City of the Mind | Literary Precedents

City of the Mind Literary Precedents

In theme and technique, this novel reveals the influence of modernism, recalling in particular James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925). In both of these works, an accumulation of metaphor and personification effects the same kind of foregrounding of the city (Dublin and London, respectively) that Lively achieves in City of the Mind. And Lively's description of Matthew as being swept up in the city's "current," "torrent," and "streaming allusive purpose" echoes Woolf's of Clarissa Dalloway, who is swept up by the "waves of ... divine vitality" that roll through London's streets. Both Woolf and Lively, although agnostics, regard this phenomenon in an almost mystical light: Clarissa believes that although she will one day cease to exist, "somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she [will survive]," and Matthew has certain moments of epiphany when he suddenly glimpses "his...
(read more)