The work of Joyce is a black mass

In a Grand Scenario from a letter he wrote to Felix Giovanelli: (MARSHALL MCLUHAN AND JAMES JOYCE:BEYOND MEDIA Donald Theall and Joan Theall)

Looking at Joyce recently. A bit startled to note that last page of Finnegan is a rendering of the last part of the Mass. Remembered that the opening of Ulysses is from first words of the Mass. The whole thing is an intellectual Black Mass. The portion which Joyce read for recording ends with an imitation of the damnation of Faust. As he reads it ... it is humble. Casual, eerie. Speaking of Existenz and the hatred of language--what about Finnegan? (McLuhan, 1987: 183).

It was the maximum scorn Joyce managed to make about the Catholic religion, which he abhorred. One thing that intellectuals do not realize is that Ulysses does not end with the "Yes" Molly Bloom at the end of her soliloquy and they resent what McLuhan said above. From an author who rebels against it, i.e., the work of Joyce is effectively a "black mass" as McLuhan noticed, I quote:

"In 1946, in a letter to a friend, the Jansenist McLuhan noted the darkness of Joyce's poetic, for as Ulysses had opened with the first words of the Catholic mass, Wake closed with a 'rendering of the last part of the mass'. making the Wake 'an intellectual Black Mass'. He noted that Joyce's recording 'concludes with an imitation of the damnation of Faust. As he reads it... it is horrible. Casual, eerie,' suggesting that it reflects the 'hatred of language' in the philosophy of 'Existenz'. On the other hand, the schizoid McLuhan disseminated a poetry of excess, for the presumed purpose (unless we take him to be one of the greatest cynics of this century) of undoing and exposing through empiric observation the workings of Joyce's rebellion - that carnivalesque ressurrection, which is in reality a revolution - an insurrection, a phallic erection and the ressurrection of Nietzsche's superman. McLuhan correctly sensed the Nietzschean depth of Joyce's poetic, for what Nietzsche describes as 'poetic violence which replaces the other of all the atoms of the phrase' becomes in Joyce's Wake, 'the abnilhilisation of the etym'."