Review of Janine Utell's James Joyce and the Revolt of Love: Marriage, Adultery, Desire

In 1921, James Joyce refused to grant Jacques Benoist-Mechin’s request to see the Ulysses schema, even though Benoist-Mechin was in the midst of translating portions of the novel into French. According to Richard Ellmann, Joyce responded humorously by protesting that ‘‘If I gave it all up immediately, I’d lose my immortality. I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality’’ (JJ 521). Joyce’s jocoserious denial has become a foundational narrative of the scholarly industry his work has spawned, as well as a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the centenary of the 1922 publication of Ulysses approaches and with the hundredth anniversary of the 1907 edition of Chamber Music— Joyce’s first published text—already passed, the accuracy of Joyce’s proclamation, as well as his immortality, seems assured. A recent ‘‘Joyce, James’’ search of the MLA database netted over 10,000 citations, and neither the arguments nor the pace of publications shows any signs of abating. But have Joyceans finally exhausted everything there is to say about the seven major prose works, two poetry collections, voluminous letters, and extensive manuscript holdings? Having passed through phases of scholarship dominated by psychoanalysis, structuralism, deconstruction, poststructuralism, feminism, historicism, post-colonialism, and genetic criticism among others, is the Joyce industry, like the river Liffey in Finnegans Wake, experiencing a ‘‘commodious vicus of recirculation’’ (FW 3.2)? Are we indeed destined to repeat ‘‘The seim anew’’ (FW 215.23)? Derek Attridge rightly points out in Joyce Effects: On Language, Theory, and History (2000) that commentary begets commentary, and the vast