I have enormous respect for Wells as a writer. By "reductive" I meant his style of prose in the context of the 4000 word sentences in Ulysses.

interesting.. what gathered respect for wells were you able to gain from reading this?

the letter is a series of self edifying straw men

to me it reads like someone trying to speak confidently to hide a deeply rooted, or joyce induced, insecurity and ends up coming across as arrogant

I can only speak for myself, but I had to the same positive pro-Wells feeling from the letter. I've read Joyce, but I've barely read Wells. This letter makes me want to.

I read the letter as an honest but negative reaction to the Wake, while genuinely praising the prodigious talent of the writer. I don't know their relative ages[1], but I read it in the tone of a businessman father astonished by the virtuosity of his musician son --- astonished that the son followed through on his dreams, but still wondering why someone would dedicate their life to making pretty sounds.

I think Well's both captures what Joyce is up to, and clearly expresses why it's not for him. I feel much the same toward Joyce. I've fought my way through the most of the Wake, and feel happy knowing that it exists without having much desire to read much more. Joyce's talent for language is obvious; his choice of where to dedicate that talent is not. In retrospect, it was probably a good choice, although one wonders how much impact a different path might have had too.

[1] Looked it up: Wells was born in 1866, thus was just over 60 at the time of the letter. Joyce was born in 1882, thus was about 45. I was picturing Joyce as being a little younger from the tone of the letter, but the difference is about right.

i am unsure exactly what wells means by any of his words, but he's dead so i am unable to ask him

if i were to follow well's example laid out in the letter i could just assert my own assumptions as fact and criticise those, but instead i will just try to explain how his words affect me

also, it is important to note that it is difficult to truly know anything about this letter because we are unaware of any prior or subsequent correspondence

> The outcome is that I don’t think I can do anything for the propaganda of your work.

did wells mean for the word propaganda to be a subtle dig? does he mean 'promotion'?

'i don't think i can do anything for'.. who asked him to? did joyce? is wells just asserting that his approval should be important to joyce?

if this letter was unsolicited i'd argue it's more about wells than joyce, and as it stands alone i find it abhorrent

> Your training has been Catholic, Irish, insurrectionary; mine, such as it was, was scientific, constructive and, I suppose, English.

on first glance this sentence had me suddenly wanting to read wells, until i read it again and realised he's 'just making pretty sounds' without any evidence or explicit reasoning which i would think any scientific and constructive mind would consider wholly necessary

this hearkens back to my first notion about a correspondence but why does wells tell joyce what joyce's 'training' is? and then set his own assumed 'training' up as a counterpoint.. and a very appealing one at that

wells continues on in this effort to assign opinion and motivation to joyce and then set himself as the better

> And while you were brought up under the delusion of political suppression I was brought up under the delusion of political responsibility. It seems a fine thing for you to defy and break up. To me not in the least.

this is another confusing message for me

for me 'delusion of political suppression' is a horrible thing to accuse someone of and self assessing a 'delusion of political responsibility' is something endeared to me

but it would seem to me someone who calls their own education one of a 'delusion of political responsibility' then i would assume that person thinks political responsibility is unnecessary but then he goes on to say that to 'defy and break up' is not for him..

so does he adhere to political responsibility even though he recognises it as a delusion? if so it would also seem rather unscientific

and of the notion of being 'constructive' it seems you in your comment also have some loose verbage in the same vein:

> although one wonders how much impact a different path might have had too.

impact? how do you measure that? i mean look at your first sentence wherein you say you've read joyce and hardly wells..

so prior to this letter who has impacted you more? you could argue, 'sure, i've read joyce but it went through me' but you still read joyce those words and ideas have a direct influence on you whether you agree or disagree with their content or construction where as an ignorance of wells means his work only indirectly impacts you

i think it is a silly effort to try to measure impact but since you deride joyce's assumed impact i will defend it

joyce was a major influence on the beat generation who were a group of poets in san francisco in the 1950s whose work went on to shape contemporary civilisation by altering legal definitions of words which catalysed a number of the social movements that followed in the coming years

this criticism and response of one of the beat poet's work plays perfectly with this letter:

> His central criticism is that the Beat embrace of spontaneity is bound up in an anti-intellectual worship of the "primitive" that can easily turn toward mindlessness and violence. Podhoretz asserted that there was a link between the Beats and criminal delinquents. Ginsberg responded in a 1958 interview .. "The bit about anti-intellectualism is a piece of vanity, we had the same education, went to the same school, you know there are 'Intellectuals' and there are intellectuals. Podhoretz is just out of touch with twentieth-century literature, he's writing for the eighteenth-century mind. We have a personal literature now—Proust, Wolfe, Faulkner, Joyce." (o)

is wells 'out of touch'? who cares? but speaking negatively about someone else's work to prop up your own, for me, makes me question the quality of your work more than the one you are deriding

(o) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_Generation#Criticism

> although one wonders how much impact a different path might have had too.

impact? how do you measure that?

I ask the question in the sense of wondering what impact Brian May might have had as a scientist rather than as a musician (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May#Astrophysics), or vice versa, whether Richard Feynman would have had greater impact as a drummer than a physicist (http://io9.gizmodo.com/5909408/and-now-richard-feynman-playi...). Wondering counterfactually what other work Joyce might have created had he dedicated himself to it does not take away from the work that he actually chose to create.

since you deride joyce's assumed impact i will defend it

I think you are misreading Wells. I'm sure you are misreading me. Personally, I am very far from deriding Joyce's impact. Joyce has had great impact on me. I originally learned Perl and CGI to do a hypertext Ulysses. I don't normally celebrate Bloomsday, but I'm usually aware of it. I've even attended Joyce conferences. While it may be my fault for not writing clearly, if you read me as deriding Joyce, it should give you pause to consider that you might be misreading Wells too.

i'm sorry, but it seems clear to me that wells is ridiculing joyce's 'last two works'

> Now with regard to this literary experiment of yours.. I don’t think it gets anywhere.

> .. Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they will ever be to read.

even ignoring how joyce suffered while writing these works, i can say anecdotally that wells is so completely wrong in this assertion because i found reading these works to be both extremely amusing and exciting to read

> .. Do I get much pleasure from this work? No.

> .. Do I feel I am getting something new and illuminating ..? No.

that is some clearly contemptuous ire.. and you said you agreed:

> I think Well's both captures what Joyce is up to, and clearly expresses why it's not for him. I feel much the same toward Joyce.

so i apologise for reading your post as agreeing with wells' contempt but it seemed to me a pretty sure reading that that was your intent

that said, now that you have described what you meant by 'wondering about ones impact' it seems like an innocuous game and i suppose my reaction to it was more about its proximity to wells' opinions that i still read as clearly saying joyce's choices were simply wrong

asking 'what would have been if he wrote in esperanto instead?' takes on different connotation when presented as nonsequitor, but when paired with 'he wasted his potential. what would have been if he wrote in esperanto instead?' it just reads rude

i am also confused why my opinion that wells is belligerently overreaching is controversial when the paris review even notes it in their lede describing the letter as "reacting, irascibly if not uncharitably"

i like wake and ulysses

> I've fought my way through the most of the Wake

this assumes a prerequisite that books, or novels, should be read cover to cover.. personally i am without this prerequisite i can pick up wake and read a single sentence and put it down and be wholly satiated

> Joyce's talent for language is obvious; his choice of where to dedicate that talent is not.

i love to have my expectations subverted, i find the obvious can often turn droll and disappointing

this is clear from the fact that dubliners bores me but i think wake is the only true novel, ulysses is the first iteration of that endeavour and is much more approachable but i think he achieved the closest thing to the platonic ideal of what i, for myself, consider a novel: a true account of affects and effects; with finnegan's wake

i think of wake as a literary fractal

what is often accused of being crowded, elabourate, riddled digressions i see as the truest account possible

like you said of me misreading you, i believe it, because regardless of the amount of words you use there will always be more that was left out that could have further elucidated those ideas

joyce seems to follow a single strand to a point of abstraction that the reader feels unable to comprehend the moment and in so doing achieves the truest expression of that moment

any finite description is incomplete

and someone could respond, 'but joyce's abstractions are well documented and you can read the text annotated to understand every foible' but that only defends that position that the work is incredibly calculated and anything but gibberish

to truly define stephen dedalus and his mind joyce would have to write within abstractions that joyce would be unable to have because joyce is wholly disparate from stephen

to attempt any such an effort would be indistinguishable from gibberish even for the author because in its essence the author would have to be unaware of what he is writing and why

so, as i see it, his only possible choice is to take it to the point that he is aware of what is being said but the reader is just too far from familiar

from this letter wells seems to revel in telling some other person why he does what he does, which from my reading is hillariously the exact opposite of what joyce wanted his readers to get from his work: life is enigmatic to life

i could be wrong about joyce, but that is why i love it

Your post is almost as unreadable as Joyce's prose (to be fair, HN's layout and scant formatting options don't help), but one note:

>> The outcome is that I don’t think I can do anything for the propaganda of your work.

> did wells mean for the word propaganda to be a subtle dig? does he mean 'promotion'?

In 1928 "propaganda" was still a fairly neutral term, literally "something that is to be propagated". It only acquired the current negative connotations during and after the World War II due to prominent use by several fascist governments, most notably Goebbels's Propagandaministerium [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reich_Ministry_of_Public_Enlig...

thanks for answering my question about his use of the word propaganda

i'm glad i asked the question instead of just ascribing my assumptions about its use as fact and then criticising it

> your post is almost as unreadable as Joyce's prose

but this sally is as vapid and condescending as wells was in his letter

"And while you were brought up under the delusion of political suppression I was brought up under the delusion of political responsibility. It seems a fine thing for you to defy and break up. To me not in the least."

Joyce was Irish, and while I am not sure of his political affiliations, I am fairly confident that he was never a supporter of the English rule of Ireland, particularly after the 1916 uprising. (This letter was written in 1928, seven years after the end of the Irish revolution and 5 after the end of the ensuing civil war.) To say that he was raised with "political suppression" is a reference to the frequently very heavy handed treatment of the Irish by the English. On the other hand, as far as I can tell he was never politically active, and may never have returned to Ireland after the revolution or even the 1916 uprising.

Wells was a socialist, a pacifist, politically active, and a firm believer in the perfectibility of humanity, though peaceful and scientific means. A reference to "political responsibility" by him likely indicates his preference for things like voting and writing (A cute Chesterton quote: "Mr Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of message") over things like shooting.

I'd say the use of "delusion" in both cases is a bit of ironic self-derision. He appears to be ascribing to Joyce the belief that the existing structure (of novels, in this case) must be torn down and thrown away for progress to be made, while his own belief is that everything can be improved incrementally, even novels. But, by using "delusion" he implies that both are probably incorrect.

To my mind, Wells is describing in detail why he does not care for Finnegans Wake or Ulysses, which is perfectly fine as it's his opinion and all that. He's also offering a fair and reasonably valid criticism of Finnegans Wake and Ulysses:

"Now with regard to this literary experiment of yours. It’s a considerable thing because you are a very considerable man and you have in your crowded composition a mighty genius for expression which has escaped discipline. But I don’t think it gets anywhere. You have turned your back on common men—on their elementary needs and their restricted time and intelligence, and you have elaborated. What is the result? Vast riddles. Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they will ever be to read. Take me as a typical common reader. Do I get much pleasure from this work? No. Do I feel I am getting something new and illuminating as I do when I read Anrep’s dreadful translation of Pavlov’s badly written book on Conditioned Reflexes? No. So I ask: Who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many waking hours of the few thousand I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and fancies and flashes of rendering?"

i felt the response was succinct and well rounded so i left off the second paragraph, but since you quoted it in full here i'll share my thoughts on that as well

i hate this notion of 'the common man', it is self indulgent condescending jargon and it reeks of the 'what about the children' argument

if i could get wells to define this vague label more clearly, then follow his criteria to find a group of people, give those people a copy of ulyses or wake, and if even only one gains some value from it.. what then? does the definition of 'common man' for wells herein actually only imply 'someone who hates this book as much as i do'

honestly this paragraph is so filled with logical fallacies and lazy criticisms i'll just paste it here again in full with a few edits:

"Now with regard to this [thought] experiment of yours. It’s a considerable thing because you are a very considerable man and you have in your crowded composition a mighty genius for expression [and calculation] which has escaped discipline. But I don’t think it gets anywhere. You have turned your back on common men—on their elementary needs and their restricted time and intelligence, and you have elaborated. What is the result? Vast riddles. Your last two works[the special and general theories of relativity] have been more amusing and exciting to write than they will ever be to read. Take me as a typical common reader. Do I get much pleasure from this work? No. Do I feel I am getting something new and illuminating as I do when I read Anrep’s dreadful translation of Pavlov’s badly written book on Conditioned Reflexes? No. So I ask: Who the hell is this [einstein] who demands so many waking hours of the few thousand I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and fancies and flashes of rendering?"

you're right, best to just ignore it.. o and you better write him a letter telling him you intend to do so