Greg brings up an interesting point in the comments of the last post: It might make references easier if we're all reading the same edition. One paperback edition I've found -- the Gabler edition -- has every 10 lines unobtrusively numbered. (You can see them on Amazon's "Search Inside" feature.) It might make references even easier.Other editions might have other good points. Any thoughts?
Rob
12 comments:
The cruel irony here is that the Gabler edition itself is what's at the centre of the Ulysses textual shitestorm.
At its initial publication in (I think) 1984, Gabler's edition claimed to have a textual authority more or less backed up by numbers. The product of textual scholarship which incorporated computers, the edition was supposed to have identified and corrected somewhere around 5,000 textual errors which appeared throughout the previous (and usually troubled) printings of the book.
The identifying wasn't the problem; the ostensible correcting, on the other hand, was soon called into question.
By Bloomsday 1988, a few years after the Gabler had nudged other texts out of print, the pens were unsheathed and the critical battle began.
If you're interested in witnessing some of the skirmishes, here're a few links:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/01/09/specials/joyce-corrected.html
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/4379
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/4336
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/4179
If you want to skip the back-biting (it's fun if you like that sort of thing, otherwise...), there's a nice concise summary of the various Ulysses editions here:
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/cwrl/v3n1/dgold/5_problems.html
The Gabler was the text used in the Joyce seminar I took at Villanova, and it vaguely bothered me then. For one thing, I missed the giant page-sized letters that began each section in the older text (a Random House Viking printing of the 1961 edition) I'd picked up years earlier at one of the many used book sales I was given to haunt. But, hey, who was I to argue with what was at the time the public consensus of the academy? What were my personal aesthetics of typography next to the mass of textual scholarship behind these ugly changes?
Little did I suspect that good ol' John Updike would make a stand on my side and voice his own objection to one of Gabler's textual choices I hated most of all.
'John Kidd's "The scandal of Ulysses" does not mention the most scandalous "improvement" in the revised text of 1986: the setting of all dialogue, prefaced with a dash in the French manner, flush left. This typographical eccentricity is so unusual as to be disfiguring, and it does not appear in the text of which Joyce repeatedly read proofs, which is conventionally indented. His manuscripts do show the dash without indentation, but what we have here... is a mistaken scholarly fidelity to holograph mannerisms that were never meant by the author to be translated into type.'
Okay, so he wasn't saying anything about my giant letters. But he was supporting my gut feeling that the Gabler edition was more textual exercise and less text. For a work as deeply concerned with language itself as Ulysses, its actual manifestation as text is an essential part of its character. To so blithely dismiss or ignore such an all-encompassing textual choice on Joyce's part -- present as it was in every edition published in his lifetime -- seems to my eye to indicate a bit of dangerous wrong-thinking at the core of Gabler's critical methodology. (I'm referring here to the flush-left versus indented matter; I've never researched my giant letters.) That alone nudges me strongly into dismissing Gabler's edition.
Apparently I'm not alone. The 1961 text, errors and all, was soon back in print and remains so.
There are several other editions as well. I've been stranded, with my truck in the shop, and haven't had chance to get to a Borders and see 1) what they stock and 2) what the ancestry of each edition is. I've a Borders Gift Card from this past Christmas, and am therefore inclined to procure my Ulysses thus.
I doubt it'll show up on the shelves here in the states, but I found warning against at least one other edition: Ulysses: A Reader's Edition, edited by Danis Rose. In case you're curious:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1084
I'm curious about the Penguin edition (based on the 1960 edition), but I'd like to actually see a copy rather than just order it. This edition also has an annotated students' version, which is line-numbered for reference (I'm not clear on whether the plain ol' Penguin edition is likewise indexed). I'm also not certain that the Penguin editions are available in the States. Stupid copyright entanglements.
At this rate, I'm just as likely to hunt up a copy of the Random House 1961 edition, either the current printing or that used one if I still have it and can find it. I'm pretty sure that the current printing has my giant letters.
p.s. -- Robb, what do you need to do to make me capable of actually posting here? This would have been a more felicitous business had I been able to embed those links.
Note to textual scholars of the future:
Rob's name does not in fact contain two bs, despite its appearance thus in my previous comment.
On the occasions when the individual in question has been referred to by a name containing two bs, they have appeared one on each end of the central vowel in the name, with the traditional R absent. Usually (although not exclusively), these instances are not typographical errors; rather, they illustrate some example of the unique history between "Bob" [sic] and the party thus addressing him.
The extra b in my previous comment, on the other hand, was merely the result of a slip of the finger (most likely the index finger of the left hand) coupled with a failure to notice the error before posting the comment, an omission easily attributed to the lateness of the hour.
Addressing your P.S. first -- I've already arranged for Blogger to send you (and two others so far) an email invitation to post on this blog. Do what the email says, and you should be authorized to post. It might have gotten caught in your filters -- or I might have an old email address for you. In that case, send me an email and I'll re-invite you with the proper address.
As for the editions -- it sounds like the Gabler is the one to avoid, then.
I'm likely to buy from Amazon; I know at least one other person (not yet on the list) as bought an edition with the 1961 text, which, now that you've told me the Gabler book's shortcomings, I'm likely to do, too.
I think I got the gist of Greg's post, and I am leaning towards the 1961 Random House edition that he mentioned. So if we are voting on it, which I guess we are, its the Random House edition.
Yeah, I'm thinking the 1961 text is the way to go. Here's an in-print edition that uses that text and I've seen fairly regularly on the shelves. Plus, big letters, Greg!
All I have to say is I'm glad I'm going to have such expert guides through this...
1961 sounds good to me!
Sherman, set the WABAC machine! We're going to 1961!
I'm going to give myself one more rooting through the books in boxes before I give up on finding that old used-book-sale copy I had, but I'm not holding out string hopes. (I think it was a Random House printing of the 1961 edition, though.)
Most likely, I'll end up looking for the current printing it Borders and using my gift card. A little like not buying ones own tarot cards, or something.
I have three copies of Ulysses. One of the Gabler, and two Random House (Vintage Paperback, and Modern Library Giant Hardback, both the 1961).
Strangely enough when I mentioned that I'd met Gabler's daughter whilst travelling to Vicky Mahaffey, my prof from the Finnegan's Wake course, she said they were a lot of valid things about the Gabler edition, and unfortunately we didn't go into detail as I was in no position to comment, and didn't really want to draw attention to the fact that I'd never read the whole thing. I will post a more detailed confession of my Joycean problems separately.
There is a facsimile edition of the original manuscript that was produced by the Rosenbach, but I'm sure it's 1) out of print 2) prohibitively expensive 3) as some of the Gabler detractor's would point out this is from the manuscript Joyce produced cannily to squeeze some money from a collector 4) further, as much as (in the more extreme estimates) 1/4 of the text is from annotations Joyce made to the proofs. I liked the Texas U article Greg linked to for its suggestion that an electronic version could eventually allow all versions to be scanned at once.
Anyway, enough of this academic waffle. As long as we choose a text and get on with readin' it, rather than get bogged down before we've turned page one (regardless of whether there's a big stately plump S on it or not).
Thanks for the blog! I've been looking at just about everything I can find online or otherwise about "Ulysses" lately. I've got an old copy of the 1961 version, but I just got this one....
http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Facsimile-First-Published-Paris/dp/0914061704/ref=pd_sim_b_89
and I love it! Like funky old soul music:)
The very best reading copy is a '61 random house paperback.
The second best, or really just as good, is the Dover 2009 reprint of the original '22 Shakespeare & Co version
Everything else is bonfire material.
Especially the Gablers.
As an aside, if your interested in the very best, actually, the only scholarly book worth reading about Ulysses
try Stanley Sultan's 1964 masterwork, The Argument of Ulysses.
peace.
just another joyce lover.
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