Category Archives: Fiction

The Stream of Consciousness in “Ulysses” and Elsewhere

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I’m making another attempt to read James Joyce’s much admired novel Ulysses. So far it’s working. Since the meat of the book is a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, I skipped the first three chapters or episodes. They’re about Stephen Dedalus. I’m also reading Wikipedia’s brief summary of each episode before I begin the next one, on the assumption that brief previews will make the story easier to follow. Never having finished more than a few pages before, I’m now on episode 6, Hades, in which Bloom attends a funeral.

So far, I’m having trouble with Joyce’s stream of consciousness technique. It’s hard to take seriously. Here’s an example. Bloom is standing next to Molly, who is still in bed, and she asks him about a word in a book she’s been reading:  

—-Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It’s Greek: from the Greek. That means the transmigration of souls.

—-O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.

He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eye. The same young eyes. The first night after the charades. Dolphin’s Barn. He turned over the smudged pages. Ruby: The Pride of the Ring. Illustration. Fierce Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked. Sheet kindly lent. The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him with an oath. Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler’s. Had to look the other way. Mob gaping. Break your neck and we’ll break our sides. Families of them. Bone them young so they metempsychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That’s a man’s soul after he dies. Dignam’s soul . . .

—-Did you finish it? he asked.

Either Bloom’s mind moves more quickly than light or Bloom and Molly are having a very leisurely conversation. Reading Ulysses, it feels like Joyce’s description of Bloom’s stream of consciousness involves cataloging every thought Bloom might conceivably have at any given moment. Reading such passages leaves the impression that his conscious mind is a torrent of thoughts, memories and literary references. He seems to suffer from a terrible sort of attention deficit disorder. He can’t focus.

Another literary character who can’t focus is Tristram Shandy, the subject of Laurence Sterne’s wonderful novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. One hundred sixty years before Ulysses, Sterne wrote a novel in which the principal character begins by describing how his parents conceived him and then takes 300 pages to get to his birth. I had no trouble accepting the stream of consciousness in Tristram Shandy, because it’s not to be taken seriously. My sense is that we’re supposed to take the stream of consciousness in Ulysses seriously, but that’s hard to do.

I bring up Tristram Shandy because I came across a brief article this week: “From Stem to Sterne: How a Yorkshire Parson Reinvented the Novel”. The author doesn’t mention Joyce or Ulysses, but she does reflect on what it means to depict a person’s stream of consciousness:

One of the most notable aspects of Tristram Shandy is its fixation with the book as a physical object. Where words fail—and often they do—the gap is filled with a diagram, symbol or a bibliographic joke. The black page is one such trick; a missing chapter is another (asterisks mark the “fragment”); so too is the use of blackprint font. Marbled pages are inserted in the middle of the novel where they would usually appear at the end….

[As one critic] points out, “you can’t say a footnote.” You can’t say a scribble either, nor a straight line, nor a font change. By breaking free from the restrictive confines of language, Sterne illustrates how Tristram’s mind works: what he really sees. A consciousness does not function merely as an internal monologue but also involves blank spots: blots and symbols where thoughts are unclear or imprecise, where language won’t do. There is a directness in the way the book attempts to communicate these symbols. The mad sound of Tristram’s brain echoes inside ours via the eccentricities of the printed page.

The big problem with capturing a character’s stream of consciousness in words is that it can’t be done. Sterne used his book’s format to help out, but getting it right would require an author to present all the elements of consciousness, the sights, sounds, tastes, etc., plus the conscious thoughts, in a realistic way. A virtual reality contraption might do it. Language isn’t up to the task, even the language of great writers like Joyce and Sterne.

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

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I read The Metamorphosis in high school fifty years ago. I remember not liking it, although I don’t remember why. I have a much higher opinion now. When Gregor Samsa wakes up and discovers he’s been turned into a giant insect-like creature, or “some kind of monstrous vermin” as this translation says, we don’t know what to expect. Will it be a simple horror story, a tragedy, a comedy? I didn’t expect Gregor to still be preoccupied with his normal affairs, like how his transformation will affect his job and his plan to send his sister to a music conservatory. Nor did I expect his family to immediately assume that the creature in Gregor’s bedroom was Gregor. The Metamorphosis is a horror story, a tragedy and a comedy too.

Another story in the collection is In the Penal Colony. It’s less well-known than The Metamorphosis, but equally disturbing. It concerns the use of a brutal machine designed to torture and kill anyone in the penal colony accused of misbehavior. The machine is horrible. So is the officer who vigorously defends the use of the machine even though he knows all the arguments against it. It is a portrait of a true believer, the kind of person who would continue to support a president who shot and killed someone in the middle of 5th Avenue.

The Trial by Franz Kafka

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There is no trial in The Trial. At least, there’s no trial in the sense of a judicial proceeding in which witnesses testify, evidence is presented and a decision is rendered. What there is instead is an ordeal with judicial aspects.

Joseph K. is informed one morning that he’s under arrest. But he isn’t told why or even who is arresting him. He’s allowed to go about his business before being summoned to a gathering in the attic of a tenement building that’s presided over by a supposed  “Examining Magistrate”. Joseph K. makes a speech critical of the proceedings but doesn’t demand to know why he’s been arrested.

That is the last official event related to his arrest that he attends. Months go by filled with lengthy discussions of the Court (whatever that is) and his case (whatever that is). He speaks to various officials, other people who have been similarly “arrested”, a lawyer, a priest, his uncle and a painter who is said to have connections with senior judges. It’s surprising that such a mysterious, nonsensical situation can give rise to such subtle, detailed discussions.

The novel ends with a brief chapter in which something happens but nothing is revealed.

Before reading The Trial, my impression was that it was a story about an unfortunate citizen dealing with a mysterious government bureaucracy. That is true, but I kept thinking that it’s also about the human condition. Life is a trial. We are subject to powerful forces we don’t really understand and we don’t know when or exactly how the proceedings will conclude. We consult experts, some of whom aren’t expert at all, and consider our options. Then our story ends. (The book, like life, is also funny at times.)

The Plague by Albert Camus

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I read The Myth of Sisyphus in college and didn’t understand it at all. I read The Stranger a few years ago and didn’t really enjoy it. So it was good to start reading The Plague and find it both understandable and enjoyable (or as enjoyable as the subject matter would allow).

The plague in question is the bubonic plague. It strikes a city in Algeria in modern times, killing thousands of people. For months, nobody is allowed to enter or leave the city. The novel has relatively few descriptions of the physical effects of the disease. There is more said about its psychological effects. We follow the activities of Dr. Rieux, who does whatever he can to help his patients, and a small number of his acquaintances, some of whom become his friends as the months go by.

The Plague is sometimes described as an “existentialist” novel, although Camus apparently disliked that term. It certainly does concern human existence, and human existence under great stress. I haven’t checked to see whether the plague is supposed to symbolize something. What I took away from the novel is that most people will rise to the occasion, as we see whenever a disaster occurs. It also occurred to me that all of us are quarantined on this planet, with no possibility of escape, and that we are all going to succumb to something sooner or later. The difference is that some of the characters in the novel get out alive.

Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg

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Family Lexicon is an autobiographical novel, first published in 1963, by the Italian author Natalia Ginzburg. I read an article about it recently and since our local library had a copy, I brought it home. I almost stopped reading it two or three times but kept going.

It’s a strange book. It tells the story of the author’s family in the 1930s and ’40s. The author doesn’t say much about herself. For example, she only mentions in passing that she’s gotten married the two times it happens. Instead, she describes the personalities, activities and especially the conversations of her parents and four siblings. The rise of fascism and the war play a relatively small role (people are arrested by the fascists, or taken away by the Germans, but not much is said about it). Ginzburg concentrates instead on the day to day lives of her family and their friends. The book is often amusing, but you have to put up with a lot of numbing detail (my mother said this, my father said that, we took a walk, the maid got upset, the new apartment was nice).

Her father is a biology professor who tells most everyone around him that they are “jackasses” and “nitwits”. Her mother is an easy-going sort who tries to see the good in everyone and everything. Her sister and three brothers are less interesting and get less attention. It’s the distinctive way the characters, especially her father and mother, talk to each other that’s the most interesting thing about the book.

Family Lexicon has gotten renewed attention because of last year’s new translation. If you’re interested, you can read positive thoughts about it here, here, here, here and here.