The superscript circles in the synopsis point to the footnotes (not reproduced here), where the editor has recorded his editorial emendations to the continuous manuscript text. For example, at l. 14, he emended the manuscriptТs СaТ to СanТ preceding СinfantТs napkinТ on the basis of his conjecture of JoyceТs activity on the lost final working draft, the text on the surviving typescript providing the evidence. The edited text differs from all earlier editions of Ulysses in one place: the word Сgums,Т with the subsequent colon (l. 17 of the synopsis and l. 660 of the reading text), is restored to the text for the first time here.
The presence or absence of СgumsТ might seem like a minor matter, but it is indicative of all the decisions involved in editing Ulysses. The editor admitted the word into the continuous manuscript text, and it became part of the edited text, on the basis of its appearance in the serialized version of СLestrygoniansТ in the Little Review; he argues that its appearance there is evidence that Joyce added the word onto a lost typescript page. The wordТs appearance here is consistent with GablerТs procedures. In a review of the edition, Jerome J. McGann made the important observation that СgumsТ is correct here but that an edition that follows other principles would be equally correct without the word. This word can stand for the many that appear in GablerТs edition, often for the first time in printed versions of Ulysses, because of his editorial principles and the consistent application of the procedures that follow from those principles.
Several examples can indicate how the editor arrived at particular readings and also how other editions might read differently. First, on the opening page of this edition, Buck Mulligan calls СoutТ to Stephen (l. 6) and blesses the СlandТ (l. 10), whereas in earlier editions he called СupТ and blessed the Сcountry.Т In both cases, the editor follows the Rosenbach Manuscript (which here was the typistТs copy) and reasons from a bibliographic analysis of the transmission text that the typed СupТ and СcountryТ were unauthorized departures from JoyceТs text. In the first case, he additionally surmises that the typist was looking ahead to СCome up, Kinch!Т in the following line. Likewise, in this edition the telegram that Stephen Dedalus recalls in СProteusТ reads, СNother dying come home father.Т (3.199), whereas earlier editions show the first word as СMother,Т more correct but failing to image the curiosity of the telegramТs orthographic error. The editor follows JoyceТs inscription of СNotherТ on the Rosenbach Manuscript (again the typistТs copy), which Joyce insists on once more in his revisions to the first set of proofs, and rejects the reconstructed typed text on the lost typescript and the СcorrectionТ to СMotherТ entered in a hand other than JoyceТs on the fifth and final set of proofs. The best known passage in this edition that is not part of any previous printed edition of Ulysses is the so-called СloveТ passage in СScylla and Charybdis.Т In the middle of his discussion of Shakespeare, Stephen asks, СЧWill he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his own youth added, another image?Т and then thinks, СDo you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to all men. Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult untie et ea quae concupiscimus . . .Т (9.427-31). The passage is in the Rosenbach Manuscript; the final working draft used by the typist is lost. Gabler reasons that the working draft did not differ from the surviving fair copy at this point and that the typist skipped from one ellipsis at the end of an underlined passage indicating italics in the line before StephenТs question (the line ends СLТart dТкtre grandp….Т)to a similar nearby ellipsis after another underlined passage (StephenТs Latin thought ending with СconcupiscimusТ),thus omitting StephenТs question and subsequent thought. In each case, and in the case of СgumsТ as well, the editorТs justification for his choices was textual and bibliographical, not critical; none of these examples presented a problematic or ambiguous textual situation. It is important to note, though, that an edition prepared under other assumptions (for example, one privileging the transmitted text over the written one) might in each case choose the reading that this edition rejects.
These few details are part of the large system that makes up any editing project. The full system includes not only the editorial assumptions and procedures that are visible in all the particular readings but also responses to broader questions about the nature of literary works and their texts, the relationship of the author to the work, the role of the editor, and the nature of authority in an edition. In being a text-based, rather than an author-based, edition; in its use of genetic editing theories and methods; and in its synoptic presentation, this edition of Ulysses offers an alternative to dominant Anglo-American methods of editing that questions and challenges the accepted paradigms. As Gabler has acknowledged, the edition can be discomforting.
Along similar lines, Jerome McGann in his review claimed that the edition Сraises all the central questions that have brought such a fruitful crisis to literary work in the postmodern periodТ and suggested that it should be Сa required object of study for every scholar working in English literature.Т As an object of study, GablerТs workЧhis assumptions and his proceduresЧcan be discussed and debated, but, as Vicki Mahaffey has noted, the controversy that erupted over the edition deflected the kind of questioning that McGann envisioned. Specific details were discussed apart from their relationship to the editorТs basic assumptions and methods as a whole. More important, as Mahaffey argues,
many of the most widely publicized attacks are based on premises about textual editing that the general reading public takes for granted, so that when a critic proves that Gabler has violated these guidelines, his editorial competence is implicitly or explicitly called into question. It takes a reasonably specialized reader to realize that the weakness of such arguments, which seem logically convincing on their own terms, is at the level of the premise, since Gabler does not share many of the premises on which the critique is based.
GablerТs loudest and most persistent critic, John Kidd, has since 1988 steadily and relentlessly attacked the edition. With a great deal of rhetorical flurry and a few oft-repeated examples, Kidd captured a great deal of attention. But all his pages of supposed analysis, and the sixty pages of tables and charts of GablerТs alleged errors and inconsistencies in his СInquiryТ into the edition, managed finally to demonstrate only two errorsЧmistranscriptions of the names СBullerТ at 5.560 and СThriftТ at 10.1259Чand to point to one reading that resulted from the editorТs inconsistency in following his editionТs own stated rules of procedure. The passage in questionЧdiscussed in GablerТs СNote on the TextТЧis at 16.1804-5: Сwas not quite the same as the usual handsome blackguard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering afterТ should be Сwas not quite the same as the usual blackguard type they unquestionably had an indubitable hankering after.Т In this instance, the editorТs diminished attention to the rule of the invariant context and his mistaking of an authorial revision based on a transmission error for a mere correction led him astray. The items on KiddТs long lists can be checked individually and will possibly lead to exposure of other errors or debatable readings or decisions, but the tables are constructed so capriciously and idiosyncratically, with so little demonstrated understanding of GablerТs theoretical assumptions and procedures, and with no coherent or consistent indication of KiddТs own working assumptions that they can point to errors or misjudgments only by accident. KiddТs campaign forced a great deal of negative attention on this edition but has ultimately revealed very little at all about it. It is to be hoped that the kind of inquiry that McGann and other critics have called for can now come to the forefront.[4 The above assessments of KiddТs attacks are elaborated in my СResponseТ to KiddТs СInquiryТ and in GablerТs СWhat Ulysses Requires.Т]
Such an inquiry is possible because, like any responsible editor, Gabler discussed his editorial procedures and laid out his decisions fully in Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition. He defines a Сcritical editionТ by Сthe complex interdependence of a text established from the ground upТ as opposed to marking up and correcting an existing text Сand its interfacing apparatus.Т Many different kinds of critical editions are possible, including a copytext edition or a different kind of nontraditional edition, but for all of them the text itself constitutes only one part. Equally essential is the apparatus, which acknowledges the hand of the editor. Readers should be extremely suspicious of any edition that presents itself as a reading text without an apparatus spelling out all its editorТs assumptions and decisions.
Anyone wishing to follow the logic and procedures that produced the readings in this edition, in other words to listen to the editor speaking as editor, is strongly urged to use the line numbers here to find the corresponding passage in Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition, with its synoptic text on the facing left-hand page. Likewise, more detailed explanations of GablerТs assumptions and procedures are available in his Afterword to the three-volume edition and in his articles СOn Textual Criticism and Editing: The Case of JoyceТs UlyssesТand the more extended СWhat
