Two passages

The two passages below are both cited by David Lodge in an essay first published in 1966. The first he gives as an example of modernism and you may well have already read it as it is a hard to dodge piece from James Joyce. The second is given as an example of then-contemporary writing being from John Braine's Room at the Top. Lodge notes that the two are similar in one aspect: "Both passages describe a crucial moment of awareness in the life of a young man". But he thinks that something has been lost in the shift from the "modern" to the merely contemporary. He sees a huge loss in the quality of the language.

At the risk of being declared a heathen, I think the exact opposite is the case. Although Joyce is praised far and wide as a great writer of beautiful language, the passage given here strikes me as everything the language in a novel should not be. Compared to the Braine writing, it strikes me as not just overwrought but also as dull and boring. I want to find and read the Braine book whereas the Joyce stuff fills me with horrid memories of once having had to read it in school.

Here is the Joyce passage:

A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and softhued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips where white fringes of her drawers were like featherings of soft white down. Her slateblue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some darkplumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.

Blechh. I once saw a bit on public television on Joyce. When they got to Portrait they had some actor read this out but for the visual they had found a beautiful Irish girl and dressed her as in the passage above and had her stand in the water. The effect was to render Joyce pointless and bloodless by comparison.

Here is the Braine bit:

Parked by a solicitor's office opposite the café was a green Aston-Martin tourer, low-slung, with cycle-type mudguards. It had the tough, functional smartness of the good British Sports car; it's a quality which is difficult to convey without using the terms of the advertising copywriter—made by craftsmen, thoroughbred, and so on—I can only say that it was a beautiful piece of engineering and leave it at that. Prewar it would have cost as much as three baby saloons; it wasn't the sort of vehicle for business or for family outings, but quite simply a rich man's toy.

As I was admiring it a young man and a girl came out of the solicitor's office. The young man was turning the ignition key when the girl said something to him and after a moment's argument he put up the windscreen. The girl smoothed his hair for him; I found the gesture disturbing in an odd way—it was again as if a barrier had been removed, but this time by an act of reason.

The ownership of the Aston-Martin automatically placed the young man in a social class far above mine; but that ownership was simply a question of money. The girl, with her even suntan and her fair hair cut short in a style too simple to be anything else but expensive, was as far beyond my reach as the car. But her ownership, too, was simply a question of money, of the price of the diamond ring on her left hand. This seems all too obvious; but it was the kind of truth which until that moment I'd only grasped theoretically.

The Aston-Martin started with a deep, healthy roar. As it passed the café, in the direction of St Clair Road I noticed the young man's olive linen shirt and bright silk neckerchief. The collar of the shirt was tucked inside the jacket; he wore the rather theatrical ensemble with a matter-of-fact nonchalance. Everything about him was easy and loose but not tired or sloppy. He has an undistinguished face with a narrow forehead and mousy hair cut short with no oil on it. It was a rich man's face, smooth with assurance and good living.

That is everything good novel writing should be. The narrator speaks like a real human being we can care about and want to learn more about. In addition, this is good manly writing.