GablerТs loudest and most persistent critic, John Kidd, has since 1988 steadily and relentlessly attacked the edition. With a great deal of rhetorical flurry and a few oft-repeated examples, Kidd captured a great deal of attention. But all his pages of supposed analysis, and the sixty pages of tables and charts of GablerТs alleged errors and inconsistencies in his СInquiryТ into the edition, managed finally to demonstrate only two errorsЧmistranscriptions of the names СBullerТ at 5.560 and СThriftТ at 10.1259Чand to point to one reading that resulted from the editorТs inconsistency in following his editionТs own stated rules of procedure. The passage in questionЧdiscussed in GablerТs СNote on the TextТЧis at 16.1804-5: Сwas not quite the same as the usual handsome blackguard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering afterТ should be Сwas not quite the same as the usual blackguard type they unquestionably had an indubitable hankering after.Т In this instance, the editorТs diminished attention to the rule of the invariant context and his mistaking of an authorial revision based on a transmission error for a mere correction led him astray. The items on KiddТs long lists can be checked individually and will possibly lead to exposure of other errors or debatable readings or decisions, but the tables are constructed so capriciously and idiosyncratically, with so little demonstrated understanding of GablerТs theoretical assumptions and procedures, and with no coherent or consistent indication of KiddТs own working assumptions that they can point to errors or misjudgments only by accident. KiddТs campaign forced a great deal of negative attention on this edition but has ultimately revealed very little at all about it. It is to be hoped that the kind of inquiry that McGann and other critics have called for can now come to the forefront.4
Such an inquiry is possible because, like any responsible editor, Gabler discussed his editorial procedures and laid out his decisions fully in Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition. He defines a Сcritical editionТ by Сthe complex interdependence of a text established from the ground upТ as opposed to marking up and correcting an existing text Сand its interfacing apparatus.Т Many different kinds of critical editions are possible, including a copytext edition or a different kind of nontraditional edition, but for all of them the text itself constitutes only one part. Equally essential is the apparatus, which acknowledges the hand of the editor. Readers should be extremely suspicious of any edition that presents itself as a reading text without an apparatus spelling out all its editorТs assumptions and decisions.
Anyone wishing to follow the logic and procedures that produced the readings in this edition, in other words to listen to the editor speaking as editor, is strongly urged to use the line numbers here to find the corresponding passage in Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition, with its synoptic text on the facing left-hand page. Likewise, more detailed explanations of GablerТs assumptions and procedures are available in his Afterword to the three-volume edition and in his articles СOn Textual Criticism and Editing: The Case of JoyceТs UlyssesТ
Michael Groden
August 1993
NOTES
1 The list of References following this Afterword contains bibliographic details about all works mentioned in the text and about some other valuable studies of the edition.
2 Some critics have argued that the first edition can and should serve as the basis for an orthodox copytext edition of Ulysses. The claim can be assessed only when an edition of this kind is actually produced.
3 Gabler has gone on to produce JoyceТs Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in more traditional copytext editions, but even there, as he explains in the Introduction to Portrait, he has resisted emending the copytext solely to fulfil final authorial intention.
4 The above assessments of KiddТs attacks are elaborated in my СResponseТ to KiddТs СInquiryТ and in GablerТs СWhat Ulysses Requires.Т
REFERENCES
Gabler, Hans Walter. СAfterwordТ to James Joyce. Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition. Ed. Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1984. 3:1859-1907.
ЧЧЧЧ. СIntroductionТ to James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ed. Gabler with Walter Hettche. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1933, pp. 1-18. Edited text reprinted, New York: Vintage, 1993.
ЧЧЧЧ. СOn Textual Criticism and Editing: The Case of JoyceТs Ulysses.Т Palimpsest: Editorial Theory in the Humanities. Ed. George Bornstein and Ralph G. Williams. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993, pp. 195-224.
ЧЧЧЧ. СWhat Ulysses Requires.Т Papers† of the Bibliographical Society of America (forthcoming).
Goldman, Arnold. СJoyceТs Ulysses as Work in Progress: The Controversy and Its Implications.Т Journal of Modem Literature 15 (1989): 579-88.
Greetham. D. C. СThe Manifestation and Accommodation of Theory in Textual Editing.Т Devils and Angels: Textual Editing and Literary Theory. Ed. Philip Cohen. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1991, pp. 78-102.
Groden, Michael. СFoostering Over Those Changes: The New Ulysses.Т James Joyce Quarterly 22 (1985): 137-59.
ЧЧЧЧ. СA Response to John KiddТs СAn Inquiry Into Ulysses: The Corrected TextТ.Т James Joyce Quarterly 28 (1990): 81-110.
Joyce, James. Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition. Ed. Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior. 3 vols. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1984.
Kidd, John. СAn Inquiry Into Ulysses: The Corrected Text.Т Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 82 (1988): 411-584.
ЧЧЧЧ. СThe Scandal of Ulysses.Т New York Review of Books, June 30, 1988, pp. 32-39.
Mahaffey, Vicki. СIntentional Error: The Paradox of Editing JoyceТs Ulysses.Т Representing Modernist Texts: Editing as Interpretation. Ed. George Bornstein. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991, pp. 171-91.
McGann, Jerome J. СUlysses as a Postmodern Work.Т Social Values and Poetic Acts: The Historical Judgment of Literary Work. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp. 173-94. Reprinted from Criticism 27 (1985): 283-306.
Sandulescu, C. George, and Clive Hart, ed. Assessing the 1984 СUlysses.Т Gerrards Cross, Bucks: Colin Smythe, and Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1986.
СSpecial Issue on Editing Ulysses.Т Ed. Charles Rossman. Studies in the Novel 22 (Summer 1990).
СUlysses: The Text Ч The Debates of the Miami JТyce Conference.Т James Joyce Literary Supplement 3 (Fall 1989).
Michael Groden is Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of СUlyssesТ in Progress (Princeton University Press, 1977), general editor of The James Joyce Archive (63 volumes, Garland Publishing, 1977-79), compiler of James JoyceТs Manuscripts: An Index (Garland Publishing, 1980), and co-editor of The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). He served as an adviser to Hans Walter Gabler on Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition.