Review – Joyces Mistakes

Joyces Mistakes: Problems of Intention, Irony, and Interpretation

By Tim Conley
University of Toronto Press, 2003

Review by Allen Ruch
18 July 2003

In preparation for this review, I was re-reading a chapter of Joyces Mistakes during my morning commute on the F-train. Immersed in one of its passages, I continued reading as I exited the subway and walked along 32nd Street. A rather cheerful doorman—a fixture at the corner of 32nd and 6th—glanced at the spine of the book and called out, “Joyce Meyers! Great book.” Since then, believing me to be a self-empowered born-again Christian, he greets me warmly every time I pass by, often offering a few pleasantries or the occasional word of advice.

Although my new associate remains happily oblivious to his mistake, I have been enjoying our casual relationship, and it’s nice to have a friend on the street who’ll blow his whistle when I need a cab. But I do occasionally ponder a few questions. For instance, do I share responsibility for his error by failing to correct him right away? Does his mistaken assumption invalidate the “connection” between us? Or was it just, as Joyce famously described error, a “portal to discovery”? At the moment, only my “privileged position” allows me to see the irony in his “misreading.” But what if one day I share the truth with him, will we both get a good laugh? Or will he be offended?

In any event, he couldn’t have been more wrong about a right book. Tim Conley’s Joyces Mistakes is a vigorous and often delightful examination of the nature of error itself: What exactly is error? What are its consequences, both intended and unintended? How are error, interpretation, and irony related? Although the works of Joyce provide the bulk of material for his arguments, Conley is clear from the beginning that his study encompasses the whole of art, from abstract painting to pop songs; and perhaps even chance encounters on the street. (I should also mention up front that Tim Conley is a writer for The Modern Word.)

Joyces Mistakes is divided into two main sections, “Writing Error” and “Reading Error.” In the first, Conley appraises at the “fault lines” of modernism, suggesting that the aesthetic principles of modernity demand an acceptance of error. Asserting that “failure” is an integral part of the modernist project, which he sees as an ongoing process rather than an isolated era, Conley boldly claims that the “bravest” writers question “not only their own individual authority but that of the act of creation itself.” Through Herman Melville’s failure of totality to Marianne Moore’s failure of compression, Conley arrives at Ezra Pound, whose Cantos proclaim “my errors and wrecks lie about me.” This open rejection of absolute authority finds ultimate expression in James Joyce, whose visionary texts “are not ‘what they are’ but what they are becoming.”

After a brief tour of possible ways of perceiving Joyce—from infallible author to Derridean “event”—Conley uses Joyce to investigate the notion of authorial intention. With his academic groundwork established in the occasionally thorny previous chapters, it is here that Conley truly hits his stride, and his unique voice emerges with clarity and assurance. While avoiding the extreme position of dismissing the author altogether, Conley wisely places intention in perspective to an array of other elements, each exerting its own pressure on the act of interpretation. With a myriad of factors working to undermine textual authority, from the “fickling intentions” of the author himself to the error-prone process of editing, printing, and publishing, declaring any text “correct” is simply an impossibility. This, Conley reckons, is a good thing—a multiplicity of meanings creates fertile ground for authors, readers, and critics alike. This is not to imply that Conley considers all interpretations to be equally valid, or that the author may be safely declared dead; Conley’s postmodernism is wisely balanced by good old-fashioned common sense, and his lucid arguments are compelling in part because of their underlying sanity.

“Writing Error” closes with “(Sic) of Irony,” perhaps the strongest chapter in the book, and a good example of Conley’s penchant for punning titles. Recognizing that our current cultural climate is “one of virtually automated cynicism,” Conley examines the different manifestations of irony, naturally focusing on that which arises from the communication gap between author and reader. He contends that error and irony form the poles of a thriving dialectic, an either/or relationship positioned within various interpretational frameworks. Finding this dynamic to be essential to the continuing vitality of literature, Conley prescribes irony as a necessary destabilizing agent, occasionally required to inoculate texts against petrification. Joyce in particular was acutely attuned to this need, and works like Ulysses and Finnegans Wake deliberately defuse attempts to coerce conclusive meaning from their pages: “Joyce forces us to err and, consequently, compels us to be ironic about it.” With so many interpretations available, to state that the text “means” something is to fall into its trap: “every word of, on, or about Joyce is ironic in that it wrongs every other word of, on, or about Joyce.” That Conley’s book is yet more words of, on, or about Joyce does not escape his attention; in fact, one gets the distinct impression he delights in multiplying reflections in this tumultuous hall of mirrors. Even the title of the book is a self-reflexive irony functioning at multiple levels: a nod to the “missing” apostrophe of Finnegans Wake, a wink to those who’ll find irony in a mistake in the title of a book about mistakes, and a nudge to those who understand that the previous folks “don’t get it.”

The next section is preceded by a whimsical interlude of sorts, an exercise in spontaneous writing preserved with all its mistakes and typos intact. Calling it a “meditative experiment” on the “bumpy relationship” between temporality and text, Conley spends a few pages channeling Beckett’s Unnamable, writing freely “in the now” while “thinking about Joyce.” After these “intermittences of sullemn fulminace,” Joyces Mistakes continues its discussion of error by turning to the reader.

Somewhat more conversational than the previous sections, the three chapters of “Reading Errors” are basically an extended meditation on reading Finnegans Wake, written in a style that combines intellectual precision with an impish sense of amusement. After a discussion on “coming to terms” with the Wake through accepting one’s anxieties about the work, Conley examines the variety of ways that different readers interact with the book, from crazed prophesy-seekers to “gracehoper” critics. Conley half-jokingly describes Finnegans Wake as being virtually alive, a text that enters into a symbiotic relationship with its readers even as it “indoctrinates” them to new modes of reception. In a remarkable one-line description of the Wake, Conley suggests that “Finnegans Wake is a consciousness seeking another, perhaps greater consciousness.” He points out that the text of Finnegans Wake is inherently interrogative, posing its questions and riddles to the reader while evading answers and resolutions. In this way, the Wake mirrors the very process of reading itself, including misreading and interpretation, providing the reader with the opportunity to “recognize his or her own cognitive abilities” and to “test one’s own humanity, errors and all.” It’s a very animated and insightful discussion, sprinkled with savvy quotations from Finnegans Wake and sparking with Conley’s wit. Like the best critics who write about reading and enjoying the Wake, Conley understands not only its literary merits, but its enchanting humor and warmth as well.

After the chapter of “Erroneous Conclusions,” the book ends with a small appendix called “Quashed Quotatoes,” a rogues’ gallery of misquotations by Joycean critics and scholars. It is both an amusing and somewhat audacious way to conclude—after all, this is Conley’s first academic book on Joyce, and one might think he’d do well to respect his elders. But Conley’s style is so cheerfully disarming, his “quotatoes” seem more an expression of sympathy for fellow travelers than a pedantic list of corrections. This is not to suggest, however, that Conley is soft. On the contrary, he is quite opinionated, and he expresses his points throughout the book with admirable verve and self-confidence, especially when refuting fellow critics. Although generous with his praise (Michael Groden, Derek Attridge, and John Bishop figure highly), Conley is not afraid to point out contradictions and sloppy thinking, and occasionally he exposes the flawed core of another’s argument through a few drops of acid wit. Happily, Conley’s ironic commentary extends to himself as well. His dry sense of humor is a welcome and constant presence throughout the book, whether he’s engaging in clever wordplay, pointing out the quirks of academia, or making droll observations about his own “authorial intentions.”

And as for my friend the doorman, this Christmas he’s getting a copy of Finnegans Wake.

Additional Information

Joyce’s Mistakes
You can purchase the book at Amazon.com.

Author: Allen Ruch
First Posted: 18 July 2003
Last Modified: 16 June 2022
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