Tag: James Joyce

John Huston’s final film

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Film, writing2 Comments

John Huston was dying while working on “The Dead,” a 1987 film closely based on James Joyce’s 1914 short story in The Dubliners collection. The film won a post-humus Best Director Oscar for Huston and a Best Supporting Actress award for his daughter Anjelica.  I was drawn to the film because I was a fan of the Hustons and, most definitely of James Joyce.

According to Wikipedia, “The film takes place in Dublin in 1904 at an Epiphany party hosted by two sisters and their niece. The story focuses on the academic Gabriel Conroy (Donal McCann) and his discovery of his wife Gretta’s (Anjelica Huston) memories of a deceased lover. The ensemble cast also includes Helena Carroll, Cathleen Delany, Dan O’Herlihy, Marie Kean, Donal Donnelly, Seán McClory, Frank Patterson, and Colm Meaney.”

I was happy that my favorite passage from Joyce’s story–often cited as among the most beautifully written in the English language from, perhaps the best English story story–was included in the film as a voice-over reading:

“It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

The New York Times review began:

”’ONE by one we’re all becoming shades,’ says Gabriel Conroy, looking out into Dublin’s bleak winter dawn. Gretta, the wife he loves and suddenly realizes he has never known, lies asleep on the bed nearby. His own life now seems paltry:  ‘Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.’

“These words are spoken toward the end of ‘The Dead,’ John Huston’s magnificent adaptation of the James Joyce story that was to be the director’s last film.

“Some men pass boldly into that other world at 17. Huston was 81 when he died last August. He failed physically, but his talent was not only unimpaired, it was also richer, more secure and bolder than it had ever been. No other American filmmaker has ended a comparably long career on such a note of triumph.”

 Pauline Kael wrote that “The announcement that John Huston was making a movie of James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ raised the question ‘Why?’ What could images do that Joyce’s words hadn’t? And wasn’t Huston pitting himself against a master who, though he was only twenty-five when he wrote the story, had given it full form? (Or nearly full—Joyce’s language gains from being read aloud.) It turns out that those who love the story needn’t have worried. Huston directed the movie, at eighty, from a wheelchair, jumping up to look through the camera, with oxygen tubes trailing from his nose to a portable generator; most of the time, he had to watch the actors on a video monitor outside the set and use a microphone to speak to the crew. Yet he went into dramatic areas that he’d never gone into before— funny, warm family scenes that might be thought completely out of his range. He seems to have brought the understanding of Joyce’s ribald humor which he gained from his knowledge of Ulysses into this earlier work; the minor characters who are shadowy on the page now have a Joycean vividness. Huston has knocked the academicism out of them and developed the undeveloped parts of the story. He’s given it a marvelous filigree that enriches the social life. And he’s done it all in a mood of tranquil exuberance as if moviemaking had become natural to him, easier than breathing.”

Wikipedia Noted: “The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited The Dead as one of his 100 favorite films. The Dead received mostly positive critical reviews. The film holds a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 31 reviews.”

As a work of love and a work of art, the movie wasn’t a blockbuster. But that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t need any validation other than the appreciation of those who saw it and saw it for what it was.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Conjure Woman’s Cat.”

‘A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake’ by Campbell and Robinson

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing

When the comic, mythic, and dream-like epic Finnegans Wake was released in 1939 after a 17-year effort by James Joyce, most readers–including top reviewers–dismissed it as gibberish.  Four years later, Joseph Campbell (The Hero With a Thousand Faces) and Henry Morton Robinson (The Cardinal)  explained Joyce’s novel so well that for years A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake was the only book that covered the entire novel rather than simply annotating “difficult” references in its text.

The Joseph Campbell Foundation (JCF), which maintains all of Campbell’s published and unpublished materials, has kept a skeleton key in print with a new introduction. I appreciate the work of JCF and while its website has evolved over the years, I enjoy spending time there where Campbell’s mythic look at the world is kept alive along with books like A Skeleton Key that are still viable long after their publication.

James Joyce is my favorite author and Finnegan’s Wake is my favorite novel, in part for its humor and scope and in part because it’s a vital component of linked novels that constituted his life’s work. Suffice it to say, the work of Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) and Henry Robinson (September 7, 1898 – January 13, 1961) made my frequent journeys through the Wake much more easier. Like carrying a strong flashlight in a dark cave.

Edmund Wilson of “The New Yorker” said, “Campbell and Robinson deserve a citation from the Republic of Letters for having succeeded in bringing out their Skeleton Key at this time….The chance to be among the first to explore the wonders of Finnegans Wake is one of the few great intellectual and aesthetic treats that these last bad years have yielded.”

Max Lerner of “The New York Times” said, “Joyce has found in Mr. Campbell and Mr. Robinson the ideal readers who approach his book with piety, passion, and intelligence, and who have devoted several years to fashioning the key that will open its treasures.”

From the Publisher

“Countless would-be readers of Finnegans Wake — James Joyce’s 1939 masterwork, on which he labored for a third of his life — have given up after a few pages and dismissed the book as a perverse triumph of the unintelligible. In 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with novelist and poet Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first guide to understanding the fascinating world of Finnegans Wake. Page by page, chapter by chapter, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake outlines the basic action of Joyce’s book, simplifies and clarifies the complex web of images and allusions, and provides an understandable, continuous narrative from which the reader can venture out on his or her own. This edition includes a foreword and updates by Joyce scholar Dr. Edmund L. Epstein that add the context of sixty subsequent years of scholarship.”

From the Book

“Running riddle and fluid answer, Finnegans Wake is a mighty allegory of the fall and resurrection of mankind. It is a strange book, a compound of fable, symphony, and nightmare–a monstrous enigma beckoning imperiously from the shadowy pits of sleep. “

As they say, it’s a monomyth, not just about residents of Dublin “but the dreamlike saga of a guilt-stained, evolving humanity.”

The festivities begin when laborer Tim Finnegan gets drunk, falls off a ladder, and dies, but then comes to back to life during his wake when whisky gets splashed on him. This sets the tone for the novel with its cycles of death and rebirth.

—Malcolm

What writers don’t say

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

Look for what writers don’t say and you’ll find their greatest truths or, if not that, important clues to what the story is about, indications that beyond the shallow waters of the obvious, there’s depth and knowledge for readers to discover, and a prickly feeling on the back of your neck that your subconscious mind is being visited by things half-remembered that when found shine a steady light on what the writer didn’t spell out.

Those reading my short story “Moonlight and Ghosts” in the short story collection Widely Scattered Ghosts know that the main character takes a dim view of the state of our mental health system, in part the fact that the centers using the group home approach (that was working) gave way to the cheaper “let’s turn the mentally ill out into the community where, in reality, few people will help them.”

My view, as I wrote the story, was that those released from group homes were basically left for dead. I assert this in the story’s opening lines (copyright (c) 2018 by Malcolm R. Campbell):

“THE LIGHT OF the harvest moon was brilliant all over the Florida Panhandle. It released the shadows from Tallahassee’s hills, found the sandy roads and sawtooth palmetto sheltering blackwater rivers flowing through pine forests and swamps toward the gulf, and, farther westward along the barrier islands, that far-reaching light favored the foam on the waves following the incoming tide. Neither lack of diligence nor resolve caused that September 1985 moon to remain blind to the grounds of the old hospital between the rust-stained walls and the barbed wire fence, for the trash trees and wild azalea were unrestrained, swings and slides stood dour and suffocated in the thicket-choked playground, humus and the detritus of long-neglect filled the cracked therapy wading pool, and fallen gutters, and shingles and broken window panes covered the deeply buried dead that had been left behind.”

One thing I didn’t say in the story was that the hospital was real, one I’d visited in one of its earlier incarnations when it was brightly lit and clean and well staffed but then, as funding cuts showed our true feelings about the mentally ill and the developmentally disabled, the care and facilities ran into a downward spiral until the facility was eventually abandoned. Later it would be razed and the property turned into a neighborhood of upscale homes where it’s my profound hope that the residents hear ghosts on quiet nights.

To reinforce the focus of the story, the opening lines quoted here are a close paraphrase of the style of the opening lines of  “The Dead,” a 1914 short story by James Joyce, a favorite writer of mine. My intent was not to gain notoriety by paralleling a famous writer’s work but to drop a subliminal guidepost into my story.  Goodness knows, folks like T. S. Eliot said “The Dead” was one of the greatest short stories ever written. It would be vain of me to compete with that, but more likely that a few people who read my story might have read “The Dead” and would see that my intent was to reinforce my main character’s belief–and my own as well.

Such clues are left for readers to find. Those who “get it,” “get it.” Those who don’t find the clue don’t lose anything as they read other than a clue they won’t miss. Writers do this a lot and then English teachers (unfortunately) tell students what they did not see. So it goes.

Nonetheless, I think I’ve mentioned here before that writers often conceal the most important parts of their work.

–Malcolm

Scene Setting in Novels – Part II

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that “scene setting” remains a popular technique for beginning a story or a novel. According to Janice Hardy, “The opening scene is the first glimpse readers get of the novel. It’s an audition for their time, and provides the critical elements and details they’ll need to understand the story, protagonist, and setting. Some novels open with the story, but others open with a prologue or glimpse of something outside the main characters and time frame.”

The overarching metaphore in my short story “Moonlight and Ghosts” is moonlight, so moonlight was my focus in the story’s opening: “The light of the harvest moon was brilliant all over the Florida Panhandle. It released the shadows from Tallahassee’s hills, found the sandy roads and sawtooth palmetto sheltering blackwater rivers flowing through pine forests and swamps toward the gulf and, farther westward along the barrier islands, that far-reaching light favored the foam on the waves following the incoming tide. Neither lack of diligence nor resolve caused that September 1985 moon to remain blind to the grounds of the old hospital between the rust-stained walls and the barbed wire fence, for the trash trees and wild azalea were unrestrained, swings and slides stood dour and suffocated in the thicket-choked playground, humus and the detritus of long-neglect filled the cracked therapy wading pool, and fallen gutters, and shingles and broken window panes covered the deeply buried dead that had been left behind.” [Copyright © 2019 Malcolm R. Campbell]

One way to add depth to a scene setting opening is through a reference to a scene in a novel, short story, or film. In my case, my opening lines were inspired by the closing lines of the James Joyce novella-length short story “The Dead” which appeared in his 1914 Dubliners collection that focussed on middle class life. I didn’t mention the link in my story, because mentioning it didn’t really fit, and because what I was thinking about was Joyce’s use of a snow metaphore in a story about the dead (which is how my character saw the existence of forgotten people in mental instutions). Here’s Joyce’s closing to “The Dead”:

“Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

Those who recognized the structure of my opening, would understand–as they read the story–my allusion to Joyce’s story and snow metaphor. Those who didn’t recognize it really didn’t lose anything except another piece of information.

My indirect reference to “The Dead” was in no way an attempt to elevate my story to the level attained by Joyce’s story that  T. S. Eliot said was “one of the greatest short stories ever written.”  You can read Joyce’s story here.  John Huston adapted the short story for the screen in his 1987 film starring his daughter Anjelica Huston. The closing lines of Joyce’s story made a very effective voice-over in the film.

I agree with Shmoop’s contention that those lines are among the most famous in 20th century literature. Sparknotes states that “The snowfall itself, like death, is indifferent; it falls on everyone dead and alive, regardless of class and nationality. In this way, death is also the great unifier between past and present, suggesting a broader connection to ‘the wisdom of the ages.'”

I view light, moonlight or other light, the same way: it’s a force that is open to everyone, ghosts or otherwise, though I don’t think the light is indifferent. These thoughts inspired by “The Dead” were on my mind as I wrote “Moonlight and Ghosts,” the opening story in Widely Scattered Ghosts.

—Malcolm

Briefly noted: ‘A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, reviews

“They lived and laughed and loved and left.” 
― James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

James Joyce is my favorite author, most especially his novels Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. With a minor in English, it was only natural and expected that I would study both of these books in school. School didn’t assign Finnegans Wake; perhaps they saved it for English majors and those working on a masters or doctoral degree. Or, perhaps the faculty was scared of the book.

I love the book, possibly for the language and the historical and cultural references and its endless puns and other humor. I also love chaos, and because of this, I suggest that people reading it for the first time should just go with the flow, setting aside worries or concerns about what it all means for a subsequent journey through the masterpiece.

If you want help, there’s help out there. If you want industrial-strength help, one option is Roland McHugh’s Annotations to Finnegans Wake. If you want getting-started help, then the 1944 A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake by Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, and editor Edmond Epstein will save most of your sanity. Before this book was published, I don’t think readers–or English department professors–thought it was possible for anyone to understand, much less explain Finnegans Wake.

Publisher’s Description: “Since its publication in 1939, countless would-be readers of Finnegans Wake — James Joyce’s masterwork that consumed a third of his life — have given up after a few pages and dismissed it as a ‘perverse triumph of the unintelligible.’ In 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with poet Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first key or guide to entering the fascinating, disturbing, marvelously rich world of Finnegans Wake. The authors break down Joyce’s abstruse book page by page, stripping the text of much of its obscurity and serving up thoughtful interpretations via footnotes and bracketed commentary. A Skeleton Key was Campbell’s first book, published five years before he wrote his breakthrough Hero with a Thousand Faces.”

In her June 2018 MythBlast| Mythic Mavericks essay on the Joseph Campbell Foundation website, Leigh Melander writes that “For years I have been intrigued with what I perceive as a particularly Celtic sensibility, an ability to dance on the knife’s edge between insight and nonsense, tragedy and comedy, sacred and profane. Not to say that only those of Celtic antecedents have this ability, of course, but there seems to be a profound and specific love for this dance in Celtic myth, story, and literature.”

An apt phrase as the foundation celebrates James Joyce this month, the man–whom I believe–knew how to dance on that knife’s edge. Skeleton Key, says Melander, “Has lasted as the bedrock unlocking of Joyce’s profanely sacred nonsensical insights for generations of scholars and readers.” To be sure, more intensive books have been written in the last 74 years to help readers decypher the the enigma people perceive in this novel, but Campbell’s and Robinson’s work is a sound first step to breaking the code.

Susan G. Hauser wrote in her her “‘Finnegans Wake’ Breakdown,” in Salon that “We had come to realize that reading Finnegans Wake without assistance was akin to crossing the Sahara without a camel.” That’s not a surprising assessment inasmuch as some of the purported best critics in the known universe proclaimed before the ink was drying on the novel’s first edition that it was unintelligible, and later, that it is “the greatest book that nobody’s ever read.”

Hauser says that the group of friends who came together to read, discuss, and understand Joyce’s novel “Began with the same resolute spirit displayed by Stephen Dedalus at the end of ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.’ We felt we were doing a noble and brave thing, though we never dared to compare ourselves to the Wake’s first readers. To our mind they were just as courageous as the first people who ever tried eating lobster.”

Perhaps you should read Hauser’s article before you try reading Finnegans Wake. If you are brave–and not one of these people who tends to ask “what’s the worst that could possibly happen?”–and decide to tackle the Wake, you’ll probably order a copy of Skeleton Key after reading the first several pages.

Blind luck might suffice, but I doubt it.

—Malcolm R. Campbell

Campbell is the author of the magical realism Florida Folk Magic Series of novels that includes Conjure Woman’s Cat” and “Eulalie and Washerwoman.” Coming soon, the final novel in the trilogy, “Lena.”

 

 

Review: ‘A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn authors, reviews4 Comments

“For you. You’ll soon. You’ll give her name. In the stitches of her skin she’ll hear your say. Mammy me? Yes you. Bounce the bed, I’d say. I’d say that’s what you did. Then lay you down. They cut you round. Wait and hour and day.”

halfformedRiverrun of words, past church and family and worse, from swerve of hope to bend of knee, you might think you’re reading “Finnegan” again as you start Eimear McBride’s streamOFconsciousness novel A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing. James Joyce leaves early on, though when you reach the novel’s final words, you might agree this story is a wake.

It’s also a mental letter of sorts, an interior monologue, from a rebellious sister to a brother with a brain tumor, within.the.tight.confines of a dysfunctional household, abuse and other perversions, rape and WorseThanRape, and the protagonist’s desperately destructive behavior. We are INside her head. Too much for simple syntax there, though sin is a constant theme, and prayers, too, so when James Joyce leaves the book by the back door, Virginia Woolf arrives at the front door. Figuratively speaking. You should be afraid, for this book will wreck you as though you yourself are violating the protagonist page by heartbreaking page, you bastard.

It’s also a raw poem, laced with the worst muck of life, the flotsam any free-flowing river carries along with sunlit ripples of lyr(within lyrics)ics more beautiful than anyone other than the doomed brother deserves to hear. The flow of words, blood, semen, vomit and other prayers are dAZZling to experience. The book’s un-named characters lead sad lives that would be sad if McBride had told the story through a conventional approach. Yet the fractured prose fits all that’s broken in the story and the poetry of the riverrun of words accentuates every vile UNformed and 1/2Formed thing.

Mammy is a single parent who is randomly holy.past.all.understanding, loving, vicious, and blind to everything but her son in her unkempt house in this small Irish town. Daddy is absent, resting in hell or elsewhere. Uncle is perverted. Schoolkids are cruel. Men have one thing on their minds. Brother is slow. Sister is wantonly searching for herself. And fate is relentless. Life inside this story, and inside the protagonist’s head, is difficult, difficult to read in half-formed thoughts, and impossible to set aside.

You won’t forget this story even though you will try.

–Malcolm