Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- References and abbreviations
- Preface
- Introduction: On being a Joycean
- Chapter 1 Deconstructive criticism of Joyce
- Chapter 2 Popular Joyce?
- Chapter 3 Touching ‘Clay’: reference and reality in Dubliners
- Chapter 4 Joyce and the ideology of character
- Chapter 5 ‘Suck was a queer word’: language, sex, and the remainder in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Chapter 6 Joyce, Jameson, and the text of history
- Chapter 7 Wakean history: not yet
- Chapter 8 Molly's flow: the writing of ‘Penelope’ and the question of women's language
- Chapter 9 The postmodernity of Joyce: chance, coincidence, and the reader
- Chapter 10 Countlessness of livestories: narrativity in Finnegans Wake
- Chapter 11 Finnegans awake, or the dream of interpretation
- Chapter 12 The Wake's confounded language
- Chapter 13 Envoi: judging Joyce
- Works cited
- Index
Chapter 3 - Touching ‘Clay’: reference and reality in Dubliners
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- References and abbreviations
- Preface
- Introduction: On being a Joycean
- Chapter 1 Deconstructive criticism of Joyce
- Chapter 2 Popular Joyce?
- Chapter 3 Touching ‘Clay’: reference and reality in Dubliners
- Chapter 4 Joyce and the ideology of character
- Chapter 5 ‘Suck was a queer word’: language, sex, and the remainder in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Chapter 6 Joyce, Jameson, and the text of history
- Chapter 7 Wakean history: not yet
- Chapter 8 Molly's flow: the writing of ‘Penelope’ and the question of women's language
- Chapter 9 The postmodernity of Joyce: chance, coincidence, and the reader
- Chapter 10 Countlessness of livestories: narrativity in Finnegans Wake
- Chapter 11 Finnegans awake, or the dream of interpretation
- Chapter 12 The Wake's confounded language
- Chapter 13 Envoi: judging Joyce
- Works cited
- Index
Summary
A SOFT WET SUBSTANCE
Halloween games are being played at the Donnelly's, and it is the family's guest, their one-time employee, Maria, whose turn it is to be blindfolded and to bring her hand down on one of the three saucers, containing a ring, a prayer book, and some water, each with its prediction for the coming year. The paragraph that describes her moment of choice seems to me one of the most strangely potent in Dubliners – indeed, in all Joyce's work:
They led her up to the table amid laughing and joking and she put her hand out in the air as she was told to do. She moved her hand about here and there in the air and descended on one of the saucers. She felt a soft wet substance with her fingers and was surprised that nobody spoke or took off her bandage. There was a pause for a few seconds; and then a great deal of scuffling and whispering. Somebody said something about the garden, and at last Mrs Donnelly said something very cross to one of the next-door girls and told her to throw it out at once: that was no play. Maria understood that it was wrong that time and so she had to do it over again: and this time she got the prayer-book. (D 105)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Joyce EffectsOn Language, Theory, and History, pp. 35 - 51Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000