Pub Phenomenology in the Works of James Joyce
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
University of Iowa Iowa Research Online Theses and Dissertations Spring 2010 The usual: pub phenomenology in the works of James Joyce Thomas M Keegan University of Iowa Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Copyright 2010 Thomas M Keegan This dissertation is available at Iowa Research Online: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/526 Recommended Citation Keegan, Thomas M. "The usual: pub phenomenology in the works of James Joyce." PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) thesis, University of Iowa, 2010. https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.34tkv1ig Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons THE USUAL: PUB PHENOMENOLOGY IN THE WORKS OF JAMES JOYCE by Thomas M. Keegan An Abstract Of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in English in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa May 2010 Thesis Supervisor: Professor Cheryl Herr 1 ABSTRACT My dissertation, “The Usual: Pub Phenomenology in the Works of James Joyce,” attempts to wrest the pub from critical dismissal as a token symbol of paternalistic Irish drunkenness and return it to the center of Joyce’s work as the site for his development of a philosophy of being. Read this way, the pub illustrates ways humans come to understand their place in the world through objects, practices, and later, as part of a public entity. The pub also tells the story of modernism’s impact on Irish society. Few spaces so deftly render the complexities of the modern Irish position: at the edge of the mechanizing forces of modernity and at odds with the vexing forces of British imperialism. Across five chapters and a conclusion, I read scenes of pub life in Joyce’s major works as the most illuminating indications of his phenomenological inquiry into the everyday. In Dubliners, Joyce outlines a trajectory for human development that passes through “childhood, adolescence, mature life, and public life.” This trajectory parallels the progress of a phenomenological inquiry into being. We begin with those things immediately available to us in childhood. We come to know the world through the objects surrounding us. Our encounters with doors, drawers, counters, and glasses reveal a host of practices that further embroider and define our experience of the world. This assemblage refigures humanity as a nexus of things and practices situated in space. For Irish masculinity in the early twentieth century, the public house often served as a central space for this connection. The pub’s public nature illustrates a kind of endpoint in the phenomenological inquiry just as Joyce ends his corpus with a book deeply absorbed in the overlapping soundscapes of a crowded public house. Investigating the how of our existence brings us face to face with other people. Being for Joyce, as it was for Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Jürgen Habermas, arises from the speech acts and human 2 contact afforded by publicness. In Joyce’s writing, there is no being that is not also a being among other people. I argue that the public house belongs to that set of unique spaces Michel Foucault terms “heterotopias.” They are spaces that buck the architectural, political, or spatial norms of the time and in so doing articulate a cultural engagement with being. The dissertation maps outs a Heideggerian account of “equipment” and conjoins it with the inventive sociological theory of Michel de Certeau, the spatial poetics of Gaston Bachelard, and the publics theory of Michael Warner. I close the dissertation with a brief look at the pub’s legacy in poems by Paul Durcan and Macdara Woods and the novel The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy. These works continue Joyce’s exploration of the pub as a space of memory and futurity, as the presence of expatriates and women in the public house lend new glosses to the practice of nostalgia and rounds respectively. Abstract Approved: ________________________________ Cheryl Herr, Thesis Supervisor ________________________________ Professor, English Department ________________________________ Date THE USUAL: PUB PHENOMENOLOGY IN THE WORKS OF JAMES JOYCE by Thomas M. Keegan A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in English in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa May 2010 Thesis Supervisor: Professor Cheryl Herr Copyright by THOMAS M. KEEGAN 2010 All Rights Reserved Graduate College The University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL _______________________ PH.D. THESIS _______________ This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of Thomas M. Keegan has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in English at the May 2010 graduation. Thesis Committee: ___________________________________ Cheryl Herr, Thesis Supervisor ___________________________________ Mary Lou Emery ___________________________________ John D. Peters ___________________________________ Harilaos Stecopoulos ___________________________________ Garrett Stewart To my mother, Joyce ii For you may be as practical as is predicable but you must have the proper sort of accident to meet that kind of a being with a difference. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (269.13-15) iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the generous and consistent support of the University of Iowa, its faculty, my friends, and family. I owe an immense debt of gratitude to my dissertation committee members for their guidance, support, joviality, and patience. In particular, I must thank Cheryl Herr who has done more for my thinking about Joyce than any other writer, scholar, critic, or friend. Whatever insights I convey in this work will bear the marks of her welcome and studied influence. In addition, my work was at various times facilitated by research conducted at Boston College’s John J. Burns Library, Emory University’s Manuscript Archive and Rare Book Library, and the National Library of Ireland in addition to Iowa’s own archives. My research was made possible by a Crossing Borders fellowship and a T. Anne Cleary research fellowship from the University of Iowa Graduate College, as well as the UI English department’s Frederick F. Seely fellowship. I must also thank the following institutions and people for shaping my engagement with pubspace and practice over the course of writing the dissertation: Jeff Doty, Mark Bresnan, Jason England, Josh Doster, Jeff Erickson, Chris Goodman, Ryan Brunette, Jerry Schimdt, Phil Lemke, Dave’s Foxhead Tavern, George’s Buffet, Joe’s Place, The Dublin Underground, The Deadwood, Le Tigre Lounge, Vincent’s, Mulligan’s, O’Neill’s in Pearse Street, The Modern Green Bar, and Mahaffey’s. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES vii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION/JAMES JOYCE AND THE PUB 1 The terms of (Heideggerian) phenomenology 12 Equipment 14 Practice and Space 18 Publicness 33 Temporality 38 II. PUB EQUIPMENT/DUBLINERS 50 Corners 53 The Public House 58 Doorways 65 Drinking 83 Mobile Pubs 97 III. PUB UNDERSTANDING/STEPHEN HERO AND A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN 106 Death and Drink Orders 108 The Epiphany’s Association with the Pub 118 Sex and Reverie 121 Roads to the Public House 130 IV. PUB FLOWS/ULYSSES 141 Pubtime 143 Language of Flow 151 Afterhours 161 V. BEING PUBLICITLY/FINNEGANS WAKE 166 Joy(ce) in the Pub 170 Eyegonblack/Augenblick 188 Public Technologies 191 Conclusion 193 VI. PUBS POST-JOYCE 197 BIBLIOGRAPHY 206 v LIST OF TABLES TABLE 1. Hubert Dreyfus’ breakdown of Part I of Being and Time and the place of Joyce’s work within this framework. 44 vi LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1. Gnomon 54 vii 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION JOYCE AND THE PUB Nothing happens in the public houses. People drink. James Joyce, Letters II After years of voluntary revisions and grudging excisions to his work, James Joyce grew increasingly desperate to retain the realist aesthetics of Dubliners. Joyce balked at his publisher’s request to change the names of the pubs and publicans in the book. The publisher, Grant Roberts, was concerned the establishments might seek legal action for libel if their real names were used. In an attempt to retain the names, Joyce frantically struck a number of poses. He plaintively stated: “nothing happens in the public houses. People drink.” He offered to accompany Roberts, with proofs in hand, to the publicans named in the stories, suggesting they might appreciate the publicity. And he pointed out that in substituting “fictitious names for the few real ones […] the selling value in Dublin of the book would go down.”1 The names, of course, found their way into the book and the number of pubs today advertising their inclusion or exclusion in his works testifies to Joyce’s foresight. As those establishments ply their trade partly in light of the merits of Joyce’s art, in this dissertation I read Joyce’s work as making use of the pub to develop his own brand of ontology. When Joyce disregards the activities of the public house as nothing, he is being at once disingenuous – drinking is not nothing – and admitting a social reality – drinking is nothing special. But Joyce saw in the nothing special of everyday life quite a lot that 1 Joyce, James, Stuart Gilbert, and Richard Ellmann. Letters, 1957. vol. 2, p. 312.. 2 impressed him. On a walk one day with his brother, Stanislaus, Joyce watched a man dodge a Dublin tram and caught a glimpse of how the mundane might matter. Do you see that man who has just skipped out of the way of the tram? Consider, if he had been run over, how significant every act of his would at once become. I don’t mean for the police inspector.