Invention, I want to buy you some clothes. Now what would you really like to have? Let us pretend we have no intelligence whatever, that we have read ALL there is to read and that Rimbaud has taught us nothing, that Joyce has passed in a cloud, that, in short, we find nothing to do but begin with Macaulay or King James, that all writing is forbidden us save that which we recognise to be inadequate. NOW show your originality, _mon ami_. NOW let me see what you can do with your vaunted pen. Nothing could be easier. My invention this time, my dear, is that literature is a pure matter of words. The moon making a false star of the weather vane on the steeple makes also a word. You do not know the fine hairs on a hickory leaf? Try one in the woods some time. You will grasp at once what I mean. But Joyce. He is misjudged, misunderstood. His vaunted invention is a fragile fog. His method escapes him. He has not the slightest notion what he is about. He is a priest, a roysterer of the spirit. He is an epicurean of romance. His true genius flickers and fails: there's the peak, there in the trees--For God's sake can't you see it! Not that tree but the mass of rocks, that reddish mass of rocks, granite, with the sun on it between that oak and the maple.--That is not an oak. Hell take it what's the use of arguing with a botanist. But I will not have my toothpicks made of anything but maple. Mr. Joyce will you see to it that my toothpicks are not made of anything but maple? Irish maple. Damn it, it's for Ireland. Pick your teeth, God knows you need to. The trouble with writing of the old style is that the teeth don't fit. They were made for Irishmen--as a class. Tell me now, of what in your opinion does Mr. Joyce's art consist, since you have gone so far as to criticise the teeth he makes?--Why, my dear, his art consists of words. What then is his failure, O God.--His failure is when he mistakes his art to be something else. What then does he mistake his art to be, Rosinante?--He mistakes it to be several things in more or less certain rotation from botany--Oh well it's a kind of botany you know--from botany to--to--litany. Do you know his poetry? But you must not mistake his real, if hidden, service. He has in some measure liberated words, freed them for their proper uses. He has to a great measure destroyed what is known as "literature." For me as an American it is his only important service. It would be a pity if the French failed to discover him for a decade or so. Now wouldn't it? Think how literature would suffer. Yes think--think how LITERATURE would suffer.