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528 J A M E S I 1922-1923 ]Eliot had more to say of the book than he wrote down. It undoubtedlyimpressed him deeply (i wish, for my own sake, that I had not read it,'he wrote Joyce on May 21, 1921) and encouraged him in his own innovationsin The Waste Land, which he had composed late in 1921.After Ulysses was published he came to tea with Virginia Woolf at HogarthHouse, and in discussing Ulysses was for the first time in her experience'rapt, enthusiastic' 'How could anyone write again after achievingthe immense prodigy of the last chapter?' 4he asked. To her it was'underbred,' 'the book of a self taught working man,' of 'a queasy undergraduatescratching his pimples,'* 5but Eliot insisted that Joyce had killedthe nineteenth century, exposed the futility of all styles, and destroyedhis own future. There was nothing left for him to write another bookabout. Yet the book gave no new insight into human nature such as Warand Peace did, Eliot granted, and added, 'Bloom tells one nothing. Indeed,this new method of giving the psychology proves to my mind thatit doesn't work. It doesn't tell as much as some casual glance from outsideoften tells.' 7Joyce himself came later to regard the interior monologueas a stylization, rather than a total exposition, of consciousness. As hesaid to Stuart Gilbert, 'From my point of view, it hardly matters whetherthe technique is "veracious" or not; it has served me as a bridge overwhich to march my eighteen episodes, and, once I have got my troopsacross, the opposing forces can, for all I care, blow the bridge sky-high.' 8On the rue de Fleurus a few blocks from Shakespeare and Company,Gertrude Stein was irritated to have her position as arch-experimentalist* In short, of a Tansley in To the Lighthouse. A more violently hostile view than VirginiaWoolfs was taken by Edmund Gosse, who now regretted the help he had given Joyceduring the war. Gosse wrote Louis Gillet on June 7, 1924:My dear Mr. Gillet,I should very much regret your paying Mr. J. Joyce the compliment of an articlein the 'Revue des Deux-Mondes.' You could only expose the worthlessness andimpudence of his writings, and surely it would be a mistake to give him this prominence.I have a difficulty in describing to you, in writing, the character of Mr.Joyce's notoriety. It is partly political; it is partly a perfectly cynical appeal to sheerindecency. He is of course not entirely without talent, but he is a literary charlatanof the extremest order. His principal book, 'Ulysses,' has no parallel that I know ofin French. It is an anarchical production, infamous in taste, in style, in everything.Mr. Joyce is unable to publish or sell his books in England, on account of theirobscenity. He therefore issues a 'private' edition in Paris, and charges a huge pricefor each copy. He is a sort of Marquis de Sade, but does not write so well. He is theperfect type of the Irish fumiste, a hater of England, more than suspected of partialityfor Germany, where he lived before the war (and at Zurich during the war).There are no English critics of weight or judgment who consider Mr. Joyce anauthor of any importance. If, as you tell me, 'on fait grand bruit du nomine J. J.... a Paris,' it must be among persons whose knowledge of English literature andlanguage is scanty. He is not, as I say, without talent, but he has prostituted it tothe most vulgar uses.Yours very sincerely,Edmund Gosse 6