"Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons steelyringing imperthnthn thnthnthn," wrote James Joyce in Ulysses. What he meant was that two barmaids, a redhead and a blonde, were listening to the clatter of dray horses in a Dublin street. Why, then, didn't he say so?
For some weeks a kindred argument has been raging in the pages of Britain's London Observer. "Great men," wrote Critic Ivor Brown, firing a blanket salvo at all Joycean obscurantists, "are not so silly as to make a practice of wasting their words." Philip Toynbee, the historian's son, rushed to...
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