In the Company of Strangers

This book owes its first and deepest debt to Maria DiBattista. It was in her seminar at Princeton that I first read Ulysses and Proust, but, more than this, it has been in her teaching, in her generous company, and by her example that I have learned how to read at all. She was the first stranger to offer me a home in the new world, and she has been a guiding intellectual and personal light ever since. For this, for her kindness and good company, and for the adventurous spin she gives to life on and off the page, I am happy to have this chance to thank her from the bottom of my heart.

The origins of this book as Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton also owe much to the wise and congenial help of Michael Wood, who helped to shape the dissertation from its inception and to bring it to a close. Conversations with him about things far beyond this book still resonate with me. Other colleagues at Princeton gave me support of other kinds. I would like especially to thank April Alliston, Sandie Bermann, Brooke Holmes, Paul Muldoon, and Jeff Nunokawa.

Princeton was a strange shore to wash up on for most of my twenties, but I still cannot quite believe my luck in the other shipwrecks I encountered there. Thanks to them, this small and sober-looking town turned out to be, if not quite a laugh a minute, an enormously exciting and colourful place, both intellectually and personally. My gratitude goes especially to Elissa Bell, Stuart Burrows, and Michelle Clayton for their solidarity, company and humor, which got me through grad school and still helps me get through life. Éric Trudel was my steadfast ally from the beginning of graduate school through dissertation and to the end of the book. His friendship and humor have been a source of sustenance and vitality for many years now. His reading of various drafts of the Proust chapter were crucial.

One of the greatest debts of this book is to “coach” Laura Baudot, who intervened with sensitivity and huge generosity at a critical turning point in the writing. Without her unique combination of complexity and clarity, and her unblinking eye for substance and style, this book might never have been written at all and would certainly have been a much poorer thing. It is a lucky book indeed to have had such intelligence heaped upon it from outside.

I also miss the Princeton company of Antonio García, Jenny Tsien, and Gillian White. The dissertation was finished in the happy Brooklyn household I shared with Isabella Winkler and Lump, two real originals.

Since leaving Princeton I have been extremely fortunate in being able to draw on the intellectual and personal riches of my colleagues in the Department of Comparative Literature at Yale. It has been a more nurturing place than I could ever have hoped for. This book has been influenced and changed at the deepest levels by the intellectual example and input of my colleagues there. David Quint has been a source of unfailing support since my arrival. He read several drafts of this book, and his comments have been of benefit in its overall shaping, especially the Dickens chapter. He had an enormous influence on my intellectual development throughout these first years of my career. Katie Trumpener, neighbor, friend, and colleague, gave me the vital conceptual framework I needed for the book as a whole. She has enriched, enlivened, and enabled work and life in New Haven in countless other ways—it feels strange to think that I haven’t always known her. Susan Chambers wrote a penetrating and insightful report on an earlier version of this book that was decisive in producing the final version. My friendship with Alexander Beecroft, which quickly moved beyond the departmental walls, has greatly enriched these past years, and I look forward to many more conversations in hostelries as yet unknown. Other colleagues and friends in New Haven who are owed thanks include Ala Alryyes, Dudley Andrew, Emily Bakemeier, Katerina Clark, Catherine Flynn, Moira Fradinger, Kate Holland, Carol Jacobs, Pericles Lewis, David Greven, Graeme Reid, Haun Saussy, Angelika Schriever, and Mary Jane Stevens. For almost all of my time teaching at Yale, the late, brilliant, witty Richard Maxwell was my comrade-in-arms. I owe him a great deal, and his loss is irreplaceable. The students in my seminars on Joyce and Proust at Yale helped me finish the manuscript with a broader mind. Conversations with Sam Alexander, Elyse Graham, and Katie Kadue were especially helpful.

In Italy, I thank SYNAPSIS, the European School for Comparative Studies, and especially Roberto Bigazzi, Laura Caretti, and Remo Ceserani. I am grateful to John McCourt and Laura Pelaschiar for giving me the opportunity to present parts of this book at the Trieste James Joyce School. Matteo Residori read large sections of the manuscript, and his input has been helpful in vital ways.

I began my education in Ireland, and in many ways I continue it, intermittently, there. The company of Aoife Naughton and Francis Sweeney, who crossed the Atlantic with me, remains a central part of my life and has been of great help in more ways than they can imagine. I am grateful to Romail Dhaddey for a room at a troubled time. One of the most important influences on this book has been that of Caitríona Ní Dhúill. Her encouragement, analysis, editing, and respectful but unstinting challenges to my set ways of thinking were fundamental. More than this, every page of it is haunted by ongoing conversations with her about many matters for the past decade and a half, and which I hope to continue for many de cades to come. Further back in my education, I am grateful to Anne Nevin for teaching me French with such brio and for a crucial piece of advice she gave me that set me on the road to comparative literature.

Also in Dublin, I am grateful to Joe Cleary, Kevin Whelan, and the Notre Dame Irish Seminar for the chance to present the Joyce chapter to an audience whose feedback sent me back to make significant revisions.

Eric Naiman kindly gave me a chance to present parts of this book at UC Berkeley. For help and conversations about matters related to this book, I owe debts of gratitude to Nancy Armstrong, Luke Gibbons, and Declan Kiberd.

I am lucky to count on the loyalty, companionship, and constant fresh perspectives on life offered by my brothers Ronan and Killian. I draw great strength from them, as I do from my extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins, who have been a source of support and strength in good times and bad.

The book and its writer owe more to Ludovico Geymonat than it would ever be possible to say. He has read and reread and reread again every page of it, deeply sensitive to my voice and tolerant of my struggles yet tirelessly holding out for higher and truer standards. His generous but uncompromising judgment was indispensable at every turn. His strength, his openness to the world, his loving sense of how and what others see are a force that transforms life into adventure. Through him, I see the whole world in new colors.

Two of the great excitements that came from the world outside when I was a child were books from my mother and magician’s tricks from my father. My childhood was filled with books and magic, two things that seemed indistinguishable to me then and barely less so to me now. My parents instilled and carefully cultivated a love of reading and indulged a taste for the fantastic that has only partly diminished with maturity. As an adult, I can now see the many other more subtle riches they have bequeathed to me: their generous curiosity for the wider world, and their distinct but equally lively takes on the ins and outs of human life have left their influence everywhere. Since they have always encouraged me to follow my own heart in life and work, this influence is all the more precious for not being imposed. This book is dedicated to them, Carmel and Colin. Mo ghrá go deo sibh.