At Fault : Joyce and the Crisis of the Modern University

Argues that American universities have lost their way, and that the works of James Joyce will put them back on the scent. There are chapters on centrifugal motion, gramophones, elephants, fox-hunting, philately, brain mapping, and baseball: a compendium of approaches befitting the ever-expanding world of James Joyce.

At Fault is an exhilarating celebration of risk-taking in the work of James Joyce. Esteemed Joyce scholar and teacher Sebastian Knowles takes on the American university system, arguing that the modernist writer offers the antidote to the risk-averse attitudes that are increasingly constraining institutions of higher education today. Knowles shows how Joyce’s work connects with research, teaching, and service, the three primary functions of the academic enterprise. He demonstrates that Joyce’s texts continually push beyond themselves, resisting the end, defying delimitation. The characters in these texts also move outward—in a centrifugal pattern—looking for escape. Knowles further highlights the expansiveness of Joyce’s world by undertaking topics as diverse as the symbol of Jumbo the elephant, the meaning of the gramophone, live music performance in the “Sirens” episode of Ulysses, the neurology of humor, and inventive ways of teaching Finnegans Wake. Contending that error is the central theme in all of Joyce’s work, Knowles argues that the freedom to challenge boundaries and make mistakes is essential to the university environment. Energetic and delightfully erudite, Knowles inspires readers with the infinite possibilities of human thought exemplified by Joyce’s writing.