New space-time. Section 2 of Wandering Rocks,
which is quite short, takes place at the entrance to Harry J.
O'Neill's, an "undertaker and job carriage proprietor" at 164
North Strand Road according to Thom's directory. This
business was on the northeastern edge of the city, close to
the spot where the road crosses the Royal Canal, and Father
Conmee has passed it on his walk to Artane in section 1.
One narrative interpolation glances at an action of Conmee's
that took place in that section (though it could well be
viewed as happening in this one), and another at an event that
is represented in section 3. These links to the sections just
before and after show two kinds of impression that Joyce's
interpolations can create: of perfect and less than perfect
simultaneity.
In section 1 Father Conmee passed "H. J. O'Neill's funeral
establishment where Corny Kelleher totted figures in the
daybook while he chewed a blade of hay. A constable on his
beat saluted Father Conmee and Father Conmee saluted the
constable." In section 2 Corny Kelleher is again seen "chewing
his blade of hay" and talking to the constable, but this
cannot be the same moment because the priest has now moved
slightly farther along the road out of the city: "Father
John Conmee stepped into the Dollymount tram on Newcomen
bridge," where the North Strand Road crosses the canal
and leaves the central city. The sentence echoes a very
similar one in section 1––"On Newcomen bridge the very
reverend John Conmee...stepped on to an outward bound
tram"––but there it came four sentences after the ones
about seeing Corny and saluting the constable. Additional
evidence of time passing is provided by the fact that Corny
Kelleher now closes "his long daybook," whereas in section 1
he "totted figures in the daybook" as Conmee passed by.
The temporal and spatial disjunctions reinforce the sense of
an interpolation––a jump to a different scene. But Clive Hart
argues that what feels like an interpolation from section 1
actually is not: "Although Conmee is some distance away, Corny
Kelleher would nevertheless have had no difficulty in seeing
him board the tram, had he taken the trouble to look. This
passage, which belongs on the fringes of the same narrative
and topographical context, is not therefore strictly speaking
an interpolation" (James Joyce's Dublin, 48). Joyce
performs the same trick in section 15, when a sentence
describing three men meeting on the steps of City Hall sounds
like it is intruding on the action of Martin Cunningham and
his friends descending Cork Hill––until one stops to realize
that Cork Hill goes directly past the steps of City Hall, so
the two scenes are in fact identical.
In section 2 the proximity is not quite so immediate as that,
but Hart's observation is accurate. O'Neill's was one of
several buildings on the North Strand Road destroyed when a
German bomber dropped four high explosive bombs on the area on
the night of 31 May 1941, and there has been a lot of
reconstruction since then, so the precise location may be a
little uncertain, but it would have been on the south side of
the road just 300-400 feet away from the Newcomen Bridge. In a
personal communication, Matt Rudge, who lives nearby, observes
that "Number 164 would have existed on the site of the
existing James Larkin House.... From that vantage point, it
would have been quite possible for Corny Kelleher to see Fr.
Conmee board the tram. They are on a similar elevation."
One can still make a case for the sentence being an
interpolation, however. In addition to its close linguistic
echoing of a sentence in section 1 (a feature of every
interpolation in Wandering Rocks), and the way it jogs
time forward a little (another feature of many
interpolations), there is the discontinuity between the two
actions. Even if Kelleher could have spotted Conmee boarding
the tram "had he taken the trouble to look," it seems
narratively significant that he does not look. He is
shown "looking idly out" of the shop, evidently concerned not
to be seen looking very intently at anything in the presence
of this constable who is pumping a covert informant ("It's
very close") for news of a "particular party." Since Kelleher
is not straining to catch sight of Conmee, it does not seem
quite right to say that the two stories share "the same
narrative and topographical context." The effect of the
sentence about Conmee boarding a tram is to make readers
suddenly recall an action from the first section, and that is
the essence of Joyce's interpolations.
The other intruding sentence is quite unambiguously an
interpolation: "Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of
hayjuice arching from his mouth while a generous white arm
from a window in Eccles street flung forth a coin." Here
the prose asserts exact simultaneity ("while") with an action
happening in a very different place, nearly a mile to the
northwest. The next section shows this action happening at the
Blooms' house: "A plump bare generous arm shone, was seen,
held forth from a white petticoatbodice and taut shiftstraps.
A woman's hand flung forth a coin over the area railings." The
two passages are linked by the "arching" descent of the spit
and the coin. Hart observes also that "Kelleher is concerned
with death, Molly with life" (Critical Essays, 203).
The simultaneity feels plausible because section 2 is so
brief and section 3 comes immediately after. When the Eccles
Street scene reappears via interpolation in section 9,
however, the narrative distance is reflected in a temporal gap
comparable to the one created by Conmee's progress up the
North Strand Road. When Molly opens her window to fling a coin
to the beggar, a card advertising Unfurnished Apartments
falls from the sash. In section 9 the card reappears
in the window. By such mechanisms the interpolations in
Wandering Rocks can create impressions not only of
simultaneity but also of forward motion, advancing action
along the arrow of time as traditional novels do.
