Quotes of Note | Reviews in Print
Their Exagmination Round Our Factification for Incamination of Music from the Works of James Joyce
:: Jolas :: Jordan :: Bowen :: Connolly :: Pearce :: Ellmann ::
From a college instructor and a Joycean
The following letter, dated March 10, 1977, was sent to Mr. McDermott after his performance of music from Joyce's works at the Buffalo symposium in June of the previous year. It was written by Richard Pearce, now a Professor of English, Emeritus, at Wheaton College.
I would like to tell you again, and anyone else who may be concerned, how stimulating and illuminating I found your performance of Joyce's songs, and I commend its vocal and dramatic virtuosity. I have been teaching Ulysses for ten years; I have attended conferences and given and published papers on Joyce. But a whole dimension of the novel was opened to me at your performance last summer. To know the song that Bloom sang to himself all day is to know how Bloom felt; to know the songs sung by other characters is to feel ironies that cannot be conveyed by the lyrics on the page, let alone the notes in a reference book. I look forward to the privilege of sharing another of your performances with my students.
— Richard Pearce, Professor
Dept. of English
Wheaton College
Prof. Pearce continues to teach James Joyce and modern fiction at Wheaton. His book, The Politics of Narration: James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf, was published by Rutgers University Press in 1991.
Albany, New York :: Boston, Mass. :: Essen, Germany
