Computers, Writing, Rhetoric and Literature
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The Problems of
Hypertextualizing Ulysses
History of the Text
Difficulties in Establishing any Definitive Edition
History of the Text
If there is any text that is not fixed, it is James Joyce's Ulysses. The first edition, rushed to press to be printed in time for Joyce's 40th birthday and typeset by French-speaking printers to avoid the wrath of English censors, contained so many mistakes that its publisher, Shakespeare and Company, sold it with an insert apologizing "for typographical errors unavoidable in the exceptional circumstances."[1] Attempts by various publishers, over subsequent editions and printings, to fix these errors had no consistent pattern, often no authorization from Joyce, and, in some cases, resulted in the transmission of new errors. Indeed, notes Charles Rossman, "Most efforts to establish a correct text of Ulysses appear to have added as many mistakes as they have eliminated."[2] The first American edition, published by Random House in 1934 (it took so long due to censorship restrictions) was mistakenly based on an unauthorized and sloppily-set pirated edition, and Random House's fix, the 1961 Modern Library edition, which until recently was the most widely-used base text for the novel, is widely acknowledged by scholars to be seriously flawed, with errors ranging into the thousands.
Recognizing the numerous errors in all extant versions of Ulysses, scholars have long wished
for a definitive or, at least, improved edition. In 1977, it seemed their hopes might at long
last be answered. Hans Walter Gabler, an early proponent of using computers to assist in textual editing,
received a $300,000 grant from the German government to undertake a new critical edition of Ulysses.
In 1984, with much fanfare and with the approval of the Joyce estate, Garland Publishing released Gabler's new,
"definitive" version of the text, Ulysses. A Critical and Synoptic Edition. "This new original text ,"
declares the introduction, "claims to replace the text made public in the book's first printing and every
subsequent printing since 1922."[3] The prestige of the work was
enhanced by a lavish introduction and testimonial by one of Gabler's advisors, Richard Ellmann, Joyce's biographer.
Gabler's undertaking was massive. In addition to offering a reconstruction of the text, he also
attempted to create a "continuous manuscript text," one which traced the process of the novel's development
through various manuscript and proof stages. The two texts Gabler created, the reading text and the "synoptic"
text, appear side-by-side on opposite sides of the page.
While the Gabler Edition was at first universally hailed, its claim to authority was soon challenged.
Beginning with a 1984 conference paper, "Errors in the Execution of the 1984 Ulysses," bibliographer and
Joyce scholar John Kidd cited Gabler for faulty scholarship and foggy editorial principles. (For a detailed
critique of Gabler, click here.) While Gabler refused to
acknowledge the legitimacy of Kidd's charges, the 1986 Corrected Text, a reading text of the Gabler
Edition published by Random House, incorporates some of Kidd's suggested changes. For the next five years,
scholars slugged it out not only among themselves in journals and conferences but in the national press.
In response to charges raised by Kidd, most notably a 1988 New York Review of Books article, "The Scandal of Ulysses,"[4] and revelations that the scholars on Gabler's advising committee had been troubled by some of his editorial techniques, Random House announced the appointment of an independent commission of textual scholars, led by G. Thomas Tanselle, to determine whether its book was flawed.
More fuel was added to the controversy in 1989, when two of Gabler's advisers, Philip Gaskell and Clive Hart,
published ULYSSES: A Review of Three Texts,[5] a sort of fixit-manual
for Ulysses, which proposed over 1500 changes to both the 1922 and 1961 editions and 483 changes to the Gabler
Edition, which they had worked on and supposedly approved.
But the tale becomes stranger. In 1990, due to a personal disagreement (one
that had nothing to do with the editing of the novel) between Tanselle and Jason Epstein, the editor who appointed
him, Random House dissolved the Tanselle committee. The Gabler Corrected Text was quietly withdrawn and Random House
has reverted to the 1961 text, errors and all. Meanwhile, Garland has announced that it will allow the
Synoptic Edition to go out of print. Kidd signed a lavish contract with Norton to produce a corrected version of
the 1922 text, but this has been repeatedly delayed for the last five years.
Where does that leave Joyce scholars and readers? The same place they were in 1922, with a corrupted and imperfect version of Ulysses.
The printed and published versions of Ulysses are not the whole of the problem. At least two electronic
editions of the text are extant, one
put together by Donald Theall at Trent University
and the other by an English company,
Bibliomania. One seems to follow the 1961 edition and one Gabler, though there are numerous transcription
errors in both. Since these texts are continually cited, downloaded, and are used as the base e-text, they
claim authority merely by their existence. Depending on how you look at it, their errors (1) compound the
problem, (2) offer new challenges in reconstructing the text, or (3) establish yet still more editions of
the text.
Difficulties in Establishing a Definitive Edition of Ulysses
One reason it is so hard to edit Ulysses is that no single source exists for a final, authorial version.
Joyce had three proof copies of the text made at a time and was inconsistent in his marking of them.
Sometimes he would mark one, sometimes two, sometimes all three. "For no intrinsically apparent
reason,"[8] he would also mix sheet sequences among them.
Another problem with the page proofs is that Joyce "wrote so much of his book directly on
them." [9]
This revision process went on right up to the date of publication, and had not Joyce set the
date of his fortieth birthday, February 2, 1922, for publication (he liked publishing books on his birthday),
the process might have gone on indefinitely. The only surviving fair-copy manuscript of the work, the Rosenbach
manuscript, is actually an amalgamation of several working manuscripts, assembled for sale to a collector.
Several versions of page proofs exists from various stages in the proofing and editing process, none complete.
Add to this the problems of deciding which errors are Joyce's, which are typesetters', which errors
Joyce recognized but allowed to stand, which errors were caught by people other than Joyce, which changes
were suggested by whom, etc., and the prospect of recovering Joyce's original authorial intentions seems
hopeless.
Concomitant with the above issues is a growing recognition among scholars that the very act of attempting
to recover an author's intentions is a flawed one, for the final edition of any work is necessarily the product,
not only of authorial intent, but of public needs, editorial demands, publishing specifications and a whole host
of other interplays and overlays by typists, copyeditors, proofreaders, compositors, secretaries, confidants,
etc. Gabler in his work is aware of this. "An editor owes more ultimately to the intention of the text than
the intention of the author"[10]
Unfortunately, awareness of variables in bringing a printed text to fruition does not necessarily
provide a theoretical groundwork for creating a new, especially definitive edition. Gabler's loyalty to
the text's "intentions" has him making changes that are in direct contrast to Joyce's intentions -- such
as placing dashes flush left and "recovering" elements of the text that either (1) appear in certain manuscripts
but nowhere else or (2) exist neither in manuscript form nor in any surviving proof copy! Although it may
be naive, post-Foucault, to desire, as does Robin Bates, "a Ulysses which in content and presentation
is the one Joyce intended,"[11] most readers of the text, and a good
number of scholars, would agree on the need for some sort of balance. Even Foucault, after all,
allowed for the possibility of the author reentering his text.[12]
The great value of the Gabler debate is that it recentered the discussion of perfecting or
improving Ulysses from the simple practice of recovery to a questioning of both the methods
and ideology of recovery. Is there a definitive text? Should we even attempt to make one? We may never
have the Ulysses that Joyce intended, but the possibility still lies open that we may yet get
the Ulysses we want. This possibility, of course, lies in the realm of hypertext.
The next section proposes some ideas for a Ulysses hypertext.
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Notes
[1] Charles Rossman. Introduction to Special Issue on Editing Ulysses. Studies in the Novel 22.2, 113.
[2] Ibid., 113.
[3]James Joyce. Ulysses. A Critical and Synoptic Edition. Ed. Hans Walter Gabler (New York: Garland, 1984), viii.
[4] John Kidd, "The Scandal of Ulysses." New York Review of Books (June 30, 1988), 32-39.
[5] Philip Gaskell and Clive Hart. ULYSSES: A Review of Three Texts (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smith, 1989).
[6] Robin Bates. "Reflections on the Kidd Era." Studies in the Novel 22.2, 130-33.
[7] Ibid. 133-168.
[8] James Joyce. Ulysses: A Facsimile of the Manuscript. (Garland: New York, 1975), 75.
[9] James Joyce. Ulysses: The Manuscript and First Printings Compared.(Garland: New York, 1975).
[10] Bates, 129.
[11] Ibid. 130.
[12] Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?" in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, ed. Josue V. Harrai (Cornell: Ithaca, 1977), 141-157.
Text Annotations
Gaskell and Hart's "Approval":
Gaskell and Hart, who had had reservations about the projects for several years, at one point
resigned for a period of several months.
Ellmann, apparently, had even more reservations, which he expressed privately to friends,
but he attempted to act as a mediator to avoid undermining the project. As the controversy has proceeded,
both Gaskell and Hart have attempted to disassociate themselves from it. Gaskell will no longer speak
publicly about it and Hart, in a 1990 interview, strangely claimed that his resignation was not actually
a resignation and that his name appearing on the Gabler Edition cannot be construed as approval for
the edition.[6]
Personal Disagreement
Robin Bates, who covered the controversy for Smithsonian magazine, reports that both
Epstein and Tanselle had served on the board of the Library of America. Epstein had clashed with the
majority of the board over activities the library should be funding and was eventually voted off
the board. "In the aftermath, Epstein wrote Tanselle that he would no longer be able to trust his
judgment."[7]