A Style of Scrupulous Meanness

James Joyce said of Dubliners that he had written it, for the most part, in a style of scrupulous meanness.

Now by this he did not mean that he was hateful toward his characters, or that the narrative was angry, or anything of that sort.

He meant that the writing style was one of fastidious plainness, in which he tried, for the most part, to excise the purple patches and fine writing.

I think that Joyce often damages those with writerly pretenses who read him (and who reads Joyce who does not?), but I think one of the good things a writer my inherit from reading Joyce is a certain limberness with regard to clarity or obscurity, simplicity or complexity, of style. By which I merely mean that sometimes Joyce is very simple. Sometimes he is vastly baroque. And every possible plateau in between. It's all a matter of context and the effect he is persuing.

I believe people are very prone to endowing prose of a certain level of density and complexity with aspects of moral probity.

I too am very inclined to do this; I think it very natural.

TCB is in a style of scrupulous meanness. By which I indeed mean a style of fastidious plainness.

But the byzantine style of many I Ching translations I resolutely do not condemn as byzantine excesses.

I just can't read them very easily, in some cases.

I find that my attention wanes for literary writing that I can't read rather easily. I think I am rather ordinary in this regard.

I'm starting to have a few strong readers read TCB. The ones who aren't already into the I Ching find it perplexing. The ones who are do not.

So, are these strong readers finding TCB perplexing, or the I Ching?

I'm not sure. I think maybe indeed the latter. For this reason.

I had a draft that was much clearer, much more linear, and unfortunately, full of stuff that was wrong. Oversimplifications, in several cases.

When I corrected my mistakes, I came up with the current TCB. And it seemed much more convoluted, much more snaky.

And much more correct.

To the extent TCB is a narrative, it is a narrative whose chronology has been run through a Cuisinart.

And a plain style can't do much about that...