Review by Choice Review
Paperspace is a reading of Ulysses that comes after two decades of poststructuralist theory; and perhaps the best description of this always complex, sometimes confused, and, in the end, good book is that it strives to view Ulysses with binocular vision. One lens is provided by Finnegans Wake, which of course follows Ulysses in the Joycean oeuvre, ignores some of that novel's assumptions and stylistic practices while pushing other elements of it much further. The other lens is provided by the last two decades of poststructuralist theory. The prescriptions of the two lenses are dangerously similar, because Finnegans Wake has long been a favored text for many French poststructuralists, and as a result McGee's vision sometimes comes dangerously close to being monocular. In many ways he is rewriting earlier American interpretations like Marylin French's The Book as World (CH, Sep '76) and Karen Lawrence's The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses (CH Apr '82); McGee avoids the shortcomings of a volume with parallel ambitions such as Post-Structuralist Joyce, ed. by Derek Attridge and Daniel Ferre (1984). Recommended to the largest undergraduate libraries and to all graduate libraries. -K. Tololyan, Wesleyan University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
