“Starting with “Cyclops”, each episode seems to be written as if it is the start of a new novel; in “Ulysses” in Progress I argue that Joyce did not start working on Ulysses with a plan to use a new technique in each episode in the last half of the book, but rather eventually felt that he had exhausted the possibilities of his original method and began experimenting with other ways of telling his story.’ (p.119.) Further: ‘While the Little Review was serializing Ulysses, Joyce worked quite consistently and submitted the new episodes with impressive regularity […] Significantly, as I wrote in “Ulysses” in Progress, once Joyce was freed from Little Review deadlines, the episodes started taking more and more time to writer, and they grew increasingly elaborate. More recently, scholars have argued that Joyce reacted to the declaration of obscenity by emphasizing the schematic elements as a way of evading the censor and by encouraging critics such as Valery Larbaud and Stuart Gilbert to interpret Ulysses through the schema rather than through the possibly obscene thoughts and actions of its characters [vide Paul Vanderham, James Joyce and Censorship: the Trials of Ulysses, Macmillan 1998] and that Joyce added the courtroom scenes and legal terminology and even the ‘legal interrogation technique of “Ithaca” [vide David Weir, ‘What Did He Know, and When Did He Know It’, in JJQ, 37, 2000) in response to the Little Review trial.[’] (p.124.) Quotes FW: ‘Wipe your glosses with what you know’ (403 n.3) and equates it with ‘wipe your asses (… &c.)’, remarking: ‘Joyce’s note points to the notorious lack of guide posts in Ulysses, since if you have to produce your glosses you are to a large extent on your own both in terms of what you undestand and how you respond. For many readers, this is a major part of Ulysses’ ultimate triumph.”
Michael Groden [q.t.], in James Joyce, ed. Sean Latham [Visions & Revisions Ser.] (Dublin & Portland: IAP 2010):
