118th book of 2021.

This review is rather long, perhaps even shamefully so, but it is written for my own record of quotes and findings. Ellmann’s James Joyce is often the first book that comes to mind when discussing literary biographies. It spans the Irish writer’s entire life over 800-odd pages, filled with photographs, letters, snippets from his works, letters from friends, and just about everything one could hope for in a comprehensive portrait of the artist. Trying to remotely capture the depth of Ellmann’s book would be futile; it feels as if every anecdote, every thought, every moment of Joyce’s life is within these pages.

As a general rule, I don't like to spend more than a month on a single book, regardless of what it is. There have been some exceptions: Infinite Jest took me a month and several days, but otherwise I prefer to complete all my reading within a month of starting. This biography, however, took me over 2 months to read, savoring every detail, underlining passages, writing in the margins, and attempting to commit it all to memory. The book itself is a hardback-sized paperback with Bible-thin pages and small text, a book that demands one's time. When it comes to reviewing it, I have settled on a method to try and manage it: I will write my thoughts and favorite quotes from each 'era' of Joyce's life, concluding with a photograph at the bottom of each section (from Ellmann's book) of his corresponding age (approximate). So, first, let's look at his boyhood.

Ellmann, as in all other aspects of his life, describes Joyce's childhood in detail, and the first chapter of the biography is even about Joyce's family before he was born. What struck me early on is that Ellmann points out that events and conversations that took place when Joyce was as young as under 10 years old would later be retold in his masterpieces of modernism. It seemed that nothing escaped Joyce's notice or memory. One of the best anecdotes from his early years is this: 'James, upon arrival [at Clongowes] was asked his age, and replied, 'Half past six,' a phrase that became his school nickname for some time.' Joyce, when he set out to read, became, as expected, voracious: 'he read a great many books of all kinds at high speed. When he liked an author, as Stanislaus observed, he did not stop until he had read everything by him.' Joyce had an undying love for Dante and Ibsen, both of whom he preferred to Shakespeare by a long shot. At school, he did well enough, but anecdotes like this one show his characteristic humor:

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Joyce and another student, George Clancy, liked to rouse Cadic [teacher] to flights of miscomprehension. In a favorite little drama, Joyce would snicker offensively at Clancy's efforts to translate a page into English. Clancy pretended to be furious and demanded an apology, which Joyce refused. Then Clancy would challenge Joyce to a duel in the Phoenix Park. The horrified Cadic would rush in to conciliate the fiery Celts, and after much horseplay would persuade them to shake hands.

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In 1898, when entering University College's 'Matriculation (preparatory) course', he misspelled his name on the register, ''James Agustine Joyce' (a mistake he continued to make until his last year), and he was sixteen and a half years old.'

'Joyce sitting in front of the school at Clongowes.'

As he grew a little older, Joyce began writing. He received a complimentary letter from Ibsen himself at the age of eighteen in response to an article Joyce had written about one of his plays. His reading continued, and Ellmann points out, 'it is hard to say definitely of any important creative work published in the late nineteenth century that Joyce had not read it'. After writing his first play (A Brilliant Career), he dedicated it 'To/My own Soul I/dedicate the first/true work of my/life', which, Ellmann humorously notes, 'was the only work he was ever to dedicate to anyone.' Around this age, Joyce sought out Yeats, a literary figure in Ireland at the time, and when they met, he was amazingly arrogant and confident.

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When Yeats imprudently mentioned the names of Balzac and of Swinburne, Joyce burst out laughing so that everyone in the cafe turned round to look at him. 'Who reads Balzac today?' he exclaimed.

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This arrogance characterized Joyce for the rest of his life. In London, when looking for a place to review books for money, he got into an argument with an editor who said that Joyce was not writing to their wishes. He said, 'I have only to lift the window and put my head out, and I can get a hundred critics to review it.' 'Review what, your head?' asked Joyce, ending the interview. Despite all his arrogance, he later confided in his Aunt Josephine Murray, ''I want to be famous while I am alive.'' It seems that Joyce's biggest support as a young man was his brother Stanislaus, who was the sounding board for all his ideas and a good source of ideas himself. Ellmann includes a 1904 entry from Stanislaus' diary:

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Jim is beginning his novel, as he usually begins things, half in anger [...] I suggested the title of the paper 'A Portrait of the Artist', and this evening, sitting in the kitchen, Jim told me his idea for the novel. It is to be almost autobiographical, and naturally as it comes from Jim, satirical.

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'June 16, 1904' was a very important day for Joyce, the day that 'he afterwards chose for the action of Ulysses'. Above all, it was his first evening with Nora Barnacle. Their fates were quickly intertwined.

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The couple went on to London. As yet neither wholly trusted the other. When they arrived in the city, Joyce left Nora for two hours in a park while he went to see Arthur Symons. She thought he would not return. But he did, and he was to surprise his friends, and perhaps himself too, by his future constancy. As for Nora, she was steadfast for the rest of her life.

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'Joyce, age 22, in 1904. Asked what he was thinking about when C.P. Curran photographed him, Joyce replied, 'I was wondering would he lend me five shillings.''

Joyce and Nora had just two children together, Lucia and Giorgio (Joyce took the baby [Giorgio] and hummed to him, astonished to find him happy. Then he went out to cable Stanislaus, 'Son born Jim.'). By this point, he was working on Dubliners despite not having finished the then-titled Stephen Hero. They were now living in Trieste. There is a lot of detail in Ellmann's writing about the creation of Dubliners and its later struggle to be published, which went through many loops, failures, and setbacks. There is even a short but entire chapter on the 'Background of 'The Dead''. Joyce later began befriending other writers, most notably Ezra Pound, who sent a letter to Joyce after hearing about him through Yeats. His first letter to James ended with, 'From what W.B.Y. says I imagine we have a hate or two in common—but thats a very problematical bond on introduction.' There is too much to cover regarding the background of his work, so I will move on to Ulysses, which Ellmann suggests Joyce had been 'preparing himself to write [...] since 1907.'

'The theme of family love, the love of parent for child and of child for parent, runs covertly throughout Ulysses.' Nora was in part the inspiration for Molly Bloom. Leopold Bloom was in part one of Joyce's friends, the man the world would later know as Italo Svevo. Around this period, Ellmann mentions that Nora later said to a friend, ''I don't know whether my husband is a genius, but I'm sure of one thing, there is nobody like him.'' By the time Joyce left Trieste and moved to Zurich in 1915, 'He had lived there almost eleven years, half as long as he had lived in Dublin. During this time, he had published Chamber Music, finished Dubliners, revised Stephen Hero into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, written Exiles, and begun Ulysses.' But despite the work he was doing, 'In the first six months of 1915, only 26 copies were sold [of Dubliners], in the next six months, less, in the six months after that, only 7.' Pound was impressed by the first few chapters of Ulysses, but when Joyce read passages to Nora, 'she found the language distasteful and offered no encouragement.' Later, Giorgio 'assured his father that he would never write anything so good as Wild West stories.' Pound also later claimed that ''a new style per chapter not required,' but Joyce had no intention of lowering any of his sails.' When Joyce and his family came to Paris to stay for a week, they 'remained for twenty years.'

The illustration of Sylvia Beach and Joyce's first meeting at a party is provided. 'Joyce withdrew to another room and was looking at a book when Sylvia Beach, half-diffident, half-daring, approached to ask, 'Is this the great James Joyce?' 'James Joyce,' he responded, holding out his hand to be shaken.' Thus, Ellmann reports the long process Joyce went through to write Ulysses and again, its struggle to be published and the trial against it at one point. He famously said, 'I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.' Larbaud, before Joyce had gone on to write Finnegans Wake, once summed up Joyce's corpus in the most succinct way, proving that everything was leading to Ulysses: 'Chamber Music had supplied lyricism, Dubliners the unmistakable atmosphere of a particular city, A Portrait clusters of images, analogies, and symbols. In Ulysses, he explained, the principal personages move like giants through a seemingly miscellaneous day.' Nora still had almost nothing to do with Joyce's work.

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Copy No. 1000 [of Ulysses] he inscribed to his wife and presented to her in Arthur Power's presence. Here, in Ithaca, was Penelope. Nora at once offered to sell it to Power. Joyce smiled but was not pleased. He kept urging her to read the book, yet she would not.

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'Miss Weaver asked him what he would write next and he said, 'I think I will write a history of the world.''

'Joyce in Trieste, age about 30.'

Joyce was asked what he was writing by August Suter. At the time, Joyce's teeth were causing him more trouble, and he had around this point had 17 extractions. His reply to Suter was:

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he could answer truthfully, 'It's hard to say.' 'Then what is the title of it?' asked Suter. This time Joyce was less candid: 'I don't know. It is like a mountain that I tunnel into from every direction, but I don't know what I will find.' Actually he did know the title at least, and had told it to Nora in strictest secrecy. It was to be 'Finnegans Wake', the apostrophe omitted because it meant both the death of Finnegan and the resurgence of all Finnegans. The title came from the ballad about the hod-carrier who falls from a ladder to what is assumed to be his death, but is revived by the smell of the whiskey at his wake.

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And later he also said he conceived 'his book as the dream of old Finn, lying in death beside the river Liffey and watching the history of Ireland and the world—past and future—flow through his mind like flotsam.' I write a little about Finnegans Wake in my review of it here. To avoid this review becoming ridiculously long, I will mostly avoid quotes concerning it and focus solely on bits about Joyce himself. Around this time, Nora was saying things like, 'Being married to a writer is a very hard life,' and to her sister, 'resignedly', 'He's on another book again.' But she also remained the steadfast woman that Ellman promised near the start of the book:

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One such evening ended with Joyce alighting from the taxi at his door and suddenly plunging up the street shouting, 'I made them take it,' presumably an angry brag that he had foisted 'Ulysses' upon the public. Nora looked at Laubenstein and said, 'Never mind, I'll handle him,' and soon deftly collected her fugitive.

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Joyce's blindness continued to worsen, but his work on Finnegans Wake continued. He rejected all requests for interviews and was, I suppose, a sort of J.D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon-like writer. His writer friends all spoke poorly of his Work in Progress, as he then called it, and said it was a waste of his good talent. At one point, Joyce argued quite simply to a friend, ''It is all so simple. If anyone doesn't understand a passage, all he need do is read it aloud.'' Despite his friends' comments, he persevered and forgot about Ulysses; when it was brought up, he said, ''Ulysses! Who wrote it? I've forgotten it.' There are claims that Joyce was unknown in his time; he certainly wasn't what he is now, but he did receive an '$11,000 advance and 20% royalties' on Finnegans Wake from two American publishers. But he often made comments about his legacy. Nora's sister once said on a visit to Madame Tussaud's, ''I want to see you there,'' and Joyce replied, ''You never will.'' (I wonder if that's true; I suppose it could be.) Joyce became closer friends with a young Beckett, and I particularly liked this passage about Joyce once or twice dictating Finnegans Wake to him:

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in the middle of one such session there was a knock at the door which Beckett didn't hear. Joyce said, 'Come in,' and Beckett wrote it down. Afterwards he read back what he had written and Joyce said, 'What's that \\"Come in\\"?' 'Yes, you said that,' said Beckett. Joyce thought for a moment, then said, 'Let it stand.' He was quite willing to accept coincidence as his collaborator.

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There is also a great deal about Lucia, his daughter, who was schizophrenic and went through many difficulties throughout these years, being moved from place to place, to different doctors and psychologists, and finally to Jung himself, whom Joyce did not like because of his criticisms of Ulysses. Nora once complained that Joyce had never really known his daughter, and he responded, ''Allow me to say that I was present at her conception.'' For example, Lucia once set fire to her room in a mental asylum and later gave the reason to a nurse that she had done it because ''her father's complexion was very red and so was fire.'' Joyce wrote to her in a kind tone and visited her. Once she said to him, ''I thought of writing to the Pope,'' and Joyce replied 'banteringly', ''Be careful of your grammar.'' Nora swung the other way and said to some friends, ''I wish I had never met anyone of the name of James Joyce.''

Based on more than 100 interviews, a vast correspondence, and many works of reference, this biography is a meticulously researched piece of work.

It delves deep into the life of Joyce, providing detailed accounts of his actions and decisions. However, despite the wealth of information presented, the man himself still remains an enigma.

As one acquaintance described him, he was "le plus fermé; il n'existait pas", which means the most closed; he did not exist.

This description highlights the difficulty in truly understanding Joyce, as he seemed to keep his true self hidden from the world.

Nevertheless, this biography offers valuable insights into his life and work, and is a must-read for anyone interested in Joyce or Irish literature.

In this truly captivating biography, Richard Ellman unfolds the complete tapestry of James Joyce.

We are introduced to Joyce's family, both his birth family and the one he created with Nora. His complex relationship with Ireland, marked by a certain strain yet a deep love affair with Dublin, is explored.

His diverse associations with contemporary writers in Europe, his passion for the musical world, his numerous relocations across the continent, his profound love of language, and of course, his writing, all come to life.

There are aspects that I have omitted here, but they all contribute to the rich and multi-faceted portrait of Joyce.

The history of the man is not only fascinating in itself but also crucial as the backdrop to the books he was to produce.

Without his reaction against the Catholic Church and Ireland, and without his love for Dublin, these literary masterpieces would never have seen the light of day.

Ellman provides in-depth analyses of each of Joyce's books, from their creation to publication, detailing the often torturous path they took.

Along the way, he imparts a wealth of enlightening information that guarantees that future readings of any Joyce works will be a different experience.

I have earmarked several sections to revisit when I reread "Dubliners," "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," and (most likely) "Ulysses."

And I will most definitely read the section dedicated to "Finnegans Wake" if and when I reach that particular book.

Joyce was undoubtedly a genius, a man torn by conflicts, a difficult personality who, in his own idiosyncratic way, loved his family yet expected the world and everyone in it to dance to his tune.

But perhaps this is an inherent part of the mark of genius.

Ellman offers some thought-provoking summations towards the end of his excellent work.

He reflects on the inevitability of Joyce writing "Finnegans Wake," despite the challenges it presented to readers.

And in his final summation of Joyce's life, he highlights the consistency between Joyce's literary endeavors and his personal life.

The ingenuity he brought to his writing was mirrored in his determination to make the world read his works.

The affection he showed for his fictional characters like Bloom was the same as that he bestowed upon his family members.

His disregard for bourgeois thrift and convention was a splendid extravagance that allowed him to transform the intractable wilderness of literature into a new state.

In all that he did, his two profound interests - his family and his writings - remained at the forefront.

These passions never waned. The intensity of the first gave his work its sympathy and humanity, while the intensity of the second elevated his life to a level of dignity and high dedication.

I wholeheartedly recommend this superb biography to anyone with an interest in James Joyce, in literary biography, or in any of Mr Joyce's literary works. It is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the man behind the masterpieces.

This is a supremely well done biography of the enigma that is James Joyce.

It serves as an incredible resource on his life, with impressively researched details and immaculately referenced information.

The author has truly delved deep into the life of Joyce, exploring his personal experiences, his artistic journey, and the various influences that shaped him.

If you have ever wanted to know about Joyce as a human being and artist, this biography will give you all there is possible to know.

It provides a comprehensive and in-depth look at his life, from his early years to his later works.

Whether you are a fan of Joyce's literature or simply interested in learning more about this fascinating figure, this biography is a must-read.

It is a well-written and engaging account that will keep you hooked from beginning to end.

Overall, it is an outstanding piece of work that offers a valuable contribution to the study of James Joyce.

Really well written.

It is truly remarkable how a writer of such renown would devote paragraphs to describing the way one crosses their legs.

I have a deep affection for both The Dead and Ulysses, and thus it was extremely enlightening to learn about the processes by which he came to pen these masterpieces.

The details provided about his creative journey added a new layer of understanding and appreciation for his works.

It made me realize that even the most seemingly insignificant aspects of a person's life can inspire great literary achievements.

This article has given me a new perspective on the creative mind of this famous writer and has left me eager to explore more of his works and the stories behind them.

Overall, it was a fascinating read that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in literature and the creative process.

Ellmann's biography of the great Irish writer is widely regarded as one of the finest literary biographies of the 20th century. It has won prestigious awards such as the 1959 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the 1982 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Ellmann skillfully balances the details of Joyce's life. The early years in Ireland are covered more comprehensively than his last years on the continent. He also provides a detailed analysis of Joyce's literary works. The biography excels in offering an overview of Joyce's work and enhancing one's appreciation of it. However, readers may desire more, especially regarding the connections between his life and his novels. But perhaps too much focus on that might shift the emphasis from biography to literary criticism. Despite being quite long, nearly 900 pages with notes, the biography is rewarding and thorough. Joyce himself was a rather difficult and irresponsible individual, and some readers may concur with his self-evaluation as "the foolish author of a wise book."

This book gave the impression of being an advertisement crafted by Nancy Reagon to persuade readers not to engage in narcotics.

Certainly, some of the chapters held a certain degree of sense and logic. However, as I delved deeper into the text, I found myself increasingly unable to establish a connection with the writing style.

In Santa Barbara, during the years when I was between the ages of 21 and 28, I had a habit of frequently visiting a bar known as the James Joyce.

This bar, with its unique atmosphere and charm, was far more tolerable and enjoyable than this particular book.

The experiences and interactions I had at the bar were vivid and memorable, in stark contrast to the rather lackluster impression left by the book.

Perhaps it was the engaging conversations with the locals, the lively music, or the simple pleasure of unwinding in a familiar environment that made the bar such a preferable alternative to the written word of this book.

For Joyce’s devotees, this work is truly indispensable.

Virtuosically, it weaves together biography and analysis in a hyper-dense yet imminently accessible primer on the genius’s life.

To read Ellman’s biography is to fortify oneself with the backdrops that pervade Joyce’s work. As he told Frank Budgen, "Imagination is memory."

It is not that Joyce’s work cannot be enjoyed without the supplemental biographical detail. However, it can surely be appreciated a great deal more with it.

Joyce's life is a complex tapestry that is absorbing, engaging, sad, and at times uproariously funny. It is truly worthy of a Joyce novel.

This biography offers a unique perspective into the mind and life of one of the greatest literary figures of the 20th century.

It allows readers to better understand the context in which Joyce created his masterpieces and the personal experiences that influenced his writing.

Whether you are a die-hard Joyce fan or simply interested in learning more about this fascinating author, Ellman’s biography is a must-read.

Every writer should possess a biography in the identical style as Bosworth's Life of Johnson.

You will never lose track of the year under review or the age of the subject at that time, for it is prominently marked on each and every page.

It goes straight to the point, much like a clock with a transparent face, enabling you to clearly see the source of every single bit of information.

Whether it be a letter, an anecdote, or a book, it is either copied directly there or noted in the back.

It serves as a remarkable example of a well-written biography and also provides a vivid picture of what the man was truly like.

In my opinion, people tend to exaggerate Joyce's wildness.

When compared to most writers, he is actually rather tame.

He simply happened to be aware of his own excellence and insisted on having it published.

This approach to biography writing and the assessment of Joyce offer valuable insights into the literary world and the individuals who inhabit it.

It makes one wonder how many other writers' true natures are misrepresented or misunderstood.

Perhaps more biographies in the style of Bosworth's could help to set the record straight and give a more accurate portrayal of these literary figures.

This is the literary biography that initiated the craze for long biographies, which has only recently been disrupted by brave biographers, frequently novelists themselves, such as Carol Shields' Jane Austen (Penguin). Arguably, Ellman's subject and his research demanded a grand scale. However, this is not always - dare I say, often not - the case.

Consequently, our bookshelves are overburdened with hefty biographies of questionable readability. This is less true of Ellmann's work here.

Of course, I read this when I was a Teaching Assistant in a Joyce course, so I had an additional incentive to find it interesting. And interesting I did find it. For instance, in a minute detail that I still quote today, when James Joyce applied to teach English in Italy, he performed better on his Italian exam than on his English exam. This is admonitory in this era of "Test Test Test" as a supposed improvement to American public education. If the greatest prose stylist of 20th-century English did not do as well on his English test, it is clear that the exam was deficient - as most general exams prove upon closer inspection. Exams function optimally when they are focused - on a book, on a course, on a proof of the Mean Value Theorem.

This is THE biography of the great Joyce. He is the one who brought us my favorite book of all time, Ulysses. This remarkable work provides a truly fascinating account of Joyce's life and relationships. Of course, it also delves into the sources and inspirations for his books, ranging from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to Finnegan's Wake. It is widely regarded by most as one of the greatest biographies of an author written in the 20th century. I would tend to wholeheartedly agree with this assessment. The reason is that it is not only highly readable but also full of valuable insights. It offers a unique window into the mind and world of Joyce, allowing us to better understand his creative process and the forces that shaped his works.

In some ways, perhaps, this is the quintessential biography among biographies. The depth of detail can at times border on the nauseating. However, that being said, one doesn't need to look anywhere else for information regarding Joyce's life. Ellmann traces the movement of auto-poeisis that is the artist's existence. It is a perpetual leave-taking of the world, leaving only their writings to mark the world's absence that they died to give life to.

As the composition of the Wake fades, Joyce's life too wanes. Incomplete and unending in different ways, the two speak to the paramount egoism of a man who loses himself in the revelation of geist. In living the very annihilative transience of time, he preserves and apotheostatizes himself and us all. He speaks to the transcendental language which renders us all silent - the word which speaks us and of which we are just the mimetic, though paradoxically singular, repetition of instantiation.

If this makes sense, I have succeeded. If it fails to make sense, then I have perhaps succeeded in other ways.