Hugh Kenner

Hugh Kenner, along with Carol Schloss, is arguably one of the most famous Joyce critics of the 20th century. Now Carol Schloss' story is unbelievably exciting. Throughout the writing process and publication of her book on Joyce's daughter (Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake), she was constantly intimidated and threatened by Stephen Joyce, James Joyce's grandson. This is not at all unusual - my professor once told me that you couldn't consider yourself a Joyce scholar without having faced the wrath of this man. He himself had received an angry fax, which we all tried to encourage him to frame and put up in his office. But when Stephen Joyce insisted that Carol Schloss delete significant material from her book (pretty much anything that James or Lucia had written to each other), she fought back, took him to court, and won. To me, this is tops in Joycean thrills.

In comparison, I always found Hugh Kenner useful and interesting in his criticism (he alone could have gotten me through every single modernism class with his work on Joyce, Eliot, Pound, and so many more) but I always imagined a disappointingly boring professor who with his middle-class privilege and tenure, was able to churn out these books and be instantly well-received. Some parts of my image are depressingly true - he is a strong social conservative, against abortion, gay rights and feminism. Shockingly, I discovered today that not only does he look like this:

...but he has a pretty good story under his belt! As it turns out, even in the 40's, Kenner had to go to great lengths to even get a copy of the book he became so famous for writing on. Jeet Heer, in an article written just after Kenner's death, writes:

More contemporary books were not only disdained, they were often forbidden by the government...One modern masterpiece that Kenner did have access to was Joyce's Finnegans Wake, tolerated because it was deemed incomprehensible. 

Excited by Wake, Kenner discovered that Joyce's Ulysses, otherwise verboten in Canada, could be found in the restricted access section of the University of Toronto library. However, in order to take a look at the illicit text, Kenner needed to secure two letters of reference: one from a religious authority and one from a medical doctor. Kenner knew a priest who could vouch for his morals, but, unfortunately, was not able to find an MD who could attest that reading Joyce would not corrupt him. Ultimately, Kenner had a family friend, a Jesuit priest, smuggle into Canada a copy of the greatest novel of the 20th century. 

Looking at my bookshelf, with numerous copies of Ulysses and other Joyce materials (see the banner at the top of the page!), it's shocking to think that I probably couldn't have read this book had I been studying 50 years earlier (I would be done for when it came to the priest's recommendation). Every once in a while, banned books cases crop up in Canada, but those where a book is banned from a library branch, a private school, or a certain store. I can barely imagine what it would be like to so badly want to read a book and truly not be able to get a copy.

So good for you, Kenner. Not only did you have to read Finnegans Wake FIRST, but you cared enough about Joyce to really put in the effort. And you have awesome hair.