
Who the Hell Is This Joyce (1928) - samclemens
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/09/21/who-the-hell-is-this-joyce/
======
mwfunk
"My warmest wishes to you Joyce. I can’t follow your banner any more than you
can follow mine. But the world is wide and there is room for both of us to be
wrong."

An admirable sentiment. I don't think the human mind (including mine) is
capable of following it 100%, but I wish more people at least aspired to it,
and fewer people saw it as a sign of weakness (which it is not, quite the
opposite).

~~~
CalChris
Aspired to it.

I read The Dead and Portrait. But when it came to Ulysses it felt like I was
aspiring to read it. Too much work and too little pleasure

No one ever quotes Joyce. They allude to him. Maybe they're just further along
that aspirational trail.

~~~
anonymousDan
I would encourage you to give Ulysses another go. I think there are a few
chapters that are hard going at the start that put people off, but after about
the third or fourth chapter it is a bit more digestible. Especially the one
where he's getting the carriage to the graveyard. Another thing I found
helpful was to read an edition with lots of footnotes explaining various
obscure passages. You can even look up bits you find confusing online. It's
more work than reading your average novel I'll grant you, but after finishing
it every other novel I've read really made me appreciate the richness of the
language in Ulysses.

~~~
andybak
I was once advised:

1\. Don't be afraid to skip parts or start from the middle and jump around

2\. Don't worry too much about it all fitting together - each small part is
enjoyable even if you're not following that larger structure.

Basically open a page at random and revel in it. It's potentially a lot of fun
to read.

I'll hasten to add that I personally haven't followed this advice. I gave my
copy away before hearing it.

------
blazespin
I would never ever read finnegan's wake. Honestly, I can't imagine why anyone
in their right mind would except perhaps literary scientists. But to put
finnegan's wake on the stereo or headphones while working out or doing a
fanstatic hike or sailing or whatever is an incredible experience that I have
always been grateful for. I encourage everyone to do it. HG wells, however, on
the other hand is something you'd want to sit down and read because he kills
his darlings with the idea that his readers will sit down and read it. Not
just let it waft over them and permeate their subconscious. Finnegan's wake is
wonderful mental music.

BTW, Joyce wrote portrait of an artist as a young man, which is a really great
read and a must for anyone with a literary / artistic bent.

~~~
johnloeber
Listening to FW is a superb idea, especially because the text takes
onomatopoeia to its limits and contains a plethora of multilingual puns. It's
meant to be read aloud. I'm guessing that the stream-of-consciousness style
lends itself especially well to audio that you can lose yourself in, which is
great for running etc.

~~~
twoodfin
Can anyone recommend a good unabridged reading of the Wake?

By the way, the Irish RTE radio (unabridged!) production of _Ulysses_ is
wonderful.

[https://archive.org/details/Ulysses-
Audiobook](https://archive.org/details/Ulysses-Audiobook)

~~~
reltuk
When I saw this question, I went to find a link so that I could recommend
Patrick Healy's reading. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it now
available for free on the internet.

It's quite rushed and somewhat flat at parts. Some of the abridged recordings
I've listened to do more justice to the excerpts they've chosen. But it's a
heroic effort none the less. For me, it made the full Wake accessible and
alive in a way that made me really enjoy spending time with it.

~~~
mcguire
This? [http://ubu.com/sound/joyce_fw.html](http://ubu.com/sound/joyce_fw.html)

~~~
reltuk
Yes exactly. Sorry for failing to include the link in my earlier comment.

------
pault
> Who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many waking hours of the few
> thousand I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and
> fancies and flashes of rendering?

This is a perfect phrasing of my feelings about all postmodern literature. I
tried so hard to get into Pynchon but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was
the butt of an elaborate practical joke.

~~~
sverige
That feeling may come from looking for meaning or trying to make sense of it.
That's the conclusion I reached, anyway, after reading V and Gravity's
Rainbow, anyway. And one other -- Vineland, that was it.

I love Dubliners by Joyce, but the later stuff? I'd sooner read The Sound and
the Fury again, but only if published with the different color inks Faulkner
wanted.

~~~
douche
> I'd sooner read The Sound and the Fury again

I have to assume this means that Joyce is somehow worse than sticking forks
covered in bees into your eyes. The Sound and the Fury is on the shortlist for
the worst book I ever heard was a great piece of literature, and soldiered
through despite its awfulness.

~~~
CalChris
I attempted S+F but there was a girl imvolved. Neither worked out.

------
l33tbro
Great post. In fact, this is the perfect article to counter the fist-shaking
cries of "Why is this article posted on Hacker News?"

The take-aways from this article are so broad that they are applicable to many
disciplines, especially coding, technology, and entrepreneurship. Here we have
two writers with very different ends. Joyce, the great poker of form, who must
have mildly infuriated the utilitarian and reductive sensibilities of Wells.

The letter makes me reflect on the tensions of my own life between engaging in
more experimental flights of fancy (where I'm making something I really love)
and, conversely, asking myself if other people may actually find value in what
I'm doing. Either way, I find articles like this much more insightful than
another Iphone headphone jack op-ed or whispers from the Elon Musk rumour
mill.

~~~
andybak
> who must have mildly infuriated the utilitarian and reductive sensibilities
> of Wells.

I get the feeling you came away siding with Joyce. I came away with hugely
increased respect for Wells (who I didn't know a huge amount about going into
this). Maybe I'm reading too much into your comment but 'utilitarian and
reductive' seemed faintly damning whereas I was surprised how deeply he was
considering the role of his work in relation to society and how nuanced his
challenge to Joyce was. Especially for a 'mere' science fiction writer...

~~~
justifier
interesting.. what gathered respect for wells were you able to gain from
reading this?

the letter is a series of self edifying straw men

to me it reads like someone trying to speak confidently to hide a deeply
rooted, or joyce induced, insecurity and ends up coming across as arrogant

~~~
nkurz
I can only speak for myself, but I had to the same positive pro-Wells feeling
from the letter. I've read Joyce, but I've barely read Wells. This letter
makes me want to.

I read the letter as an honest but negative reaction to the Wake, while
genuinely praising the prodigious talent of the writer. I don't know their
relative ages[1], but I read it in the tone of a businessman father astonished
by the virtuosity of his musician son --- astonished that the son followed
through on his dreams, but still wondering why someone would dedicate their
life to making pretty sounds.

I think Well's both captures what Joyce is up to, and clearly expresses why
it's not for him. I feel much the same toward Joyce. I've fought my way
through the most of the Wake, and feel happy knowing that it exists without
having much desire to read much more. Joyce's talent for language is obvious;
his choice of where to dedicate that talent is not. In retrospect, it was
probably a good choice, although one wonders how much impact a different path
might have had too.

[1] Looked it up: Wells was born in 1866, thus was just over 60 at the time of
the letter. Joyce was born in 1882, thus was about 45. I was picturing Joyce
as being a little younger from the tone of the letter, but the difference is
about right.

~~~
justifier
i am unsure exactly what wells means by any of his words, but he's dead so i
am unable to ask him

if i were to follow well's example laid out in the letter i could just assert
my own assumptions as fact and criticise those, but instead i will just try to
explain how his words affect me

also, it is important to note that it is difficult to truly know anything
about this letter because we are unaware of any prior or subsequent
correspondence

> The outcome is that I don’t think I can do anything for the propaganda of
> your work.

did wells mean for the word propaganda to be a subtle dig? does he mean
'promotion'?

'i don't think i can do anything for'.. who asked him to? did joyce? is wells
just asserting that his approval should be important to joyce?

if this letter was unsolicited i'd argue it's more about wells than joyce, and
as it stands alone i find it abhorrent

> Your training has been Catholic, Irish, insurrectionary; mine, such as it
> was, was scientific, constructive and, I suppose, English.

on first glance this sentence had me suddenly wanting to read wells, until i
read it again and realised he's 'just making pretty sounds' without any
evidence or explicit reasoning which i would think any scientific and
constructive mind would consider wholly necessary

this hearkens back to my first notion about a correspondence but why does
wells tell joyce what joyce's 'training' is? and then set his own assumed
'training' up as a counterpoint.. and a very appealing one at that

wells continues on in this effort to assign opinion and motivation to joyce
and then set himself as the better

> And while you were brought up under the delusion of political suppression I
> was brought up under the delusion of political responsibility. It seems a
> fine thing for you to defy and break up. To me not in the least.

this is another confusing message for me

for me 'delusion of political suppression' is a horrible thing to accuse
someone of and self assessing a 'delusion of political responsibility' is
something endeared to me

but it would seem to me someone who calls their own education one of a
'delusion of political responsibility' then i would assume that person thinks
political responsibility is unnecessary but then he goes on to say that to
'defy and break up' is not for him..

so does he adhere to political responsibility even though he recognises it as
a delusion? if so it would also seem rather unscientific

and of the notion of being 'constructive' it seems you in your comment also
have some loose verbage in the same vein:

> although one wonders how much impact a different path might have had too.

impact? how do you measure that? i mean look at your first sentence wherein
you say you've read joyce and hardly wells..

so prior to this letter who has impacted you more? you could argue, 'sure,
i've read joyce but it went through me' but you still read joyce those words
and ideas have a direct influence on you whether you agree or disagree with
their content or construction where as an ignorance of wells means his work
only indirectly impacts you

i think it is a silly effort to try to measure impact but since you deride
joyce's assumed impact i will defend it

joyce was a major influence on the beat generation who were a group of poets
in san francisco in the 1950s whose work went on to shape contemporary
civilisation by altering legal definitions of words which catalysed a number
of the social movements that followed in the coming years

this criticism and response of one of the beat poet's work plays perfectly
with this letter:

> His central criticism is that the Beat embrace of spontaneity is bound up in
> an anti-intellectual worship of the "primitive" that can easily turn toward
> mindlessness and violence. Podhoretz asserted that there was a link between
> the Beats and criminal delinquents. Ginsberg responded in a 1958 interview
> .. "The bit about anti-intellectualism is a piece of vanity, we had the same
> education, went to the same school, you know there are 'Intellectuals' and
> there are intellectuals. Podhoretz is just out of touch with twentieth-
> century literature, he's writing for the eighteenth-century mind. We have a
> personal literature now—Proust, Wolfe, Faulkner, Joyce." (o)

is wells 'out of touch'? who cares? but speaking negatively about someone
else's work to prop up your own, for me, makes me question the quality of your
work more than the one you are deriding

(o)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_Generation#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_Generation#Criticism)

~~~
nkurz
> although one wonders how much impact a different path might have had too.

 _impact? how do you measure that?_

I ask the question in the sense of wondering what impact Brian May might have
had as a scientist rather than as a musician
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May#Astrophysics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May#Astrophysics)),
or vice versa, whether Richard Feynman would have had greater impact as a
drummer than a physicist ([http://io9.gizmodo.com/5909408/and-now-richard-
feynman-playi...](http://io9.gizmodo.com/5909408/and-now-richard-feynman-
playing-the-bongos)). Wondering counterfactually what other work Joyce might
have created had he dedicated himself to it does not take away from the work
that he actually chose to create.

 _since you deride joyce 's assumed impact i will defend it_

I _think_ you are misreading Wells. I'm _sure_ you are misreading me.
Personally, I am very far from deriding Joyce's impact. Joyce has had great
impact on me. I originally learned Perl and CGI to do a hypertext Ulysses. I
don't normally celebrate Bloomsday, but I'm usually aware of it. I've even
attended Joyce conferences. While it may be my fault for not writing clearly,
if you read me as deriding Joyce, it should give you pause to consider that
you might be misreading Wells too.

~~~
justifier
i'm sorry, but it seems clear to me that wells is ridiculing joyce's 'last two
works'

> Now with regard to this literary experiment of yours.. I don’t think it gets
> anywhere.

> .. Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than
> they will ever be to read.

even ignoring how joyce suffered while writing these works, i can say
anecdotally that wells is so completely wrong in this assertion because i
found reading these works to be both extremely amusing and exciting to read

> .. Do I get much pleasure from this work? No.

> .. Do I feel I am getting something new and illuminating ..? No.

that is some clearly contemptuous ire.. and you said you agreed:

> I think Well's both captures what Joyce is up to, and clearly expresses why
> it's not for him. I feel much the same toward Joyce.

so i apologise for reading your post as agreeing with wells' contempt but it
seemed to me a pretty sure reading that that was your intent

that said, now that you have described what you meant by 'wondering about ones
impact' it seems like an innocuous game and i suppose my reaction to it was
more about its proximity to wells' opinions that i still read as clearly
saying joyce's choices were simply wrong

asking 'what would have been if he wrote in esperanto instead?' takes on
different connotation when presented as nonsequitor, but when paired with 'he
wasted his potential. what would have been if he wrote in esperanto instead?'
it just reads rude

i am also confused why my opinion that wells is belligerently overreaching is
controversial when the paris review even notes it in their lede describing the
letter as "reacting, irascibly if not uncharitably"

i like wake and ulysses

> I've fought my way through the most of the Wake

this assumes a prerequisite that books, or novels, should be read cover to
cover.. personally i am without this prerequisite i can pick up wake and read
a single sentence and put it down and be wholly satiated

> Joyce's talent for language is obvious; his choice of where to dedicate that
> talent is not.

i love to have my expectations subverted, i find the obvious can often turn
droll and disappointing

this is clear from the fact that dubliners bores me but i think wake is the
only true novel, ulysses is the first iteration of that endeavour and is much
more approachable but i think he achieved the closest thing to the platonic
ideal of what i, for myself, consider a novel: a true account of affects and
effects; with finnegan's wake

i think of wake as a literary fractal

what is often accused of being crowded, elabourate, riddled digressions i see
as the truest account possible

like you said of me misreading you, i believe it, because regardless of the
amount of words you use there will always be more that was left out that could
have further elucidated those ideas

joyce seems to follow a single strand to a point of abstraction that the
reader feels unable to comprehend the moment and in so doing achieves the
truest expression of that moment

any finite description is incomplete

and someone could respond, 'but joyce's abstractions are well documented and
you can read the text annotated to understand every foible' but that only
defends that position that the work is incredibly calculated and anything but
gibberish

to truly define stephen dedalus and his mind joyce would have to write within
abstractions that joyce would be unable to have because joyce is wholly
disparate from stephen

to attempt any such an effort would be indistinguishable from gibberish even
for the author because in its essence the author would have to be unaware of
what he is writing and why

so, as i see it, his only possible choice is to take it to the point that he
is aware of what is being said but the reader is just too far from familiar

from this letter wells seems to revel in telling some other person why he does
what he does, which from my reading is hillariously the exact opposite of what
joyce wanted his readers to get from his work: life is enigmatic to life

i could be wrong about joyce, but that is why i love it

------
eliben
> Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they
> will ever be to read.

Oh how true for so much code, unfortunately.

~~~
hinkley
Haha, I came to say exactly the same thing. I'll have to save that line for
some code reviews.

------
briansteffens
I agree with a lot of what he's saying, but at the same time, why does it
matter? Does every book need to be easily enjoyable as light reading by anyone
who is literate? Joyce was highly educated and exceedingly well-read, and he
wrote (in his later works especially) for an audience similar to himself on
those points. The only downside is it limits his potential audience, similar
to how a writer of obscure fanfiction or someone who blogs about niche
subjects limits their own potential audience. His particular niche was writing
for literature nerds.

~~~
stepvhen
But Finnegans Wake isnt difficult like Pynchon or Gaddis, who have tons of
characters and complex plot devices and rich narrative. It is syntactically
erratic and full of "puns" and "wordplay" whose existence the reader is
forever aware of but cannot understand without countless hours more poured
into the supporting literature. It is not an awful experience but you do not
get out what you put in, unlike other difficult authors.

------
greydius
This is a nice reminder that we don't have to make enemies out of those that
disagree with us.

------
Hondor
A great example of the complaint writing process of beginning and ending with
a compliment and sandwiching the criticism in the middle. Allowing him to get
away with

"Your mental existence is obsessed by a monstrous system of contradictions."

and still not being too personally offensive.

------
ktRolster
"Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they
will ever be to read."

Ouch.

~~~
icantdrive55
That's the one that caught my attention too.

There have been times where I try to get into a book, and if I even get the
hint the writer is filling up pages with overly complex flowery prose; I
immediately put the book down.

I always assumed it was just because I wasen't a natural reader. I've actually
stayed away from a lot of classical literature, because I just couldn't get
into the books.

I have been completely wrong though. I remember reading Nabrakov's Lolita
years after I suffered through those English/Lit. courses. I do wish my
instructors felt it was safe reading back then, or they weren't afraid of
getting fired for assigning this book.

That book really changed my view on lituraure. I remember reading the book,
and every sentance, paragraph just flowed.

I remember being shocked at the subject matter, and wondering if that was
clouding my judgement, and honestly I'm still not sure.

After that book, I bought all his books, and haven't completely finished one.

I think it's more due to my unnatural reading ability though.

I college, I saved up most of my required English/lit. classes for my last
semester year in college--out of fear. I do know I felt traumatized by my
English 101 instructor. He would rip apart my writing with that red pen. He
would have me read my horrid papers in front of the class, and public speaking
was my worst fear. He once, in a round about way, accused me of plagiarism--
because he had to ask his wife what an amygdala was, and "How did You come up
with that idea for a paper?" In the end, he did give me a B, but I was really
affected by that class. I used to enjoy writing before his class. It's funny
how one teacher can stifle a young student's enthusiasm.

I had a girlfriend in a different English class, directly across from my
classroom, at the same time of day. The doors were always open. I could hear
her instructor because he had a loud voice. I would write down what that
teacher had to say--stuff like funneling paragraphs, and not being to wordy,
etc. I learned more about writing from her teacher than mine.

And as usual, I rambled on to long, but if you don't quite get what's so great
about seemingly dry old books, give Lotita a shot.

~~~
CalChris
Nabakov is a pleasure to read. You can argue about what he means (and that's a
good thing) but he is a sheer joy to read.

------
Mz
Sorry, the title missed the bigger draw for me: This was written by H.G.
Wells! The title should make that clear. This was not just anyone asking "Who
the hell is this Joyce...?"

~~~
dang
HN tries to de-emphasize authors in titles. The year should be in there,
though, to cue the reader that it's probably a historically interesting
author. We'll add that.

~~~
dredmorbius
I really wish you wouldn't, though I can see some of the merits of this. Fact
is, reputation _does_ matter.

I disagree strongly with publications that do this, most especially for
_current_ works. _The Economist_ doesn't have bylines at all (and have an
explainer for this, which utterly fails to persuade -- the less charitable
explanation is that many of the stories are written by young recent grads with
little actual depth and who wouldn't be considered other than the
publication's umbrella branding), _The Register_ omits bylines from its
overview page, though they're featured on articles themselves. Arguably the
justification is the inverse of _The Economist_ 's.

~~~
dang
That analogy doesn't hold up because HN isn't a publication, it's a list of
links.

It's nearly always trivial to figure out who the author of a post is. The
question is whether that should be emphasized in the title, and HN's
traditional default is no. Putting the emphasis on content rather than
personalities seems to produce better discussion.

~~~
dredmorbius
As I said, I understand your reasoning (your description is as I'd thought it
would be). I disagree with it.

Arguing over whether or not HN is a publication is awfully semantic. At the
very least, it's a publication of links and the commentary of them. So we
disagree there as well, though that's not particularly material.

There's a deeper issue of reputation, credibility, _consequences_ , and more,
that matter. This ties strongly into my "Big Questions" re-asking (submitted
an hour or so back), and a suggestion from Ted Lemon in 2015: that a very
large part of the addressible problem we're facing is the noosphere -- a
superset of media, all of human thought. There's something very broken (and
some terrifying consequences) to how ideas are created, propagated, (or
propagandised), distorted, mistated, etc.

I'm not sure how to fix this. I'm not sure that it's fixable.

When I first started studying science -- in primary school -- I found the
mentions of scientists names and such to be distractions. Shouldn't the
_ideas_ matter more than the person who had them? I've completely reversed my
thinking, because it seems to me impossible to consider an idea without
understanding the context within it, _and context matters_. The person
themselves matters.

I've been thinking a lot about reputation, identity, and community,
particularly regards my recent experiences with Imzy, and constrasting that to
other spaces. In particular, _identity IS reputation_ in a whole lot of ways
-- starting with the etymologies of "fame", "reputation", "fame", "honor".
Fully anonymity is also full impunity, and at least my experiences elsewhere
suggest that works poorly. I've contrasted that strongly to HN's practices and
results. Even where I don't always agree, or find elements frustrating, one
thing HN does is, generally, allow tensions to dissipate fairly quickly,
through UI/UX (including some of the annoying or missing elements of it),
moderation, examples set, and more.

I realise that offering authors names risks a cult of personality. At the same
time, some good (and bad) reputations are well deserved. Electronic
communications generally strip away many of the normal social queues.
Stripping away the few that are left, most especially authorship, strikes me
as heading the wrong way. I'm a fan of Jakob Nielsen's microcontent guidance.

I'm also increasingly convinced that not offering users tools to quantify and
qualify the content they access online is a tremendous failing of present
tools. I've a limited capacity to really process information and messages,
various sources (Stephen Wolfram, Walt Mossberg, NY Times moderation desk)
suggest ~150 - 300 emails, ~800 comment moderations, are about the upper limit
of what someone can _sustainably_ absorb or process per day, over the long
term. And _that_ is if this is their full-time job. If you're looking at
assimilating quality and complex information, the count's likely far lower.

As such: cues to quality, including reputation and identity, matter.

~~~
nkurz
Beautiful response. I was going to take a different direction, but yours makes
better reading.

Dan writes: _HN tries to de-emphasize authors in titles._

But HN should also remember that the goal is to improve the discussion, not to
just to follow the preexisting rules. In this particular case, I think adding
"H.G. Wells" would have helped rather than hurt the discussion. If you think
the same, you probably should have added it. If you think the final discussion
is better without (perhaps you are right, the quality was good, and had the
name been added maybe this would be the first in an onslaught of rerepublished
letters by science fiction authors who've been dead for 100 years) then you
should keep it off. But as the one making the rules, it's kind of cheating for
you to point at them as explanation for your actions.

------
awclives
Any Joyce or Wells lovers here may like Jupiter, an app my team built. We are
clearly biased, but we think that Jupiter is the best way to read the
classics.

It allows you to highlight your favorite parts, and share magic links like
this one to a great line from Dubliners:
[https://jupiter.ai/books/Q9bx/?hl=Oze](https://jupiter.ai/books/Q9bx/?hl=Oze)

As expected, the reading experience is great in the iPhone app and necessarily
not great in the browser.

Here's the app store link: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jupiter-read-
highlight-class...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jupiter-read-highlight-
classic/id1121414981?mt=8)

------
ap22213
It's revealing that Wells made this letter to Joyce and not the other way
around. To the artist, the audience only becomes important when they're either
a patron or a subject. And, even then, they often don't matter much. But, to
Wells, the audience is the purpose - and his work, a product.

To consume art is to allow oneself to momentarily seep into the mind of
another. And, if done with 'soul' unshielded and open, it's one of the most
intimate actions possible for a sentient being like a Human who is eternally
imprisoned within a vessel of imperfect sensors.

Joyce is an artist. And, to read him - well, the experience may not be
enjoyable - it may actually be uncomfortable, painful or even bizarre or
alien. But, it's what he is.

------
pmoriarty
Virginia Woolf called Joyce's Ulysses the work of _" a queasy undergraduate
scratching his pimples."_

------
smcnally
"Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they
will ever be to read." is a good zinger, and likely true in mnay cases

------
Tycho
What makes this so great is that it's private correspondence, unburdened by
any audience except the recipient. It's hard to imagine such frankness in a
contemporary NY Times column, with the usual liberal/progressive/SJW
sycophancy at work. You wouldn't get lines like

 _You began Catholic, that is to say you began with a system of values in
stark opposition to reality._

------
barrkel
The font in this article is nigh-on unreadable on Firefox on Windows. It
renders perfectly legibly in Chrome and IE11, but on Firefox it is so faint
and the forms so small that they get lost in the anti-aliasing. The kerning
seems quite bad too.

Here's what I mean: [http://imgur.com/a/ymnvH](http://imgur.com/a/ymnvH)

Seems like a regression, as usually Chrome's font rendering is much uglier on
Windows.

(Sorry for off-topic post.)

~~~
bzbarsky
Those two screenshots are actually using different fonts (you can tell by the
shape of the bottom part of the 'g', for example: in one screenshot it's the
same width as the top part, but in the other it's wider).

Chances are, this is a difference in what the different browsers do with the
"garamond-premier-pro" font family name and which font they actually end up
using when that's specified. Any chance you could confirm that?

