Word: joycean
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Joycean epiphany in John G. Short's fantasy-ridden account of the Weatherman incidents in Chicago comes in the final paragraph. Short knows that the instant revolution of Weathermen and other such groups is merely an extension of their oedipal urge to kill the repressive father. As Short wings away from riot-torn central Chicago to the relative security of the Harvard womb, he recalls how he used "to sit every morning when I was 14 years old in a big gothie chapel dreaming of machine-gunning the headmaster and deacons when they walked out the front door." So Chicago...
...Piano and Harpsichord (1961) were initially written with stereo in mind. In the dense antiphonal Double Concerto, for example, each solo instrument is set off against the other - one to a stereo channel - and each has its accompanying coterie of winds and strings. The resulting dialogue is almost Joycean in its plural textures and moment-to-moment subtleties. Recording studios also offer new technical means of composing, through such devices as the echo chamber, multi-track recording and tape superimposition. "In this way," says Poland's Krzysztof Penderecki, "the process of recording itself has become a means of composition...
Occasionally, Miss Frame breathes life into her tale of death with her poet's gift of language. Indeed, the best part of the novel is an interlude of exuberant Joycean punning when Godfrey's death-scrambled brain cannot help turning words inside out. For example, he reads "The Drol's Pryer...
...point he pauses over a particular problem to ask, "now, why is that? is there an essay somewhere I can read on that? is it of import? or shall I go on?" Portnoy, with his daydreams and his failures, is actually much closer to that other Joycean hero, Leopold Bloom. The more Portnoy dredges up his past, the more it cripples him. He never achieves even Stephen's nominative freedom, for the mind is the one part of the man that can never expatriate...
While the overall tone of the book is tragic and almost elegiac, the individual scenes are often hilarious and demonstrate Donleavy's adeptness at using his lyrical Joycean prose to explore human emotions. A scene of touching pathos, for example, is broken up when Balthazar is discovered naked and feverishly ill in Breda's bed by her employer's wife. The female fight that follows is unmatched in literature for its comic ferocity. Hair curlers are grabbed, bellies butted, Balthazar's breakfast food spilled, bottles of urine knocked over, dresses ripped-all while Balthazar lies abed...