?February 2016 // When working on my undergraduate dissertation, I looked at this selection of books, which includes facsimiles of Joyce’s notebooks. I looked at how Joyce presents advertisements as material objects, as well as ideological apparatuses. I wondered if his notes on advertising, taken from a book by Howard Bridgewater, were in any way influential on his presentation of them in Ulysses. I looked at these notes in one of the volumes. Compare Bridgewater to Joyce:
‘It will be admitted that the primary aim of every advertisement should be to attract attention.’ (Bridgewater, 12)
Joyce’s notes (transcribed by me - an extract):
Attention: Statistics show 4 visual limit. Headings 4 limit. Absence of counter attractions. […] Intensity obtained by movement. […] Variation of type consistent with harmony. […] Riding bicycles.
(The bit about ‘riding bicycles’ refers to a passage in Bridgewater’s book which argues that bicycle ads should focus on a part of the bicycle, and advertise the function of the machine by having an image of someone riding it.)
In Ulysses itself, the idea of arresting attention comes up in Ithaca, among other places:
the infinite possibilities hitherto unexploited of the modern art of advertisement if condensed in triliteral monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum visibility (divined), horizontally of maximum legibility (deciphered) and of magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntary attention, to interest, to convince, to decide.’ (Ulysses, 636)
Funny how the idea stuck with Joyce.
Howard Bridgewater, Advertising, or the Art of Making Known. A Simple Exposition of The Principles of Advertising (London: Sir Issac Pitman & Sons, n.d., ?1909).
James Joyce, ’Notes on Business and Commerce’, Notes, Criticism, Translations and Miscellaneous Writings Vol. II, The James Joyce Archive, ed. Michael Groden, Hans Walter Gabler, David Hayman, A. Walton Litz, Danis Rose (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1978).
James Joyce, Ulysses, ed. Jeri Johnson (Oxford: OUP, 2008).
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