Nick Sweeney - Daedalus: All Dublin Talking (2023)

 

Never having read Ulysses, I may be at something of a disadvantage here given that Daedalus extends the existence of its principal character; and yet it didn't feel as though I was at a disadvantage. Similarly, this is a work in progress - a breather taken for the sake of comparing notes and due consideration given to what other materials will be needed before the building can be completed - and yet to me, in my potential ignorance, it feels finished. Daedalus presents thirteen snapshots in the life of himself beyond the final page of Joyce's novel and dating from 1904 to 1925. Sweeney hasn't yet settled on what will occur to link these interludes, hence the temporary pause to take stock.

I didn't have much of an idea of what occurred to Stephen before the final page of Joyce's novel, but Sweeney isn't afraid of making what I suspect may be dramatic changes - dramatic changes being more consistent with real life than with fannish extensions. So our man turns his back on the poetry and we find him later crossing the Atlantic to churn out popular songs for Tin Pan Alley - or at least one of its cousins - then hanging out on Hollywood lots with Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. It probably could have turned a little pear-shaped given some of the supporting cast, but doesn't, retaining its focus on what it was doing anyway and otherwise ignoring the legends of celebrities who happen to be passing through; although this paragraph gave me a warm chuckle:

He gave in to sleep, dreamed of a bananaeating lion roaming the Emperor Diocletian's Palace in Split, and he and Stan and a fat man comically trying to shoo it out the door before the illtempered boss noticed and put his one fearsome beady eye on them all.

Somehow, although written in a style which pays homage to Ulysses, or so I gather, Daedalus is recognisably the work of Nick Sweeney in that it's the voice established in Laikonik Express and The Émigré Engineer, which seems like no mean feat, elaborating on migratory themes - where we end up and how we're changed by the journey, which appeals to me for obvious reasons. So Daedalus isn't either - ugh - fan fiction, or even Wide Sargasso Sea which, fine book though it is, sings from an entirely different hymn sheet to Brontë's Jane Eyre. Most surprising of all, at least to me, is that it doesn't read like a work in progress and does everything it apparently needs to do in just 150 pages. It feels complete and satisfying as it stands, and doesn't suffer from its episodic composition; and it's of a quality suggesting that any expansion, extension, or filling in of gaps the author chooses to make can only add. I'll be interested to see where it goes from here.

I really need to read Ulysses, don't I?

Wide Sargasso Sea

 

Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
One day we will have all become so fucking stupid that somebody will describe this as Jane Eyre fanfic, but thankfully that day remains some way ahead, at least in this house. Older boys and girls will doubtless remember that Jane Eyre is about a woman called Jane Eyre who sort of fancies her boss, Mr. Rochester. He kind of fancies her back too, but is unfortunately already married and keeps his crazy wife locked away in the attic so as to keep her from setting things on fire. It might be observed that the aforementioned crazy wife gets something of a raw deal in Jane Eyre, although in literary terms she's not much more than a piece of scary scenery provided so as to throw her husband's twattery into sharp relief. All the same, I guess Jean Rhys felt that the first Mrs. Rochester got something of a raw deal, hence this prequel telling her side of the story.

Antoinette Cosway is the approximately white daughter of a nineteenth century Caribbean plantation owner and heiress to a fortune, which is why she attracts the attention of the aforementioned Rochester, although he isn't specifically identified here. While I'm not convinced Charlotte Brontë's novel is quite the expression of patriarchy it might seem - her mad woman in the attic playing a more or less gothic and hence symbolic role rather than being ancestral to Bernard Manning jokes - it's hard not to be left a little uncomfortable by the first Mrs. Rochester, which was almost certainly the point; and Brontë was writing from a very much colonial perspective, which seems worth addressing

Rhys' Antoinette is a victim of her environment more than anything. Her life begins to fall apart in the wake of the abolition of slavery, leaving her and her dwindling family marooned - interred within a Caribbean existence which is itself mostly hostile to them. By the time Rochester turns up in hope of marrying her bank account, the psychological damage is mostly done, and the novel maps her falling apart over time, not so much for the sake of turning a victim into a martyr to any particular cause, but to render Antoinette as a rounded human being rather than just a one-dimensional reason why some better known English guy is a bit of a dick. No-one comes out of this looking good.

'Then I will have the police up, I warn you. There must be some law and order even in this Godforsaken island.'

'No police here,' she said. 'No chain gang, no tread machine, no dark jail either. This is free country and I am free woman.'

Additionally, to Rhys' credit, Wide Sargasso Sea makes no attempt to impersonate Brontë's novel, but rather is formed from dreamlike impressions with viewpoints shifting from one individual to another and keeping the reader guessing for much of the time. Thus we are afforded wildly variable sides of the same story obliging us to draw our own conclusions regarding Antoinette's state of mind and the ominous nature of her environment.

I suppose someone must have adapted it for screen with Hugh Grant or one of that bunch goshing and crikeying his way through a completely unrelated script in period costume, but it doesn't read like anything which would lend itself to that sort of distillation into lace, milkmaids and pretty pictures, so I hope not and I'm not going to look, just in case. Some things only really work as books, or work significantly better as books than in any other medium, and I suspect this may be one of them.