University of Tulsa

The Self-Reflexive Arranger in the Initial Style of Joyce's "Ulysses"

Author(s): John Somer
Source: James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Winter, 1994), pp. 65-79
Published by: University of Tulsa
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25485420
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musm

The Self-Reflexive Arranger

in the Initial Style of Joyce's Ulysses1
John Somer
Emporia State University

David Hayman
of the
the presence
announced
1970, when
an
in
to
offer
seemed
he
James Joyce's Ulysses,
arranger
approach
over the novel since 1922.2 From the
to readers who had puzzled
readers struggled with the book's extravagant
adherence
beginning,
deviation
For S. L.
to, and exuberant
from, mimetic
representation.
was
for
half
of
in
first
the
novel
the
realistic
1961,
Goldberg
example,
of
It is
and the last a "rather pretentious
parade
literary machinery"3
now that the mimetic
common
illusion of the entire
knowledge
them a traveling
novel is disrupted
devices,
among
by numerous
a
an
conclusion.
unresolved
disjointed
plot, and
point of view,
a traditional
realistic structure. While
Ulysses fails, then, to sustain
in
earlier critics, such as T. S. Eliot and Joseph Frank, found meaning
narrative
not
its
did
resolve
its poetic
structure,
problems.4
they
that there are meaningful
Their work did suggest, however,
patterns

In

seems to draw from both positions,

and while
in the text. Hayman
'lifelike" situations, he
he sees Ulysses as a realistic novel, containing
to see the
its structural difficulties.
He prefers, however,
recognizes
"as
functional
of
mean
the
book's
novel's multifarious
parts
aspects
ing" (Hayman xi-xii).
intro
of the mechanics
of Ulysses, Hayman
During his discussion
it as "a figure or a presence
duces the arranger and defines
that can
be identified neither with the author nor with his narrators, but that
an
of overt control over increasingly
exercises
increasing
degree
materials"
of the early
the narrator
(84). Gradually,
challenging
as cosmic
"into
the
artist-God
adds,
evolves,
Hayman
episodes
in
and
the
second
half
of
the
becomes,
eventually
Ulysses,
joker,"
a
a
creature
of
faces
"a
but
many
arranger,
larger
single impulse,
version of his characters with a larger field of vision and many more
to control" (93). In his 1982 revised "Ulysses": The Me
perceptions
offers a second definition:
chanics ofMeaning, Hayman
should
arranger
somewhere
function,

The

be

seen

between

as

something
the narrator

between
and

the

persona
implied

and

author,

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One

is tempted

best

to see

control.

the

to speak of "him" as an "it."...

arranger

as...

an unstated

but

Perhaps
inescapable

itwould

be

source

of

(122-23)

the work of other critics on the concept of the

acknowledging
he
insists
is "the sum of the narrative
that
the arranger
arranger,
a
than
it" (124). For Hayman,
the
rather
of
process
component
a
at
"the
narrative
fabric
of
the
arranger "subtly" penetrates
variety
of points and in a variety of ways" (124). As he develops
the "variety
a
of ways," he comes as close as he ever does to providing
descrip
tion of the functions
of the arranger. We are told the arranger is

After

in the initial action of Ulysses_It

is also behind...
the style shifts
the arranger
that mark each of the early chapters_Furthermore,
controls the suppression of information and action-Indeed,
just
should be attributed to
about any intrusive or arbitrary phenomenon
the arranging persona. (125)
the text of
then, is one of the creative forces behind
arranger,
an
it
but
for
undefined
remains,
Ulysses,
Hayman,
entity
amorphous
or purpose.
by presence
The

While Hayman's
to the novel has remained
influential,
approach
or de
his work with
the arranger has been emulated,
ignored,
is the arranger's greatest champion,
nounced. Hugh Kenner
analyz
its actions in 1980.5 Many recent critics, however,
ing and illustrating
such as Marilyn
French and Karen Lawrence,
ignore the arranger
and its potential
to justify the novel's fragmentation
because
they
view the uncertainties
of the novel as its point and theme.6 Likewise,
as
and Dermot Kelly see the novel's problems
John Paul Riquelme
that
could
dimensions
of
and
expressions
symbolic
psychic
mythic
no other way7 Others
be articulated
attack the arranger. Shari and
Bernard Benstock,
for example,
argue that the story does not issue
from either a narrator or an arranger but generates
itself as it pro
the
ceeds.8 Patrick McGee
believes
that it is an error to personify
"a
it
is
of
While
because
arranger
merely
arrangement."9
principle
view that the technical problems
in
recent critics share Hayman's
a
not
are
most
do
its
manifestation
of
share
theme,
Ulysses
Hayman's
as a sim
interest in the arranger.10 Perhaps
they see the arranger
as a
answer
to
reductive
and
the
novel's
thus,
and,
plistic
problems
and
of
attack
upon simplistic and
misrepresentation
betrayal
Joyce's
of
reductive
conceptions
reality11
as
is nearly as complex
The concept of the arranger, however,
a
To
its
relation
to
I
this
will
itself.
first
discuss
device,
study
Ulysses
and then Iwill
narrator
in both realistic and self-reflexive
fiction,
to the struggle between
the mimetic
and self
discuss
its relevance

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to those of a
its functions
traditions. Third, Iwill compare
Iwill explain how the initial style (Joyce's name for
Next,
of Ulysses) creates the arranger by
the style of the first ten episodes
a dramatic mimesis
to
in the first six episodes.12
achieve
failing
that constitute
I
will
five
the
devices
self-reflexive
Finally,
identify
in the first six episodes
the arranger's actions
of Ulysses before the
itself in the headlines
of the seventh
arranger
formally presents
"Aeolus."
episode,
An arranger is that part of an author's creative persona
responsi
creative options,
ble for weighing
for selecting a narrative
strategy,
a fictional world. A narrator is that part of
and finally for designing

reflexive
narrator.

of the arranger and

that same persona who carries out the decisions
In
in language.
the arranger's fictional world
who,
thus, manifests
the
the author while
the arranger remains behind
realistic fiction,
narrator stands in front of him. In novels narrated by an omniscient
the distinctions
narrator,
among the author, arranger,
third-person
and narrator tend to disappear,
creating the illusion that the author,
an omniscient
witness
of history, is speaking
truthfully to the reader
about events shaped by fate, not by an arranger. In realistic stories
a
the author
is clearly dis
narrated
narrator,
by
first-person
not
the
As
the narrator
from
the
narrator
but
arranger.
tinguished
the world from his vantage point, the author and arranger
describes
to orient
the reader both to the story and to the
work
together
a world
In Ken
narrator by manipulating
larger than the narrator's.
over the Cuckoo's Nest, for example,
One
Flew
arrang
Kesey's
Kesey's
the novel from the charge of antifeminism
defends
by
ing persona
a
Since
portrait of a woman.13
sympathetic
adding the "Jap nurse,"
the narrator's
story does not causally
require the nurse, her ap
events behind the
reveals the presence
of Kesey, arranging
pearance
Bromden.
Inmimetic
narrator?Chief
stories, then, the author may
himself
from his narrators, but he does not distinguish
disassociate
from the arranger.
himself
the arranger
exists
In self-reflexive
fiction,
however,
indepen
in
front
him
and
of
his narrator.
from
the
author,
standing
dently
his omniscient
control over the narrative
The arranger demonstrates
a reader's eyes. While
text
before
the
surface
of
the
by arranging
numerous
narrators
in
from
his
disassociates
himself
Ulysses
Joyce
writ
and his narrators
from his arranger, self-reflexive
and himself
ers tend to revise his strategy. With notable exceptions,
such as Tim
O'Brien's Going After Cacciato,14 they tend to unite the narrator with
the arranger. The result is that the narrator must voice the narrative
of the arranger.
strategies
the arranger
for example,

"The Leonardo,"
In Vladimir Nabokov's
narrator
the con
the
describes
through

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tours of the world

it has established:
"Now this is the way we'll
shall eat.
the world:
shall sweat, every man
arrange
every man
There will be work,
there will be a clean,
there will be belly-cheer,
As the arranger sketches
the social and moral
warm,
sunny-."15
this
of
life
of
the intellect. Clearly,
it
excludes
the
world,
perimeters
it create a literary universe
the arranger forces the reader to watch
and to see itsmimetic
which are
its arbitrary boundaries,
limitations,
to contain the story of the Leonardo.
The value
sufficient, however,
a vehicle for
of the arranger to self-reflexive writers
is that it provides
them to demonstrate
of knowledge,
their skepticism
just as an
narrator once manifested
omniscient
faith in knowledge.
The exis
in its
tential resonance
of the arranger can best be seen, however,
to the tradition of self-reflexion.
contribution
Because
is distinct from the author and his nar
Joyce's arranger
rators arguably for the first time in literary history, Ulysses is the first
of
direct assault on the presumptions
of realism by the conventions
self-reflexion.16
One of the central themes of this novel is the dis
the mimetic
tradition and the self
written-oral
crepancy between
a distinction
not clearly drawn before
reflexive written
tradition,
of written
1922. The mimetic
is a complex
tradition
written-oral
that a real story is
narrative
conventions
that fosters the illusion
the self-reflexive
tradition is a complex
being told orally. In contrast,
of written
narrative
conventions
that numerically
the
represents
to create the illusion of mimesis.
way writers use narrative devices
The mimetic written-oral
tradition encourages
readers to feel that
is believable
and that they have "lived"
the story they are reading
its characters and have learned as much or more than they
alongside
tradition achieves
have. The mimetic written-oral
this illusion in two
seem to mirror plausible
First, the texture of the story must
ways.
characters doing possible
the structure of the story
things. Second,
must seem to incorporate
the workings
of destiny
itself. Because
the
the third-person,
omniscient
narrator, embodies
narrator, especially
both the novel's texture and form, he is the heart of the mimetic
illusion. While
the narrator animates
the novel's moral and intellec
it is, paradoxically,
the personal
appeal of his voice
to
omniscient witness
that
humanizes
this
readers
speaking directly
of history and makes him accessible
and, thus, credible. His author
feature of the written
ity derives from his voice. The distinguishing
to
oral tradition,
of a narrator who pretends
then, is the presence
tual vision,

speak
desire

to readers. Perhaps
this convention
derives from the novel's
"to tell the secrets of men's hearts" with
the authority
of an

oral singer. As Robert Scholes

the authority of this convention

and Robert Kellogg

note, however,
in the written-oral
is compromised

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"in any written narrative" there is "at least a poten

because
an actual, ironic
the knowledge
tial, and usually
disparity between
and values of the author and those of the narrator."17 The "oral"
its siren call, is both the strength and weakness
narrator, then, with
tradition.
of the written-oral
seduced by a
readers,
Inexperienced
a
to
for
reliable
tend
the
ignore
craving
authority
disparity between
and narrators
want
to hear. The
authors
and to hear what
they
mimetic
written-oral
the per
tradition,
then, tends to reinforce
to reject the world of experience
vasive human
for amore
tendency
and fanciful one.
congenial
on the other hand,
The self-reflexive
written
tradition,
ejects
tradition

readers from the fancied illusion of the narrative and immerses them
in the sensual reality of processing
print on paper. Upon
finishing a
are
to
that
readers
self-reflexive
feel
story
they have lived
supposed
the life of the author as he creates a story before their eyes. Certainly,
the devices
with
that an author uses
acquainted
they will become
and the way he uses them to create the illusion that he ismirroring
readers may even come to see that stories are writ
reality. Possibly,
ten by mere people
to negotiate
with a
about ways
imaginatively
that resists rational apprehension.
The self-reflexive
tradition
two
in
such
the
texture
of the
First,
ways.
generates
perceptions
of characters,
and
story must suggest, however
faintly, the presence
itmust reveal the author's methods
them. Second,
the
of developing
structure of the story must
the author's conscious use of
incorporate
a
to provide an orderly and meaningful
shape to the story.
paradigm
the arranger selects the story's texture and form and, thus,
Because
its moral and intellectual value, the arranger is the mind
determines
the arranger issues from the
of the self-reflexive
experience.
Perhaps
"ironic disparity"
authors and narrators
in written
between
texts
man
to
is
reveal
men's
the
of
"secrets
whose
hearts."
By
aspiration
to a narrator, shows
this disparity,
the arranger,
ifesting
superior
means
of creating a formal order. Because
men's "real" secret-their

world

readers tend to ignore this disparity

they require an
inexperienced
Free of the spell of the
arranger to jar them from this misperception.
of
narrator, they will then have the power to focus upon the mystery
the world and the mind.
language and the elusive juncture between
written
The self-reflexive
tradition,
then, invites readers to reject a
to
vision
fanciful
and
the human quandary, how
accept
congenial
ever mystifying
itmay appear to be.
liter
Since the narrator and the arranger embody their respective
itwill be helpful
to compare
A nar
their functions.
ary traditions,
that
of the author's voice,
is a literary device
rator, reminiscent
fosters the illusion in readers that they are "hearing" the words
they

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of the author's mind and

read on the page. The arranger, reminiscent
that
is a literary device
that forces readers to acknowledge
a reader's mental
a
are
to
While
narrator
may
they
reading.
appeal
a
ear, the arranger frequently
eye. While
appeals to reader's physical
a narrator draws the reader into the narrative's
illusion, the arranger
alerts the reader to its typographical
reality. A narrator springs to life
a familiar
in his voice?his
his diction?and
becomes
cadences,
on
the
before
The
other
hand,
arranger,
arranges
type
personality
the reader's eyes and, because of the unexpected
nature of its work,
as a nar
As different
remains
foreign and appears manipulative.
rator and an arranger might
appear to be, however,
they share many
duties.
the author, standing
Just as a narrator masks
important
between
him or her and the text, so too can an arranger. Just as a
hand,

a character
own agenda,
narrator becomes
by setting his
beginning
to reveal his point, and
his story where he wishes,
the
story
shaping
so too can an arranger.
in his story the flow of his mind,
embodying
as any
to grow and develop
The arranger,
then, has the potential
character
in a story.
Joyce appears to see the arranger as a character because he drama
tizes its origins so carefully in the first six episodes
of Ulysses before
it in "Aeolus."
he formally
introduces
Like the mythic
figure
a fabulous artifice
the arranger rises from a labyrinth,
Daedalus,
ever haz
the initial style. The most venturesome
form of mimesis
arded by a novelist,
of the
the initial style clarifies the aspirations
mimetic
to present
written-oral
tradition by attempting
reality ob
as
a
are
Such
and,
result,
jectively
authoritatively.
goals
implicit in
as articulated
the conclusion
in A
of Stephen Dedalus's
aesthetic
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. While
and
his
friend,
Stephen
three
Lynch, stroll through the streets of Dublin,
Stephen discusses
issues: the purpose of art, the nature of beauty, and the forms of art.
At

this stage of his career, Stephen's

reaches its crescendo
aesthetic
in his final point. Art, he says, has three forms, the lyrical (the most
the epical, and the dramatic
If art is
(the most objective).
subjective),
to represent
life truly, the artist must provide his audience no more
than God provides
them with life. The artist
help with his narrative
should remain "within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork,
invisible, refined out of existence,
indifferent, paring his fingernails"
to Stephen,
itmust be
if art is to be authoritative,
(P 215). According
that is, dramatic
in form.
a
strove
and objective
for
dramatic
Joyce
style in both
and A Portrait, the initial style seems to be Joyce's fullest
of Stephen's
aesthetic.18 The distinguishing
feature of
expression
narrator. To
the initial style is the limited role of the omniscient

objective,
While
Dubliners

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it with
interior monologues
demote
the narrator,
Joyce surrounds
of the novel
and with
free indirect discourses.
The introduction
illustrates
the initial style. Its first sentence,
"Stately plump Buck
came from the stairhead,
a bowl of lather on which
Mulligan
bearing
a mirror
and a razor lay crossed"
is the work of an
(U 1.01-02),
narrator.19 The narrator continues
the actions
to describe
omniscient
and Stephen Dedalus
their di
and to introduce
of Buck Mulligan
tower on the morning
of 16 June. Before
alogue on top of Martello
the first page is finished,
leaves the omnis
however,
Joyce seemingly
a device
cient narrator
interior monologue,
for a one word
that
the reader to leave the narrator and enter the minds
of
are
to experience
and
what
characters
feel
they
thinking
directly
pages,
Joyce adds a third narrative device to the initial
ing.20 Within
indirect discourse. With
this device,
the narrator adopts
style?free
even a scene,
the idiom of one character or another and sometimes
and thus allows the reader the sensation
of being in the mind of the
of a scene without
characters or in the ambience
actually leaving the
narrator.21 Unlike
the interior monologue,
grasp of the omniscient
a character
reveals what
free indirect
which
knows,
consciously
can reveal both what a character is aware of and what he is
discourse
narrative devices enables the initial
ignorant of. The fusion of these
to
events
and to reveal the subjective world to
present
objective
style
narrator
As the omniscient
into the
recedes
almost any degree.
more
more
to
narrative
and
and
of
the
surrenders
background
even the
and free indirect discourses,
interior monologues
dialogue,
to be reported,
seems to exist independently
rather than appearing
of transitions.
of the narrator,
Thus con
hinged
by the merest
from the text all but the last rem
the initial style removes
stituted,
nant of the narrator's presence,
readers to enter
apparently
allowing
a result, the initial style seems to create for Joyce a
As
directly.
Ulysses
of drawing
readers into the story
flexible and nearly invisible means
them that they are actually reading a book. The
without
reminding
a technical attempt to refine the
is ostensibly
initial style, therefore,
"artist" from the story and to achieve the dramatic mode of mimesis.
to present
filtering it through a nar
reality without
By appearing
to mask
the "ironic disparity"
rator, the style seems, paradoxically,
seems to reveal to the world
from
authors and narrators,
between
allows

"every side" and to expose the "secrets of men's hearts," and, finally,
the objectivity
and the au
seems to achieve
of Stephen's
aesthetic
thenticity of an oral singer.
success of its
the initial style, despite the apparent
Unfortunately,
fusion of the effaced narrator
dramatic
to achieve such authority and instead

and interior monologue,

the flaw within
intensifies

fails
the

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the initial style has two fundamental

tradition because
For
the effaced narrator and free indirect discourse.
same
creates
of
weaknesses
this
combination
however,
tunately,
in the written-oral
to the irony inherent
Joyce's original response

written-oral
weaknesses:

tradition: that is, the self-reflexive

strategy of the arranger.
mimesis
initial style is the narrative
juncture between

Thus, the
and self

reflexion.
The first problem with the initial style is the effaced narrator. As
narrator shrinks within
the omniscient
the text, the narrative seems
to advance
itself as itmoves from one narrative device to another. In
the first episode,
for example,
the narrator describes
Buck Mulligan
as he descends
Tower: "His head vanished
from the top of Martello
out of the stairhead"
of his descending
voice boomed
as
Then dialogue
Buck
(U 1.237-38).
quotes from W. B.
appears
more turn aside and
no
Yeats's "Who Goes with
"-And
Fergus":
I For Fergus rules the brazen cars" (U
brood IUpon love's bitter mystery
In the next paragraph,
to
the style shifts immediately
1.242-47).22
romantic
free indirect discourse,
and the narrator,
the
assuming
diction
and vision
the morning
of early Yeats, describes
scene,
"Woodshadows
floated silently by through the morning
peace from
breast of the dim
the stairhead
seaward where he gazed_White
on
words
sea_Wavewhite
wedded
the dim tide" (U
shimmering
and describes
1.242-47). The narrator returns in the next paragraph
the same scene,
"A cloud began
to cover the sun slowly, wholly,
the bay in deeper green" (U 1.248-49). Then the narrator,
shadowing
free
describes
the bay using an image
indirect discourse,
assuming
"It lay
from Stephen
of his mother's
deathbed:
Dedalus's memory
Next
beneath him, a bowl of bitter waters"
the
(U 1.249).
paragraph
to Stephen's
shifts without
interior monologue,
warning
"Fergus'
song: I sang it alone in the house" (U 1.249-50).
(As his mother
lay on
her deathbed nearly a year before the novel's time, she had asked her
son to pray for her and instead heard him
sing Yeats's poem.)
continues
for
several
sentences,
Stephen's monologue
ending with
his quoting his mother, who repeated Stephen's words from Yeats's
"For those words,
love's bitter mystery"
(U
poem:
Stephen:
but the drone

1.252-53).
As this brief passage
the initial style shifts often and
illustrates,
one
narrative
to another. In order for these
from
mode
unexpectedly
shifts to occur economically
the narrator
shrinks within
the text
to
readers
the
encounter
the
and, consequently,
gives
opportunity
a narrator and to
narrative without
De
what
experience
Stephen
dalus
ates,

form of narration.
calls the dramatic
its audience
the feeling
then, within

The initial style gener

that they are in contact

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reality that is rendered directly to them and not one mediated

a
In the written-oral
tradition, how
through
prejudiced
sensibility.
is short-lived
readers
because
ever, this confidence
simply have
were
not
and
would
if
auditors
time-which
have
they
they
really
a passage,
to consider
not readers-time
such as the one described

with

it. For example,

and to question
if the narrator is refined from
tomove from description
to
the narrative, who makes
the decisions
to
free
indirect
to
The
interior
and
discourse,
dialogue,
monologue?
answer, of course, is James Joyce. Since that is true, the artist literally
is not being refined from Ulysses, only the narrator is, and they are
As a result, the initial style, with
its effaced
ironically disparate.
It not
artistic objective.
narrator, seems to fulfill Stephen Dedalus's
to
fails
and
his
distance
eliminate
the
ironic
between
only
Joyce
as no omniscient
narrator ever
narrator, but, ironically, it identifies,
above

the subjective
is in this seemingly
author
exactly where
It reveals each and every decision
novel.
that the author's
with
makes.
its
intricate mix of
The
initial
persona
arranging
style
to
narrative
techniques,
suggest to a reader that
ostensibly
designed
he or she is experiencing
the
novel's
imagined reality, finally
directly
effect. The effaced narrator
forces a reader to
has the opposite
a human construct
the fact that he or she ismerely
confront
reading
and is not actually
'living" this story. In short, the effaced narrator
could,

objective

to the real drama

points

behind

its mimetic

illusion,

the life of the

arranger.

reason the initial

Free indirect discourse
is not only the second
an authoritative mimesis;
to
it
is
also the trapdoor
fails
achieve
style
onto
set of Ulys
which
the
the
dramatic
arranger
through
springs
in Ulysses
ses.23 Free indirect discourse is essentially
mimicry, which
at least between
the mimic and his or her
creates an ironic distance,
an omniscient
narrator dons
this technique,
object.24 To implement
with the ease of a consummate
actor a character's reality by mimick
Since the effaced narrator of Ulysses is the
ing his or her language.
in free indirect discourse,
mimic
in the
it finds itself paradoxically
hearts and souls of its characters and in the grammar and syntax of
the narrator struggles
to remain backstage,
free
the novel.25 While
forces it to center stage where
it manifests
the
indirect discourse
narrator and character and, thus, drama
between
ironic distance
tizes the ironic disparity between
author and narrator.26 Within
the arranger,
of the labyrinthian nature of writing,
manifestation
is
and
of
with
it
the
mimetic
born,
self-reflexion,
fragile
agent
an author, a story, and a reader is altered.
liance between
While
arranger

the effaced narrator

in the initial style,

this
the
al

create the
and free indirect discourse
they are not its only manifestations.

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it begins
to
the arranger is in the text of the first six episodes,
their mimetic
order in five ways,
the first three appearing
the first six episodes
of the novel. First, it
pervasively
throughout
so that it points
to
renders
itself, rather than
opaque
language
to
the
has
identified a good
narrative.
Kenner
itself
through
pointing
illustration of the arranger's work in the unorthodox
spelling of the
cat (66). The cat answers Bloom with an unlikely
Bloom's
of
mewing
same
and unsightly,
both
"Mkgnao" (U 4.16). Later in the
episode,
amore conventional
the narrator and Bloom demonstrate
spelling of
to
that sound
fails
the
(U 4.456, 462). While
suggest
"Mkgnao"
a
it
of
sound
does
the
fondness
for
manifest
cat,
arranger's
ordinary
Once

disrupt

arranging
type.
Next the arranger

uses narrative devices

that divert readers from
to their experience
their experience
of the narrative
of reading the
text. One of Bloom's
in "Hades" is a case in
interior monologues
It draws readers into such an intense engagement
the
with
point.
novel's Active reality that they ironically experience
their own plea
sure in
the men wait in their carriage to
reading the passage. While
follow Paddy Dignam's
the arranger seizes
corpse to the cemetery,
the reins of the narrative:
All waited. Then wheels were heard from in front, turning: then
nearer: then horses' hoofs. A jolt. Their carriage began to move,
creaking and swaying. Other hoofs and creaking wheels started be
hind. The blinds of the avenue passed and number nine with its
craped knocker, door ajar. At walking pace. (U 6.24-28)
are pre
and conceptual,
Bloom's experiences
here, both sensual
sented with such immediacy
in the interior monologue
that readers
admire the novelty of the passage
and savor the experience
of having
read it. The arranger invites readers to enjoy their own experiences
over those of the fictive characters.
The arranger also manipulates
the narrative voice to reveal the
within
itself. In "Hades," after nearly three complete
epi
of the
about Bloom, readers might come to think momentarily
of the novel as that of an omniscient
narrator limited to
perspective
are jarred from
the central intelligence
of Leopold Bloom. Readers
with
when he
their comfortable
this
however,
narrator,
relationship
are
events
in
readers
Bloom's
absence.
Moreover,
begins
reporting
not given the opportunity
to read over these two brief lapses in
divisions
sodes

in both instances
the
because,
690-707),
(U 6.526-34,
consistency
is gossip about Bloom. The narrative
content
invites readers, then,
to think about Bloom and to question
is able to
how the narrator
of
the
the
function
him.
Thus,
encourages
arranger
independently

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reader

to see the divisions

that reside within

the novel's

narrative

strategy.
In addition
on
attention

to rendering
to focusing
readers'
language opaque,
and to dividing
the
the narrative
voice,
themselves,
While
the
traits.
arranger also reveals two seemingly
contradictory
an ideal memory
it
of the text by having
arranger demonstrates
within
the
itself, it also creates mysteries
repeat, quote, or parody
a reader's use of memory
narrative
that nullify
and reason. An
a faculty that makes
of the arranger's textual memory,
the
example
the "author's ideal reader," occurs in "Calypso" when
the
arranger
narrator
from over forty pages earlier: "A cloud
repeats a passage
to
cover
sun
the
The repeti
(171.248,4.218).27
began
slowly, wholly"
and
tion invites readers to seek parallels between
Bloom as,
Stephen
see the same cloud,
it
undermines
apart, they
yet
covertly
episodes
this invitation by encouraging
readers to ask questions
that have no
con
answers.
Ironically, such covert attacks on the novel's mimetic
in the
tract with a reader help to generate
the narrative mysteries
as
novel. While
the entire text of Ulysses might be properly described
a mystery,
occurs in
of a narrative mystery
the first real example
an unknown
a macintosh
attends
"Hades," when
figure wearing
This
funeral.
the
novel,
appears
figure
throughout
Paddy Dignam's
and remains as an inexplicable
but he is never accurately
identified
someone mistakenly
in Ulysses,
referred to as "MTntosh"
problem
as these last two devices may be,
As different
(U 6.891-96).
they
the mimetic
illusion
further expand the arranger's ability to disrupt
alert readers to the
these five devices
of the initial style. Together,
in the
fallacy of the initial style and begin their education
the
self-reflexive
of
arranger.
ways
the arranger
before
shouts his presence
in, then
Consequently,
in
the
headlines
block
hides
blazoned
among,
capitals
impishly
across the initial
episode,"Aeolus,"
Joyce has
style of the seventh
introduced
the arranger in the first six
carefully and systematically
In
and
of
dramatizes
the aspiration
them,
Ulysses.
Joyce
episodes
tradition to capture the authority
failure of the mimetic written-oral

mimetic

of mimesis
when
carried to extremes
of an oral singer, the tendency
and the union of five self-reflexive
devices
to turn into self-reflexion,
the first manifestation
of the arranger. A careful
that constitute
that the novel's
reading of the text of Ulysses will reveal, I believe,
to learn the ways
of
styles reflect the arranger's attempt
the arranger appears to challenge
narration. By the seventh episode,
the narrator for control of the novel, and by the eleventh
episode,
it seems to have
"Sirens," it seems to have succeeded.
By "Penelope,"
to influ
self-reflexive
and mimetic
learned to balance
conventions,

various

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ence both the surf ace of the text and a reader's apprehension
of it, to
its life somewhere
have created an art object that acquires
between
a
its pages
and a reader-at
juncture where
print and
magical
one
It
is
and
flow
another.
into
merge
imagination
likely, then, that
the arranger is the dominant
character in Ulysses and that the deci
the essential plot of
sions itmakes and the actions it takes constitute
not by a narrator's developing
the novel, a plot measured
portrait of
an
is the
such
but
of
If
reality
by
style.28
arranger's growing mastery
case, the artist, clearly distinct from his narrators and even from his
remains
refined out of existence,
indifferent,
"invisible,
arranger,
an
his
and
achieves
derived
paring
Ulysses
authority
fingernails,"
encounter with
not from a
the human quandary,
from an honest
an oral
singer.
parody of
This idea of the arranger is not exactly what Hayman
had inmind.
He never explicitly
identifies
it as a creative entity with a coherent
narrative strategy for Ulysses. Once this identification
ismade, how
ever, the narrator
(the self
(the mimetic
agent) and the arranger
reflexive agent) share equal billing as sources of the narrative,
and
accounts
their struggle
for control of Ulysses
and
for,
structurally
in
and
the
contradictions
the
thematically
irregularities
justifies,
to something
text. Joyce alludes
like the arranger with
Stephen's
for the classical Daedalus-"fabulous
artificer" (P 169).
appellation
But we have the word arranger, and while many doubt its existence,
a
and others dispute
few share Kenner's
its purpose,
persistent
the most
observation
that Joyce's creation of the arranger "is perhaps
in all of Ulysses" (64).
innovation
radical, the most disconcerting

NOTES
1The research for this
study was sponsored by a grant from the Research
and Creativity Committee at Emporia State University.
2David
Hayman, "Ulysses": TheMechanics ofMeaning, rev. and exp. (1970;
Madison: Univ. ofWisconsin Press, 1982), pp. 88-104,122-25. Further refer
ences will be cited parenthetically
in the text.
3 S. L.
The
Classical
Goldberg,
Temper: A Study of James Joyces "Ulysses"
(London: Chatto & Windus,
1963), p. 22.
4T. S.
Eliot, "Ulysses, Order, and Myth," Dial, 75 (November 1923),
480-83; rpt. James Joyce: TlvoDecades of Criticism, ed. Seon Givens (New York:
Vanguard, 1963), pp. 198-202; Givens, pp. 201-02; Joseph Frank, "Spatial
Form inModern Literature," Sewanee Review, 53 (1945); rev. in The Widening
Gyre: Crisis andMastery inModern Literature (Bloomington: Indiana Univ.
Press, 1963), pp. 3-62.
5
Hugh Kenner, Ulysses, rev. ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press,
the presence of the arranger in the first
1987). While Kenner demonstrates
half of the novel, he also attributes most of the arranger's indifference

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toward the reader to the "sour xenophobic

toward

its visitors.

Even

(p. 65) of Dublin

indifference"

sees

Kenner

though

as

the arranger

for

responsible

the quirks in the text, he insists that Joyce is the governing consciousness
behind it. See pp. 61-71, especially pp. 65, 68-69. Further references will be
in the text.
cited parenthetically
6
Marilyn French attributes the narrative twists in Ulysses to Joyce's use of
Einsteinian ideas; see The Book as World: James Joyce's "Ulysses" (Cambridge:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 3-22, especially p. 4. Karen Lawrence
the

acknowledges
narrative

as an excellent

arranger

term

in the text but rejects it because

intrusion"

which

consciousness,"

that

suggests

"for capturing

"it posits
there

sense

the

is an

"absolute

of

of a

the existence

to

way

order experience." See The Odyssey of Style in "Ulysses" (Princeton: Princeton

Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 14, 64, 208. Further references to the Lawrence work
in the text.
will be cited parenthetically
7 See
John Paul Riquelme, Teller and Tale in Joyce's Fiction: Oscillating
Perspectives (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1983), p. xv and Dermot
Kelly, Narrative Strategies in Joyce's "Ulysses" (Ann Arbor: UMI Press, 1988),
p.

2.

8 Shari Benstock and Bernard

Benstock, "The Benstock Principle," The
Seventh of Joyce, ed. Bernard Benstock (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press;
Sussex: Harvester, 1982), pp. 10-21. They argue that if the term narrator is
inadequate to describe the narrative strategy of Ulysses, then arranger will
fail also?p.

18.

9Patrick

McGee, Paperspace: Style as Ideology in Joyce's "Ulysses" (Lincoln:

Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1988), pp. 72-74.
10Naomi
Segal attributes the "stylistic play" to the "implied author"; see
Flaubert, Joyce, Schnitzler,
"Style indirect libre to Stream-of-Consciousness:
Woolf," Modernism and the European Unconscious, ed. Peter Collier and Judy
Davies (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), p. 101. Further references will
in the text.
be cited parenthetically
11
For

an

that

argument

device and as a philosophical

and Marriage
Monocausality,
12
See

LettersI,

p.

129.

debunks

Ulysses

Both

Hayman

presence

in the initial style, but neither

Hayman,

pp.

124-25

and

as

monocausality

literary

see Robert E. Spoo, "Teleology,

proposition,
in Ulysses," ELH, 56 (Summer 1989), 439-62.

Kenner,

p.

Kenner

note

speculates

upon

and

the

arranger's

its origins.

See

71.

13Ken
Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (New York: Viking Press,
1962).
14Tim
O'Brien, Going After Cacciato (New York: Delacorte Press, 1978).
15Vladimir
Nabokov, A Russian Beauty and Other Stories (New York:
McGraw Hill, 1973), p. 12.
16

For

Jerome

Klinkowitz,

Joyce,

for all his

"language

games,"

is a modern

ist trying to find out if culture can survive "without the confident assump
tions of nineteenth-century
science and philosophy"; see The Self-Apparent
Word: Fiction as Language I Language as Fiction (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 41-42. I do not deny Joyce's modernist
agenda but
to
to
debt
clarify postmodernism's
Joyce. Ulysses slowly introduces
hope
self-reflexive conventions
among the realistic ones and finally creates a
satisfactory

blend.

17Robert Scholes
Oxford Univ. Press,

Perhaps

such

a conclusion

and Robert Kellogg,

1966), pp. 51-53.

awaits

postmodernism

The Nature of Narrative

itself.

(London:

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18
Many critics doubt the relevance of Stephen's aesthetic to Ulysses.
Scholes and Marlena G. Corcoran argue that Joyce merely took his own
juvenilia and polished it "to support [Stephen's] claim to artistic status" inA
Portrait; see "The Aesthetic Theory and the Critical Writings," A Companion
to Joyce Studies, ed. Zack Bowen and James F. Carens (Westport: Greenwood
Publishers, 1984), pp. 689, 694.
19
as the free indirect
Experienced readers of Ulysses may see this sentence
discourse of either Mulligan or Dedalus. A reader new to the text, however,
see

will

it in conventional

norm,"

terms,

what

creating

calls

Lawrence

a "narrative

38-53.

pp.

20Kenner observes that as

Stephen looks into Buck's mouth, he sees his
gold fillings and thinks, "Chrysostomos" (U 1.26), an allusion to eloquence
or

to one

who

is

35.

p.
21After Buck "golden-mouthed,"
Mulligan recites a passage from W. B. Yeats's "Who Goes
with Fergus," Collected Poems (New York: Macmillan,
1956), p. 43, the nar
rator, assuming the romantic diction and vision of early Yeats, describes the
floated silently by through the morning
scene, "Woodshadows
morning
wedded
peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed_Wavewhite
of this
words shimmering on the dim tide" (U 1.242-47). For discussions
technique, see Lawrence, pp. 19-20, and Kenner, Joyces Voices (Berkeley:
Univ. of California Press, 1978), especially "The Uncle Charles Principle,"
pp.

15-38.
22

See

21.

endnote

23While
experienced readers may see the arranger's hand in the first
words of the novel, the arranger first overtly appears in the passage from
"Telemachus" (U 1.242-47), quoted in endnote 19, and, thus, begins the
education

of

rather

a reader

new

to

text.

the

Lawrence

also

sees

as an "antecedent of the radical stylistic developments

discourse
than

24Not

the

stream-of-consciousness

p.

technique,"

free

indirect

in Ulysses

24.

all free indirect discourse is mimicry as demonstrated

by Segal
(p. 110) and Roy Pascal, The Dual Voice: Free Indirect Speech and Its Functioning
in the Nineteenth-Century
European Novel (Manchester, Eng.: Manchester
Univ. Press; Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Iittlefield, 1977), pp. 45-60. In such
the author/narrator

cases,

shares

language

with

the

characters.

When

free

indirect discourse ismimicry, however, it contributes to self-reflexion be

cause, as M. M. Bakhtin argues, mimicry "rips the word away from its
object"; see The Dialogic Imagination (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981),
p.

55.

25
Roy K. Gottfried agrees that the "artist-god" is present in the novel's
language; see The Art of Joyce'sSyntax in "Ulysses" (Athens: Univ. of Georgia
Press, 1980), p. 160.
26
in Flaubert (p. 98). As much as he
Segal notes the same phenomenon
tries to remove himself from his texts, his use of free indirect discourse
attention
readers'
focuses
27
In the second
instance

upon
the

that the arranger's knowledge

suggests

the

arranger

has

access

him.
clause

terminates

in a

of the text is superior

to "a

book,"

period.

Kenner

tomere memory
p.

says

and

65.

printed
28 I believe that the
composition history of Ulysses supports such an
hypothesis. Michael Groden, in "Ulysses" in Progress (Princeton: Princeton
Univ. Press, 1977), notes that Ulysses iswritten in three styles. When Joyce
started to use a new style, he did not obscure the earlier one but allowed it to

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as a palimpsest involving all three stages" of

suggests that Joyce did not have an initial
throughout the writing of the novel and had to
taught him how to revise his artistic impulses
(pp. 37,77,126,158,165-68,194).
Normally, when awriter changes his style,
he completely revises the text, as Joyce did when he abandoned Stephen
Hero and started over with A Portrait. I believe that the composition history
argues that the end of the novel is anticipated by its beginning. Why else
would Joyce superimpose
the headlines,
the first blatant sign of the ar
ranger, on the initial style in "Aeolus" after he had invented the final style, if
he had not seen a connection between the two?
stand "as if to present Ulysses
composition
(p. 4). Groden
overview that sustained him
wait until climactic episodes

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