Joyce's contemporaries were struck with the unruly nature of his works, quite apart from their strident indecency and irreverence. In 1915 as perceptive a critic as Edward Garnett considered A Portrait ‘too discursive, formless, unrestrained’, the author's ‘pen and his thoughts seem to have run away with him sometimes’, and he advocated revision, ‘time and trouble spent on it, to make it a more finished piece of work, to shape it more carefully’ (reprinted in P 320). His pronouncements look fairly euphemistic compared to what was levelled at Ulysses some seven years later. It would be easier to dismiss such judgements as short-sighted expressions of an earlier period if novice readers did not still have to wrestle with similar impediments, though the struggle is often bypassed by instant recourse to an-aesthetic assistance in the form of summaries, annotation or guide books or, increasingly, electronic aids.

Initial consternation may relate to the many words Joyce used that cannot be found in standard dictionaries and to the fact that grammatical rules appear frequently suspended. Joyce often did not edit his chaotic material into the spheres of sanctioned, correct, periods.

OUR PATTERN SENT! (FW 472.25)

Which is the topic of this probe: it highlights a few irregularities, sentences that have gone askew, passages that would have to be marked by school teachers.