount the praise. We confess that it is very difficult to know quite what to say about this new book by Mr. Joyce. It is rather a study of a temperament than a story in the ordinary sense. Whether it is self-portraiture we do not know, but it has the intimate veracity, or appearance of veracity, of the great writers of confessions. It is concerned mainly with the school and college life—a Jesuit school and Trinity College—of a youth who has no home life to balance him. Stephen Dedalus is not only real, he is like every artistic projection, a type. He is an artist with all the artist's vices and virtues, exquisite sensibility, moral perversity, Christian mysticism and Pagan sensualism, the refinement of human nature at its best and a bestial coarseness. At times the analysis of emotions reminds us of Andreyed in the brutal probing of the depths of uncleanness; at others the writing is pure lyrical beauty. It is not a book we can recommend to anyone; it has the coarseness in places of a young man who is wilfully coarse. But people who stand Mr. Masefield's exploitation of the vulgarity of the farm labourer will not find much to hurt them in the brutal language of college students who are mostly good Catholics. The tradition of English fiction, however, is not in the direction of Russian realism, and we cannot say that we regret it.
