James Joyce

Although Edna O'Brien has never trafficked in James Joyce's head-over-heels brand of high modernism, she does have a couple of characteristics in common with her great predecessor. After all, both authors engaged in a profoundly ambivalent excoriation of their native Ireland. And while O'Brien's sexual politics can make Joyce seem like a fusty Edwardian by comparison, both novelists got a certain amount of flack for their erotic frankness. So this latest match from the Penguin Lives series seems like a good one--and largely lives up to its promise. O'Brien makes no pretense of competing with Richard Ellmann's immense, magisterial portrait. Instead she has concocted in James Joyce something that resembles one of her own novels: a show more spirited, lyrical, and acerbic narrative that just happens to feature the author of Ulysses in the starring role.
Having experienced the constrictions of Irish life firsthand, O'Brien is particularly good on Joyce's downwardly mobile childhood. Was his resulting hatred of his native land exaggerated? Apparently not:

No one who has not lived in such straitened and hideous circumstances can understand the battering of that upbringing. All the more because they had come down in the world, a tumble from semi-gentility, servants, a nicely laid table, cut glasses, a piano, the accoutrements of middle-class life, relegated to the near slums in Mountjoy Square, the gaunt spectral mansions in which children sat like mice in the gaping doorways.
The author also gives a vivid sense of her subject's devotion to his art, an altar upon which he happily sacrificed his family, health, friends, and even his eyesight. She is stubborn in her defense of Joyce's sublime irresponsibility, which she ascribes to all writers: "It is a paradox that while wrestling with the language to capture the human condition they become more callous, and cut off from the very human traits which they so glisteningly depict." O'Brien's own wrestling match in James Joyce has, to be honest, its share of pins and minor pratfalls: there are some embarrassing repetitions and punctuational oddities, and her occasional assimilation of Joyce's own language is an awkward (if heartfelt) form of homage. Still, when she sticks to her own inflections, her account of this "funnominal man" is an eminently readable and entertaining dose of Irish bitters. --James Marcus GoodReads show less

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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! show less

James Joyce by Edna O’Brien is part of the series, Penguin Lives. I am so impressed with the quality of this book, that I will look into others in the series which includes: Joan of Arc, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Buddha, Dante, Martin Luther King Jr, Herman Melville, Charles Darwin, Virginia Woolf, Rosa Parks, Simone Weil, Marcel Proust and others. The books are short - ~200 pages and cover the highlights of the subject’s lifetime.

Edna O’Brien is an excellent choice to author this biography. She is a well respected Irish author and helps to communicate the Irish POV of Joyce’s life and body of work.

First, in reading about people who lived in historical time periods, it is difficult to not overlay modern values and opinions show more to those in the past. In Joyce’s (1882-1941) era in Ireland and Continental Europe, I found it difficult to not dwell on being angry over the norms where male-dominated societies treated women poorly as a matter of practice, the first born son was the only heir and families favored and gave in to their indulgences. However, Joyce himself seemed to be particularly difficult and behaved with entitlement and self indulgence with his family, and others in his inner circle that went beyond the norms of the time.

O’Brien presents Joyce with all of his flaws as well as his creative genius as a writer. She also points out why the Irish people were deeply hurt by Joyce’s portrayal of life in Ireland and of the Irish who lived in poverty. The Irish psyche was deeply shamed by his exposing the filth of poverty that the Irish did not like to talk about. Rather than portray Ireland at its best, they felt he exposed the worst.

It is worth noting that Joyce left Ireland in his 20’s, wrote all of his works about Ireland while living in Continental Europe and never returned to live in his home country. He lived and wrote in Italy, France and Switzerland.

Overall, this book is a good introduction to James Joyce and a good jumping off point to study more about his life and works. show less

As in the other volumes from this series, O'Brien's version of Joyce's life is but a sketch, evocative and at times even poetic but only an introduction. While she mostly succeeds in capturing the emotional state of this most Irish and contradictory man, using his fictional characters to understand their author is a weak point. Joyce was neither Stephen Dedalus nor Leopold Bloom nor Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, and confusing some of their exploits with his life is misleading factually and emotionally.

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.