Sue's Reviews > James Joyce

In this truly fascinating biography, Richard Ellman presents the entirety of James Joyce: his family, both natal and his family with Nora; his rather strained relationship with Ireland coupled with a love affair of sorts with the city of Dublin; his varied relationships with contemporary writers in Europe; his love of the musical world; his many relocations throughout the continent; his love of language; and of course his writing. And there are sides I've left out.

While the history of the man is intriguing, its importance is as the background to the books he was to create. Without the reaction against the Catholic Church and Ireland and without the love of Dublin, these books would not have seen the light of day. Ellman provides analyses of each book, from creation through publication, the whole torturous path, and along the way also gives the reader so much enlightening information that assures future reading of any Joyce works will be different. I have marked several sections to be read when I read Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and (probably) Ulysses again. And I will definitely read the section for Finnegans Wake if/when I reach that book.

Joyce was undoubtedly a genius, a conflicted man, a difficult man, a man who, in his own way, loved his family but also expected the world and everyone in it to move to his drum. But perhaps that is part of the mark of genius.

Ellman makes some interesting summations near the end of his excellent tome. In this first:

In retrospect, it seems clear that the 'monster,'
as Joyce several times called Finnegans Wake in these
days, had to be written, and that he had to write it.
Readers may still sigh because he did not approach them
more directly, but it does not appear that this alternative
was open to him. In Dubliners he had explored the waking
consciousness from outside, in A Portrait and Ulysses from
inside. He had begun to impinge, but gingerly, upon the
mind asleep. There lay before him, as in 1922 he well
knew, this almost totally unexplored expanse. That the
great psychological discovery of his century was the
night world he was, of course, aware, but he frowned on
using that world as a means of therapy. Joyce's purpose
was not so didactic; he wished, unassumingly enough, to
amuse men with it. (p 716)

And finally, in summing up the life of James Joyce,

The surface of the life Joyce lived seemed always
erratic and provisional. But its central meaning was
directed as consciously as his work. The ingenuity with
which he wrote his books was the same with which he
forced the world to read them; the smiling affection
he extended to Bloom and his other principal characters
was the same that he gave to the members of his family;
his disregard for bourgeois thrift and convention was
the splendid extravagance which enabled him in
literature to make an intractable wilderness into a
new state. In whatever he did, his two profound interests
---his family and his writings---kept their place. These
passions never dwindled. The intensity of the first gave
his work its sympathy and humanity; the intensity of
the second raised his life to dignity and high
dedication. (p 744)

I highly recommend this superb biography to anyone interested in James Joyce, in literary biograpy, or any of Mr Joyce's literary works.