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[Aetat. 41-44 ] J O Y C E 557would often begin a conversation at the point where it had stopped thenight before, saying, 'And .' Sometimes he was avuncular: if youhave an ideal, young man, stick to it' Or he might be whimsical, i seein the paper today that a man by the name of Icicle got married. Thatmust make him a bicycle. It might even make him a tricycle.' Or, morepensive, he would ask, 'Which would you say was the greater power inholding people together, complete faith or doubt?' Laubenstein plumpedfor faith but Joyce was firm, 'No, doubt is the thing. Life is suspendedin doubt like the world in the void. You might findthis in some sensetreated in Exiles.' (Stephen, in Ulysses, is of the same opinion.) He wasbent upon Laubenstein's reading his book, and to this end presented himwith a copy of Ulysses. 'How did you like it?' he inquired a few dayslater, i lost it,' said Laubenstein. Joyce laughed and gave him anothercopy, and asked him repeatedly how he was getting on with it. At lastLaubenstein replied, 'Frankly, Mr. Joyce, I must tell you I don't understandit.' Joyce was not at all annoyed. He answered, 'Only a few writersand teachers understand it. The value of the book is its new style.' Atother times he was less calm, and having drunk himself into abject melancholy,retailed his misfortunes at such a pace that Nora remonstrated,unheeded, 'Now Jim, now Jim, we've heard all that before,' or at aneven later stage, exclaimed at his drunkenness and threatened, 'I'll betaking the children and going back to Ireland.' One such evening endedwith Joyce alighting from the taxi at his door and suddenly plunging upthe street shouting, i made them take it,' presumably an angry brag thathe had foisted Ulysses upon the public. Nora looked at Laubenstein andsaid, 'Never mind, I'll handle him,' and soon deftly collected her fugitive.*10Another musical friend was George Antheil, the 'bad boy of music,'who lived in a small flatdirectly over Sylvia Beach's bookshop, and wasone of Ezra Pound's special enthusiasms.! Joyce attended a private performanceof Antheil's Ballet Mechanique, a part of which he said waslike Mozart, 12and he was also present at the Ballets Suedois on October4, 1923, when the composer played his Sonata Sauvage, Airplane Sonata,and Mechanisms. The music interested him somewhat, at least as aphenomenon, and he was even more interested in the emphatic responsesto it of Erik Satie and Darius Milhaud, the eminent composers;the intrigue of music was almost as fascinating as that of literature, t andeventually he was to enter that too. Joyce discovered that on Sunday* Myron Nutting was with Joyce on a similar occasion when he threw up his arms suddenlyand leaped into the street crying. 'No, I'm free, free.' 1 't Pound wrote a small book, George Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony, in which, asthe subject complained, he imposed his own musical theories on Antheiht When Antheil, in an equivalent burst of literary fervor, asked what French or Englishnovelists he should read, Joyce advised him to begin with Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noirand La Chartreuse de Parme. 13