Sue’s Reviews > James Joyce > Status Update

review to come

p 743 Absolutely magnificent. Spellbinding too. This will be my benchmark for future biographies. Joyce was probably a difficult person to be with throughout much of his life, but he certainly appears to meet the criteria for genius. And his wife Nora said, after his death, 'Things are very dull now. There was always something doing when he was about.'

'There is,' he went on, 'no connection between the people in Ulysses and the people in Work in Progress [FW]. There are in a way no characters. It's like a dream. The style is also changing, and unrealistic, like the dream world. If I had to name a character, it would be just an old man. But his own connection with reality is doubtful.'

He drank with a nice combination of purpose and relaxation: during his convivial evenings he filled his mind with the way people talked and behaved, storing up what he needed for his writing; he also confided to intimate friends the latest anxieties of his life; and as the hour grew later he sang and cavorted to forget his troubles....He engaged in excess with considerable prudence.

to correct my prior entry, Appalled by his own dolorousness, he offered Louis Gillet a new calendar of weekdays: 'Moansday, Tearsday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday.' (auto correct even changes names)

Appalled by his own dolorousness, he offered Louis Holley a new calendar of weekdays: 'Moansday, Tearsday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday.

Out of consideration for himself as well as posterity, Joyce had decided that a book about his life should follow Gilbert's book on Ulysses. In this way he could make sure that his image...might be given the world as little distorted as possible. He...[asked]...Gilbert, who declined....Without saying so to Gorman directly, he made clear that he was to be treated as a saint with an unusually protracted martyrdom.

Miss Weaver came to Paris to discuss his plans with him in early April, and immediately thereafter, quite properly putting eyesight before matrimony, he went to Zurich.

I love George Moore's comment on beginning to read Ulysses. "After having read a few pages he commented to Janet Flanner, 'It cannot be a novel, for there isn't a tree in it.'"

p 607: Nora, whose health had been excellent for many years, was suddenly suspected of having cancer...She went into the hospital, and Joyce, refusing to be separated from her,had a bed set up in her room...He depended upon Nora to hold his life together by her loyalty and by her contempt for his weaknesses. There was no one else to whom he spoke without deliberation.