James Joyce's Manuscripts and Letters - University at Buffalo Libraries

xii James Joyce's Manuscripts and Letters
those portions of his workbooks which were not crossed through with
colored crayon and therefore not used. Yet we are still amazed, and
perhaps still not entirely convinced of the order and logic of Joyce's
method. This, I believe, is in part caused by our amazement and
puzzlement with Finnegans Wake itself. Had these workbooks been
intended for use in Ulysses, a work which we can more easily understand,
we would more readily accept and even comprehend Joyce's
filing cabinet. And it is in this connection that we can appreciate the
relationship of the various portions of the Buffalo Joyce Collection.
For although the "Finnegans Wake Workbooks" are undeniably for
use in Finnegans Wake, they can be compared to a number of the
Ulysses notebooks which are part of the Buffalo Collection.
The resemblance between three of the "Ulysses Notebooks" (MSS.
V. A. 2., V. A. 4., VIII. A. 5.) and the "Finnegans Wake Workbooks"
is startling. Here too Joyce has jotted down not only ideas and early
drafts of portions of Ulysses, but also phrases and words. Here too
Joyce has used colored crayons to indicate when he has pulled a
phrase or a word out of the filing cabinet and inserted it into a draft
of the novel. It now becomes apparent that not only is Joyce's overall
method of composition that of expansion and addition, the same in
Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, but we can also see that his use of
workbooks was not an innovation created to fit the vastness and complexity
of Finnegans Wake. On the contrary, the same use of workbooks
seems to have been part of the Entstehungsgeschichte of
Ulysses.
Let the above brief example serve merely as a hint of the value of
the manuscripts in the Buffalo Collection. A full and true appreciation
of the collection will come to light only through its continued
use by Joyce scholars. With this aim in mind, I have undertaken the
task of briefly charting and laying out for inspection a portion of the
Joycean labyrinth, since it is hoped that these manuscripts, when examined
in detail, will offer a key to the better understanding of the
"hides and hints and misses in prints" (FW 20.11) in the writings of
the most controversial figure of twentieth-century literature.
I gratefully acknowledge the guidance of Professor Oscar A. Silverman,
Director of Libraries and Chairman of the Department of
English of the University of Buffalo, at whose suggestion I undertook
the cataloguing of the Joyce materials and without whose valuable and
generous assistance this book could never have been completed I
also wish to thank the late Charles D. Abbott, Curator of Special Collections
and Director Emeritus of Libraries, and the staff of the