An odd experience this: in college, I apparently loved Joyce. I read his works, I read Ellmann's biography, I thought Joyce was right about more or less everything.

Here I am, less than 15 years later, reading O'Brien's short life in anticipation of re-reading Joyce's work (other than the Wake), and I've come to almost exactly the opposite conclusion: that Joyce is wrong about more or less everything: an awful human being who hid behind tiresome romantic cliches about Truth and Beauty, a man whose prodigious linguistic talents were wasted on puerile and boring topics and ideas, writing as he did at great length about his own non-existent victimization and the objects he'd fondled at one time or other--and then justifying it all with some half-arsed discussion of the inner spiritual essence of whatever.

And this book makes those feeling worse, simply because O'Brien allows those cliches and puerilities to stand as marks of Genius and Independence. She believes that "writers have to be such monsters in order to create," which is so plainly false that it's hard to know what she's talking about.

On the upside, it's a short read, and fairly easy; O'Brien slips in the odd Joyceism, but they're ignorable. The real problem, as with anyone who self-consciously follows Joyce, is that she writes sentences, not paragraphs. That's all well and good if you want to quote a hagiographical sentiment down the pub, but not great if you want to read, understand, or, heaven forfend, criticize what you're reading.

More concretely, there's almost nothing in her about PAYM, and I have no idea why. ( )

Edna O'Brien does a good job of giving an introduction to Joyce (the complicated author). Joyce was a genius beyond his period or our period of understanding. The genius probably frustrated the author. The book shares the man, who was profound and challenging to the modern man. We love Joyce even when he might make us mad. He was a critical author who's writing was a paragon of free verse and feeling of home. Edna O'Brien shows us why Joyce's writing is worth the time and effort to make understanding out of circuitousness paths. ( )

James Joyce was an author who could easily have been classified as mad or brilliant or perhaps both. Edna O'Brien gives us a glimpse into James Joyce's unconventional life in her novel, James Joyce: A Life. I wanted to read this book because James Joyce is on my list of authors whose books I need to read. I've had Dubliners sitting on my shelf unread for the longest time. However I have managed to read a few of his works so I didn't feel totally unprepared.
Edna O'Brien touches on various points in Joyce's life from birth to death. From Joyce's dysfunctional family life to his volatile marriage to his wife, Nora. O'Brien includes many interesting facts about Joyce's rise to fame. His peculiar tendencies and his prideful nature.
I think if I had read more of Joyce's novels before hand it would have helped me to decipher and make the character connections even more so. O'Brien did a fairly good job in trying to correlate the influences in Joyce's life to the characters in his novels. This is also a short biography so it doesn't go into great detail about Joyce's life. However this is a great introduction to James Joyce.
Overall this is a good read. It's an insightful look into one of literature's treasures. This biography is really enjoyable and I'm so glad that I read it. Now it's time to dust Dubliners off the shelf. ( )

James Joyce, the phenomenal Irish writer, was born in 1882 and died in 1941 at age 59, probably a great accomplishment considering the amount he drank in his lifetime. Joyce lived mostly in poverty, partly because of the impoverishment of the family in which he grew up, and partly due to his own alcoholism and extravagance. As an adult, there were many times when he could only pay rent by the day. His life partner and later wife Nora Barnacle would sit in a café or park all day holding their first child, waiting to hear where they could sleep. (And yet O’Brien characterizes Barnacle as morose and mopey and castigates her for “weakening [Joyce’s] natural cheerfulness.”) Once Nora delivered a letter to Joyce at his workplace complaining about their circumstances and he responded by blowing his nose in it. [Why she didn’t leave him seems like a very interesting topic to me, but O’Brien did not address it, perhaps because her sympathies are unquestionably with Joyce.]

Joyce borrowed incessantly from everyone he could, alternately begging, flattering, and abusing would-be lenders. Somehow, he always found people willing to let him take advantage of them. Joyce, O’Brien observes in understatement, “loathed responsibility.” Later in life, Joyce found a patron, a Miss Weaver, who loaned him close to a million dollars in today’s money. O’Brien writes approvingly that Miss Weaver never asked for anything in return, whereas she seems rather disgusted that Sylvia Beach (of the famous bookstore Shakespeare and Company) who helped Joyce get published “wanted a share in the glory…”

Joyce’s romantic relationship with Nora began on June 16, 1904, and the date of their first liaison is now celebrated around the world as Bloomsday, as it is also the date Joyce used for his circadian masterpiece featuring Leopold Bloom, Ulysses.

Of Ulysses O’Brien writes: "Language is the hero and heroine, language in constant fluxion and with a dazzling virtuosity. All the given notion [sic] about story, character, plot, and human polarizings are capsized. By comparison, most other works of fiction are pusillanimous."

"He said he had all the words, it was simply a question of putting them in the right order. He would pore over each word not only for its rhythm, its sense, its aptness, its beauty, its vulgarity, its myriad associativeness, but sometimes for its prophetic core. Every word, like every image, was up for investigation. Even then he was dissatisfied. He wanted a language above all languages, he refused to be enclosed in any tradition. He wanted to be God."

"He would astound his readers. he would bring them to a pitch of consciousness where they had not gone before. Not for him the 'experimentation' of Marcel Proust, of whom he said: 'Analytic still life. Reader knows end of sentence before him.' He would breach unknown frontiers."

O’Brien is merciless with detractors of Ulysses. As she points out, it took Joyce “seven years of unbroken labor, twenty thousand hours of work, havoc to brain and body, nerves, agitation, fainting fits, [and] numerous eye complaints ….” There is certainly no question that Joyce put a great deal of work into his book, but I don’t think his sufferings in that regard automatically disqualify any criticisms. However, O’Brien's sensitivity pales next to Joyce's, who not only craved flattery and appreciation, but never forgot an insult, penning the offending persons into his books as unflattering characters.

O’Brien also talks a bit about Finnegans Wake, suggesting correctly that “If Ulysses had angered people, this new work would send them into paroxysms” with each reader needing “to make a daring leap to construe meaning” from the text. In writing this book, O’Brien said of Joyce that “he was determined to break the barrier between conscious and unconscious, to do in waking life what others do in sleep.” But when O’Brien calls one of the characters in the book “the most accessible … ever conceived by Joyce” I believe that would be a stretch. It is difficult to find people who are able to read it, much less consider the characters “accessible.” Nevertheless, even to go through and pick out understandable pieces from the text is to become quickly astounded and appreciative of Joyce’s genius. As O’Brien writes:

"His imagination was meteoric, his mind ceaseless in the accruing of knowledge, words crackling in his head, images crowding in on him ‘like the shades at the entrance to the underworld.’ What he wanted to do was wrest the secret from life and that could only be done through language because, as he said, the history of people is the history of language.”

He well might have wrested the secret of life and attempted to share it with the rest of us in Finnegan's Wake, but not many readers have managed to figure out what he discovered, though not for lack of trying.

Discussion: The author is clearly a fan of Joyce (in Joycian style she calls him “funnominal”), and as bad as he sounds even from the reporting of a sympathizer, she doesn’t seem to have much negative to say about him, nor much supportive to say about the people who gave their lives, their livelihoods, and their happiness to Joyce for little in return. She even maintains that “monstrous” behavior is necessary for genius; unfortunately, those whose lives Joyce ruined seemed to have felt the same way. [And as horrible as Joyce was to the women in his life, we can at least say that he was just as horrible to the men.] She also seems willing to exonerate Joyce’s bad behavior because of his upbringing in straitened and hideous circumstances. And indeed, the family lived on tea, fried bread, and drippings, while Joyce’s father drank his pension and his mother was usually pregnant. To O’Brien, Joyce’s brilliance also “excuses” his incredible arrogance: “Who can blame him if in that spate of high-hearted youth and virtuosity he likened himself to Parnell, Hamlet, Dante, Byron, Lucifer and Jesus Christ?”

From O’Brien’s account one can see clearly that Joyce was a very troubled man, as well as a very ingenious one. But is one really necessary for the other?

There is no index, which is unfortunate; no reference for quotes; and no indication of when a poetic or punful remark is by Joyce or by O’Brien.

Nevertheless, this is an eminently readable little biography, and not without its own poetic style.

Evaluation: Even if you have read other biographies of Joyce, this is a very literate and entertaining, but not uncontroversial, addition to the oeuvre. ( )

I love writers on writers. O'Brien's biography of James Joyce is as boisterous and playful as Joyce's own prose. This is a reader's biography, full of fantastic vocabulary and mischievous, serpentine phrasing. Those familiar with Joyce's life will likely learn nothing new, but the passion and joy O'Brien has for Joyce makes revisiting his life exciting; for those new to James Joyce, this biography is a bit like baptism-by-fire. The reader is plunged in to Joyce's life with little explication of the who's and the where's. Like reading one of Joyce's own novels, it is up to the reader to keep up.

Joyce inspired O'Brien to be a novelist, so it seems a perfect fit for her to write a biography on him, but disappointingly, I found little of O'Brien in the narrative. Certainly, a passion for Ireland, a deep appreciation for the way the place kills and inspires, but very few 'I' statements that make clear her opinions. (I've gotten spoiled by biographies that allow the biographer to be present.) In some ways, this reads as a very long essay on Joyce and his works, but the style is very personable, very rambunctious, envisioning Joyce's thoughts and feelings with certitude.

What made me appreciate this book was O'Brien's taken on Nora Barnacle, Joyce's lover and eventual wife. It's always the women -- the wives, the daughters, the sisters, the lovers -- who intrigue me, and in this, Nora, and later, Lucia, were of greater interest to me than the man himself.  O'Brien is sympathetic toward Nora, which I appreciated since I'm sympathetic toward her; even better, O'Brien recognizes and honors the dynamic between Joyce and Nora, the genius and the 'peasant'. (In fact, O'Brien had me when she wished, on page 56: "If only she had kept a diary." If only!)

A quick read at 178 pages, this biography invites lingering and reflection, and of course, a look at Joyce's works. For fans of delicious language, this book is a must, whether one is familiar with Joyce or not! ( )