Sad to finish this journey.

What a stunning book it is! I firmly believe it has won a plethora of awards.

It provides an abundance of information regarding Joyce's inspirations for his masterpieces Ulysses and Finnigans Wake.

This has made me extremely curious about Joyce's daughter Lucia. As a result, I discovered that there is a biography of her available.

It is truly a brilliant book about a brilliant man. Joyce's works are not only literary gems but also a source of无尽的 inspiration and exploration. This book has opened up a new world for me, allowing me to have a deeper understanding of Joyce and his creative process. I highly recommend it to all those who have an interest in literature and the life of great writers.

From time to time, I find myself deeply musing upon the question of how, when, and why it has come about that artists, especially in the written and plastic arts, are so widely regarded as having some sort of moral pre-eminence in civilization.

I refer only to the western artistic environments as I do not know enough about other regions to comment on them.

It has clearly been a relatively recent development, dating, I suspect, from Victorian times. But it really took hold within modernism. Modernist and post-modernist writers are so often held up as having some extraordinary insight into our cosmos and particularly into the condition of the human race. And yet, why should we make this assumption? On the most basic level, we should be slightly wary, given the appalling behavior of so many artists. They behave outrageously in their lives, but we readers contemplate in piety the ideas in their art work. There is some sort of irrationality to the human brain incorporated in all this.

This is not, of course, the primary issue in studying James Joyce, but it is certainly present. As I have found it to be present in Ezra Pound and in Patrick White, two other modernist writers I have been reading in the last few years. In Joyce, it is most acutely a part of his relationships with his wife Nora, his brother Stanislaus, his patrons Sylvia Beach and Lady Gregory, and other writers such as WB Yeats, Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, George Russell, and, for that matter, Sigmund Freud. Fascinatingly, these are all people on whose support Joyce continually relied, and he sometimes worked hard to obtain their patronage.

This implies a level of egocentrism which is almost incomprehensible. He seems to have been one of those individuals who regards himself as remarkable and assumes the world will treat him accordingly. He took an interest in singing, did very well in a contest but was furious when he did not win and refused to take lessons. He expected and readily accepted anyone’s support, especially financial, but repaid their beneficence with sarcasm, contempt, and abuse. Although he did feel some remorse and apologize to Nora from time to time, such as when he initially accepted someone’s vindictive and untrue claim that Nora was conducting an affair. It should, perhaps, be noted that she, in her turn, referred to “that chop suey he’s writing.” So they were hardly a meeting of minds. He once wrote to Nora: “I am a jealous, lonely, dissatisfied, proud man. Why are you not more patient with me and kinder with me?” I think these days we call that “entitlement”.

When he was unable to convince a publisher to print Dubliners because of potential legal ramifications, his rage, Ellmann points out, ignored the fact that a publisher could be financially and ruinously liable if a charge were laid and sustained.

Ellman quotes W.B. Yeats as having said of Joyce, “Such a colossal self-conceit with such a Lilliputian literary genius I never saw combined in one person.” Yet Yeats later modified his judgment and came to admire his work. Yeats’s account of their early meeting is a delight, although its accuracy was later in question: He has the youthful Joyce declaiming to the revered established poet, “‘I really don’t care whether you like what I am doing or not. It won’t make the least difference to me. Indeed I don’t know why I am reading to you.’/ Then, putting down his book, he began to explain all his objections to everything I had ever done. Why had I concerned myself with politics, with folklore, with the historical setting of events, and so on? Above all why had I written about ideas, why had I condescended to make generalizations? These things were all the sign of the cooling of the iron, of the fading out of inspiration. I had been puzzled, but now I was confident again. He is from the Royal University, I thought, and he thinks that everything has been settled by Thomas Aquinas…Presently he got up to go, and, as he was going out, he said, ‘I am 20. How old are you?’ I told him, but I am afraid I said I was a year younger than I am. He said with a sigh, ‘I thought as much. I have met you too late. You are too old.’”

Ellmann is certainly an admirer of James Joyce but he does not spare him some home truths. He refers to “that callow foolery which Joyce never chose to renounce.” He is severe about the psychology of Joyce’s departure from Ireland: “Joyce needed exile as a reproach to others and a justification of himself. His feeling of ostracism from Dublin lacked, as he was well aware, the moral decisiveness of his hero Dante’s exile from Florence, in that he kept the keys to the gate.” And Ellmann reports with brutal detail Joyce’s ambivalent affectation of indifference at the time of his mother’s death.

One of my favorite quotations from the book offers a comparison with Sam Beckett: “Beckett was addicted to silences, and so was Joyce; they engaged in conversations which consisted often of silences directed towards each other, both suffused with sadness, Beckett mostly for the world, Joyce mostly for himself.”

Nevertheless, Joyce was a very clever magician with words. When his father died, in his grief he renamed the days of the week as Moanday, Tearsday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday. And there is his description of Rome: “Rome reminds me of a man who lives by exhibiting to travellers his grandmother’s corpse.”

In 1904 (I do like this book’s device of showing at the top of each page the year or years it describes), he started work on what would eventually become Portrait: “he recognized his theme, the portrait of the renegade Catholic artist as hero. He could draw upon two types of books he had read: the defecter from religion and the insurgent artist. He joined the two together. His own conflict with the Church, his plunge into callow sexuality, his proud recalcitrance in the name of individuality and then of art, his admiration for Parnell, for Byron, for Gibson and Flaubert, his Parisian exile, all began to merge as parts of this central conception in which the young man gives up everything for art. But Stephen’s esthetic [sic] notions are not renunciant; he becomes an artist because art opens to him ‘the fair courts of life’ which priest and king were trying to keep locked.” But “there was a limitation upon even his candour.” Stanislaus “contended that he confesses in a foreign language.”

So, one way and another, it turns out that James Joyce was correct: he was a remarkable human being and he was destined to be remembered. Not as an example of human perfection (a friend in Paris stated, “He had not taste, only genius.”) Ezra Pound, with his customary pomposity declaimed: “I respect Mr Joyce’s integrity as an author in that he has not taken the easy part. I never had any respect for his common sense or for his intelligence, apart from his gifts as a writer.” One might see a little inadvertent irony in Pound lamenting someone’s lack of common sense!

Perhaps I might conclude this review of a superb, magnificent biography with the author’s quotation from a letter to Joyce from H.G. Wells: “Your training has been Catholic, Irish, insurrectionary; mine, such as it was, was scientific, constructive and, I suppose, English. The frame of my mind is a world wherein a big unifying and concentrating process is possible (increase of power and range by economy and concentration of effort), a progress not inevitable but interesting and possible. That game attracted and holds me. For it, I want language and statement is simple and clear as possible. You began Catholic, that is to say you began with a system of values in stark opposition to reality. Your mental existence is obsessed by a monstrous system of values in stark opposition to reality. Your mental existence is obsessed by a monstrous system of contradictions. You really believe in chastity, purity and the personal God and that is why you are always breaking out into cries of cunt, shit and hell. As I don’t believe in these things except as quite provincial values my mind has never been shocked to outcries by the existence of waterclosets and menstrual bandages – and undeserved misfortunes. 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.

“Now with regard to this literary experiment of yours. It’s a considerable thing because you are a very considerable man and you have in your crowded composition a mighty genius for expression which has escaped discipline. But I don’t think it gets anywhere. You have turned your back on common men, on their elementary needs and their restricted time and intelligence and you have elaborated. What is the result? Vast riddles. Your last two works have been more amusing and exciting to write than they will ever be to read. Take me as a typical common reader. Do I get much pleasure from this work? No. Do I feel I am getting something new and illuminating as I do when I read Anrep’s dreadful translation of Pavlov’s badly written book on Conditioned Reflexes? No. So I ask: Who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many waking hours of the few thousands I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and fancies and flashes of rendering?

“All this from my point of view. Perhaps you are right and I am all wrong. Your work is an extraordinary experiment and I would go out of my way to save it from destruction or restrictive interruption. It has its believers and its following. Let them rejoice in it. To me it is a dead end.

“My warmest good 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.”

Posterity has been much kinder to Joyce than it has to Wells, and I suspect Wells will slip from view quite quickly. Yet he shows much more capacity for self-reflection than Joyce does and I think he makes some very pertinent points about Joyce and his work.

Ellmann makes very pertinent points about the whole shebang.

Finally, I found the opportunity to finish Richard Ellmann's superb and highly readable biography of James Joyce. Regardless of what one might think of Joyce's writing, the man himself was incredibly interesting. I would add that he had an immensely attractive personality, but after considering what his wife Nora endured... no, forget it—he was indeed an immensely attractive personality. It's difficult not to like a man who came up with the following days of the week after his father's death: "Moansday, Tearsday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightsday, Shatterday."

I would have been ambivalent about inviting him to dinner. This world-class writer was also a world-class moocher. On the other hand, at his best, he was highly entertaining, and when possible, he was as generous to others as they were to him. Still, bringing him to my house might have posed a risk. Many witnesses attest to Joyce's gregariousness, yet Stefan Zweig found him morose and withdrawn. Perhaps he caught him on a series of bad days. Here was a man who suffered greatly (those damn eyes, his poor daughter, Lucia) and yet overall maintained a cheerful outlook on life. One might say drunks are often like that... well, one would probably be right. Yet Joyce transformed his optimism (and white wine) into the high comedy of Ulysses. Still, it's interesting to note that in some of his letters, his drinking got the better of him; for example, in a letter to his brother, he used the word ‘nymphomaniac’ instead of ‘satyr’. Or perhaps this was some kind of Freudian slip—he was referring to himself. In any event, how often did this happen while Joyce was composing his novels? And in the case of Finnegans Wake, how would anyone be able to tell between intentional and unintentional slips?

The convivial Joyce knew many of the great literary minds of his day, from Hemingway to Beckett. These people could be very intimidating to a small-fry middlebrow like me. I hate to say there are a lot of people smarter than me because the converse is that I'm stupider than a lot of people, which doesn't sound as nice. On the other hand, some highly talented people gave a thumbs down to Ulysses (forget FW!) including Virginia Woolf and Aldous Huxley (who once said Joyce showed everyone how not to write a novel). And while Joyce and H.G. Wells met on a couple of occasions and liked each other, Wells turned down a request from Joyce to help promote FW with a gracious and perceptive analysis. (And Shaw's opinion, quoted extensively by Ellmann, is flat-out hilarious.) But forget the famous friends. Joyce's much put-upon brother, Stanislaus, was no slouch. Many of his letters are quoted here, to great effect. Joyce's father was a monumental source of Irish blarney. And there was Nora, so often accused of not being Joyce's intellectual equal (well, who was?). When Joyce signed a copy of Ulysses and gave it to her as a gift, she promptly tried to sell it, deeply offending the author. But who is to say she wasn't giving a literary critique? Joyce rarely kidded himself about Nora. He knew he couldn't survive without her. If nothing else, she kept the storms and dogs at bay. As for Yeats and Shaw…Ellmann points out that they never finished reading the book, though they were free with comments about it.

Did Joyce like people? He loved people. But it could be painful knowing him. He broke off several friendships for no apparent reason. And boy, could he sometimes be prickly. Just read about Joyce's participation in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest in Zurich and the resulting hilarious (and I think unjustified) lawsuit Joyce instituted against the lead actor. And who would not have wanted to be present in Paris when the feisty Joyce, strolling down the boulevard with Hemingway, gets into an argument with someone and finally says something to the effect of, "Ernest! Beat him up!" He could be wonderfully iconoclastic. The wrath Joyce directs at puritanism in all its forms is a joy to behold. His derogatory comments about Freud-ism and Jung-ism come as a breath of fresh air. But like many people without religion, he resorted to pseudo-religion. He was a great believer in the importance of coincidences, and of serendipity. And when someone asked why he did not like dogs, he said, "Because they have no souls."

Cat lovers might agree.

I have always liked Joyce's early work, right up through Ulysses, which deserves its status as a classic. But FW is a different kettle of kippers. Ellmann provides quotes from Joyce at the beginning of every chapter, and most of these quotes are from FW. It's as if Ellmann is trying to focus our attention on the book, to grab our lapels and say, "See! It's great!" But outside of the fact that I don't understand it, I have other issues with FW. Most novelists are con artists, pretending to knowledge they don't really possess. Ellmann quotes Virginia Woolf to this effect. I can't remember the exact words, but she pretty much accused Joyce of being an ignorant show off. To my thinking, the concept of FW is wonderful. Joyce had it all outlined. But then he began going out of his way to insert arcane material that would require great effort to comprehend. And I mean he went way out of his way, to the point of taking 64 lessons in Flemish just so that he could insert more esoteric puns in the text. FW is one great 'plug-in'. "Here's the outline. See? Easy? Now just paste a mass of portmanteau words from point A to point Zed and it becomes profound!" But of course Joyce was a genius and an artist. What he did with all that artifice is what counts. Shakespeare did wonderful things with Plutarch. But I more or less understand Shakespeare. When Joyce was working with a translator on an Italian version of FW, he told the man, "We have to work quickly. In two years I won't understand what I wrote." (Paraphrase, but close.) And one of my favorite anecdotes in the book regards the time Beckett was taking dictation from Joyce (Finnegans Wake). There was a knock at the door. Joyce said ‘Come in’ and Beckett wrote it down. When Joyce discovered the error, he said, “Let it stand”. Thus…a modern masterpiece is born.

Joyce explained that the action of Ulysses takes place in the day, while Finnegans Wake takes place at night. If I could read in my sleep, FW might make sense to me. 'Nuff said.

But speaking of masters: what of Richard Ellmann? This is a great book. Ellmann really knew how to write, and how to turn a phrase. "Dr. Borsch, always eager to commit surgery…" "…but to be dissatisfied by Rome is a grander destiny than to be dissatisfied by Trieste." He details Joyce's life extensively but not excessively. And his obvious admiration, even love, for FW leads one to believe one doesn't have to be a crackpot to read and comprehend it (or, for that matter, to have written it). Ultimately, the loss is mine.

As for the great question: was Joyce a great understander of women? Molly Bloom's soliloquy leads many people to think so. But when one interviewer asked Joyce about this, he rolled his eyes up and stared at the ceiling. And what did Molly Bloom herself (Nora Joyce) have to say about it?

"He doesn't know the first thing about women."

Ellman is an outstanding biographer. His works are highly regarded in the literary world. He has a remarkable ability to bring the subjects of his biographies to life. Through meticulous research and in-depth exploration, he uncovers the hidden aspects of their lives and presents them in a vivid and engaging manner. His writing style is both elegant and accessible, making his biographies enjoyable to read for a wide range of audiences. Whether it is a well-known historical figure or a lesser-known personality, Ellman manages to capture their essence and tell their stories in a way that is both informative and captivating. His biographies not only provide valuable insights into the lives of the individuals he writes about but also offer a broader perspective on the historical and social context in which they lived. Overall, Ellman is a master of the biographical genre, and his works are a testament to his talent and dedication.

Thomas Aquinas was a great philosopher and theologian. His works had a profound impact on Western thought.

Dante Alighieri, the author of the Divine Comedy, is one of the most important poets in Italian literature. His masterpiece is a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

Italo Svevo is known for his psychological novels. His works explore the inner lives of his characters.

Henrik Ibsen is a famous Norwegian playwright. His plays deal with social and moral issues and are considered some of the greatest works of drama.

Ezra Pound was an influential poet and critic. His works were characterized by his use of modernist techniques.

Marcel Proust is a French novelist. His novel In Search of Lost Time is a masterpiece of literature that explores themes of memory, time, and love.

Wyndham Lewis was an English painter, writer, and critic. His works were often controversial and dealt with themes of modernity and war.

Edouard Dujardin was a French novelist and playwright. His works were some of the first to use the stream-of-consciousness technique.

These writers and thinkers have all made significant contributions to the world of literature and thought. Their works continue to be studied and admired today.

Having delved into all of Joyce's work, I was initially extremely sceptical. How could Ellman possibly succeed in shedding light on anything regarding Joyce's work through a mere biographical analysis? It seemed the furthest thing from Joycean. However, to my pleasant surprise, I ended up truly enjoying this work as a whole. (I had read sections of it before, but had never had the inclination to read about Joyce's early life, for example.) In all honesty, I don't believe this book elucidates anything about Joyce's work at all. Instead, it should be regarded more as a captivating historical account of a brilliant writer. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it simply because I am enthralled by James Joyce, and Ellman doesn't attempt to explain any of Joyce's texts through his biography. What he does rather brilliantly, though, is draw attention to the real-world influences on his thinking. He shows how the form of Joyce's work wasn't determined by some inborn genius but was the result of a living, thinking, feeling individual experiencing moments of unparalleled tension and turmoil. I would recommend this work to anyone intrigued by the life of Joyce, but not to those seeking a deeper understanding of his work.

I don't have a great fondness for the genre of biography. In fact, I've come to believe that biographical analysis is the least effective lens through which to interpret James Joyce. However, I have found Richard Ellman's other critical writings to be extremely beneficial. Moreover, he did receive a Pulitzer for his biography of Oscar Wilde. So, I decided to give his work on Joyce a try.

What typically turns me off about biographies is either an excessive reliance on a fabricated overarching narrative of the person's life or a disjointed list of facts and anecdotes. Ellman, I think, walks the line between the two very effectively. Although, at times, he leans towards the litany of facts as he often connects various people and specific events to the characters and events in Joyce's stories. As I mentioned earlier, this does little to enhance or deepen our understanding of Joyce's work. Fortunately, it wasn't so persistent or overwhelming as to make me abandon the book.

The little overarching idea that exists mainly focuses on Joyce's creation of conflict and rejections to fuel his work. In this regard, perhaps biographical analysis can be enlightening as his recurring themes center on self-imposed exile, betrayals, and a kind of frustrated knowledge or recognition between two people. What is remarkable about James Joyce is that, despite constantly testing and driving friends away, he always seemed to be able to attract new ones. He was simultaneously charming and sociable, as well as irritable, stubborn, and arrogant, much like his books.

Some unexpected things I learned were that he was a more outspoken socialist than I had imagined, and a much greater misogynist than I had inferred from his works. Disappointingly, this book does not explore the famous letters between James and his wife, aside from a single reference to a letter beginning "dear cuckold." However, Nora's biography by Brenda Maddox does, so you can do with that information as you please.

James Joyce sure was an asshole!

But also just a sad strange man. The life of his daughter is famously sad and I found it quite affecting to read it through Joyce’s eyes. In some ways, this book is a bit too close to its subject.

So I’m glad I read that book that’s sort of a biography of his novel Ulysses. It fills in some important details and gives greater context.

While it’s a very good biography, its closeness to its subject is something that I often find to be a weakness. But I suppose I’m unusual in feeling this way as this seems to be the norm in most biographies.

I think, though, that this closeness does more to obscure the subject than anything else. I felt this way especially when reading an award-winning biography of Thomas Jefferson. It was so tightly focused on Jefferson that it made it nearly impossible to understand the time period or his role in it.

Anyway, this biography has really excited me about rereading Joyce. I may even attempt Finnegans Wake, though I suspect I’ll give up on it rather quickly.

Perhaps with a better understanding from the biography, I’ll have more patience and be able to appreciate Joyce’s work in a new light.

Who knows, maybe this time around, I’ll be able to make it through Finnegans Wake and discover the genius that lies within.

Only time will tell, but for now, I’m looking forward to delving back into the world of James Joyce.

A truly masterful achievement. It not only shed light on Joyce's life but also gave really useful insights into his work. This is an outstanding piece that offers a comprehensive look at Joyce's literary contributions. The details provided about his life help to contextualize his work and understand the influences that shaped his writing.

I especially appreciated the parts relating to Finnegans Wake. This complex and challenging work has always intrigued me, and the analysis in this article has deepened my understanding of it. It has pushed me to reread Finnegans Wake and also Ulysses at some stage. These two works are considered to be Joyce's masterpieces, and rereading them with the new insights gained from this article will surely be a rewarding experience.

The author's writing style is engaging and accessible, making it easy for readers to follow the discussion. The use of examples and quotations from Joyce's work further enriches the text and brings his ideas to life. Overall, this is a must-read for anyone interested in Joyce's work or modern literature in general.

During my diverse employments overseas from the 1960s through the remainder of that tumultuous century, I would frequently convene with friends from the United Kingdom and the U.S. to engage in discussions about books. I discovered, to my great dismay, that I was woefully ignorant of James Joyce, whose reputation among us all was truly formidable. Some individuals pretended to be well-acquainted with him and endeavored to impress by extolling the genius they believed he was and the brilliance of his works. Joyce's contemporaries, at least as I understood it from my reading about him at that time, held him in a similar regard.

I perused Ellmann's biography of Joyce while residing with my small family in a "box" house in the midst of the Saudi desert. (I would recommend a similar expatriate experience for all young families to decelerate the passage of time.) There were no distractions there, save for an occasional mouse that would leave us presents such as bottle caps, a string of yarn, or an abandoned ice cream stick near a hole by the kitchen sink.

I had always found Joyce to be tiresome and distant, as if I did not speak English as my mother tongue and had no European blood within me, particularly that of the British Isles or Western Europe. However, of course, I did. According to what I have been able to unearth through studying my parents' ancestral history and from DNA tests (now probably gathering dust on the shelf of a PRC lab), only a small trace of Irish remains, but there is an abundance of British and a hodgepodge of American.

By reading Ellmann's outstanding biography of Joyce, I managed to eradicate some of my own ignorance not only of Joyce himself but also of literature in general. I firmly believe that "James Joyce" by Ellmann should be read by all aficionados of literature, and it matters little whether one has read all of JJ's works, some of them, or none at all. One will be enlightened and inspired to explore his works further.

What more can you want when it has more than you want?

This simple yet profound question makes us stop and think. In a world where we are constantly bombarded with desires and the pursuit of more, it's easy to lose sight of what truly matters.

When we have more than we actually need, it's a time to reflect on our priorities. Do we really need that extra possession, that additional achievement, or that higher status? Maybe what we truly want is something intangible, like happiness, contentment, or meaningful relationships.

Sometimes, having more than we want can also bring with it a sense of burden and responsibility. We may feel the need to manage and maintain all those extra things, which can take away from our precious time and energy.

So, instead of always striving for more, perhaps we should learn to appreciate what we already have. When we do this, we may find that we already have everything we truly need to be happy and fulfilled.

What more can you want when it has more than you want? It's a question that challenges us to reevaluate our lives and find true satisfaction in the present moment.

Probably the best biography I have read, regardless of subject. The writing is so fluid that it feels like a smooth river flowing through the pages. It achieves a perfect balance between the analytical and the personal. On one hand, it delves deep into the artist's works, analyzing their techniques, styles, and the historical context in which they were created. On the other hand, it also gives us a vivid and intimate look at the artist's personal life, his joys, sorrows, loves, and struggles.

And, more importantly, this biography tells us about one of the greatest artists our species has ever produced. His life was a rich tapestry that deeply informed and influenced his art. Every experience, every emotion, every thought found its way into his creations, making them not only works of art but also a reflection of his soul. Through this biography, we get to know this remarkable artist on a whole new level, and we are left in awe of his talent, his passion, and his unwavering dedication to his craft.