“Unprobables in their poor suit of the improssable”: The Improbability Principle in Joyce

Abstract: David Hand’s Improbability Principle, Richard Mazur’s examination of flukes, and Nassim Taleb’s book The Black Swan provide many parallels to Joyce’s lifelong engagement with improbability and chance. While the dark horse or the outlier is, as Taleb puts it, outside the realm of the predictable, it also presents opportunities for the greatest gains; i.e., the greater the odds, the greater the possible returns. While planning is designed to minimize the role of chance, Joyce’s method was to remain as open as possible to winds of chance and to make coincidence his collaborator. Just as Ireland has been described as a country where the inevitable never happens and the unexpected always, it unexpectedly produced the greatest of Black Swans: James Joyce. Joyce, in turn, produced the Blackest Swan of all: Finnegans Wake.