'Quaker thoughts need not be pious, consolatory or proper or successful. They may be turbulent, disruptive, rude, even alien.' Photo: iStock/Niall_Majury.

James Joyce’s work has been called ‘a demonstration and summation of the entire [Modernist] movement’. But there’s a lot of evidence that he took a close interest in Quakerism, says Jonathan Wooding

‘Quakers are at an advantage when it comes to appreciating this notoriously willful writer.’

James Joyce’s work has been called ‘a demonstration and summation of the entire [Modernist] movement’. But there’s a lot of evidence that he took a close interest in Quakerism, says Jonathan Wooding

by Jonathan Wooding 17th May 2019

Are these the wandering thoughts of an individual in a silent Meeting?:

‘God: noise in the street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller than red globules of man’s blood they creepycrawl after Blake’s buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow. Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.’