BEHIND or beneath this new Readers Edition of Ulysses is an isotext of the novel. An isotext is simply (!) an assemblage of every scrap of text from every known source, tagged and identified diachronically so that each element is presented in all of its variant forms. The variants arose because Joyce, as he wrote the book, changed his mind, recast his material, had second and many subsequent thoughts. Additionally, he had a life to lead, a family to keep, a living to make.
In his introduction, Rose offers (amongst much else) a history of the composition of the book which presents with great clarity the many creative and mechanical stages gone through by Joyce before he finalised (loosely speaking) the text for publication in February, 1922. It has long been known that as he worked on the proofs of the latter part of the book he augmented its bulk by about 20 percent and that expansion made alterations in the earlier part aesthetically necessary.
The upshot of this and other odd compositional procedures was that the introduction of textual faults and errors was inevitable. The assembly of the isotext is, therefore, a necessary first step in retrieving and displaying, in a linear way. the documents of composition notes, manuscripts, typescripts, page proofs. In the course of his introduction, Rose makes a convincing case for the insertion of much of the famous Rosenbach Manuscript (now in Philadelphia) into the main tree of descent of the text.
Once the isotext is established it has to be editorially operated upon so as to be made yield a reading text. And this is precisely what is delivered in the Reader's Edition. Rose maintains that he has "copyread" the isotext and extrapolated from that complex document a reading or "reader friendly" text that amounts to a new edition of Ulysses. It certainly is new, audacious. challenging. welcome. readable, irritating and, occasionally. wrong.
Remember how we are introduced to Bloom in the Calypso chapter? "Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls." Later, in the Sirens chapter, we encounter: "As said before he ate with relish the inner organs . . . In between, in the Lestrygonians chapter. Bloom has a light lunch in Davy Byrne's pub where he partakes of a glass of Burgundy and a Gorgonzola cheese sandwich. The Reader's Edition gives the following: "Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich with relish of disgust, fresh clean bread, pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese. The instability of the text at this point arises from the fact that the phrase "with relish of disgust" was added by Joyce between the was being retyped the phrase was inserted in the wrong place. But is Rose's audacious placement of the phrase final and definitive? Hardly. If we allow precedence to Joyce's twice used formulation "ate with relish" then we are editorially obliged to allow the alternative placement, Mr Bloom ate with relish of disgust his strips of sandwich . . . In some matters the cosmos of Ulysses is, as Simon Dedalus says of the sky on the morning of June 16th, 1904, as uncertain as a baby's bottom".
Rose's audacity is everywhere apparent, from his revision of Joyce's punctuation to his highhanded treatment of Joyce's hyphenless compounds and neologisms. In the opening pages of the Reader's Edition we encounter dressing gown and looking glass" instead of the long accepted Joycean scripture "dressing gown" and looking glass. Some readers may think these are small things, but consider the following small things in Rose's version of Mulligan's description of the sea: "The snot green sea. The scrotum tightening sea. That second hyphen loses the contractive effect on the male appendages of an early morning dip at. the Forty Foot.
If we plunge deeper into the book other losses become apparent. Twice - once by Stephen Dedalus and once by Bloom - Shakespeare is described as "greyed auburn as he is imagined walking through London. All the previous editions offer "greyed auburn", a coinage which Joy cc calculated would give most readers pause, and provocatively obtrude his book's textuality into the readers's consciousness, a stumbling block for the eye.
Rose's editorial practice delivers a text which is Smoother easier on the eye. He takes the opportunity to effect hundreds of emendations and corrections which readers of Joyce will greet with applause: he also makes many changes which are not sanctioned anywhere in the manuscript record.
There are some places where he conclusively dislodges the readings offered by Gabler's (et al) Critical Edition of 1986. There are even some places where he performs "invasive surgery" (his phrase) and fixes details which he thinks Joyce got wrong through oversight, poor sight on inadequate knowledge. Consider the following example from the Ithaca chapter.
In response to the question as to what qualities of water did Bloom admire the Reader's Edition gives, its unplumbed profundity in the Marianne Trench of the Pacific, exceeding 6000 fathoms . What Joyce actually wrote was the Sundam Trench of the Pacific, exceeding 8000 fathoms" and all editions until now reproduce that version. The Sunda Trench (yes, Joyce got it wrong) was not accurately plumbed by 1904 but had been by the time Joyce wrote these words in 1921. Since then the deepest profundity measured is what the atlas to hand calls the Marianas Trench. Rose's invasive surgery, anachronism plantational at times. Joyce's anachronism has been replaced by Rose's creative intervention, spiced by a possible misnomer. Whose book is this, anyhow? There is a profound difference between creative intervention and scholarly editing.
Joyce's knowledge of Irish was rudimentary but some of Roses corrections to it would give you heartburn on your arse. While it is a pleasure finally to see Islandbridge feature under the correct form of its name, the fugitive Lynchchaun suffers the additional indignity of a misspell ing in his. But this is a procedure that could be continued to no last term, as no doubt it will This is despite its faults, a landmark edition for first time readers and life time fans. What we need now is a hyper text version of Ulysses on CD-ROM. Now there is a project for the National Library, to be funded by our National Lottery!