James Joyce: A Passionate Exile Book

In surveys and reader questionnaires, James Joyce's Ulysses is consistently chosen as the greatest novel of the 20th century. It is a book everyone should read once in their lifetime, certainly; but it may not be the one you want to start with. For an introduction to Joyce's life and work, you might instead choose Richard Ellman's monumental biography. An easier place to start would be this handsomely produced, coffee-table style account of Joyce's years of wandering in Europe. Since he began in his self-imposed European exile in his early 20s, and remained there until his death in Zurich in 1941, this is pretty much a full biography of the adult writer, from the early days working on The Dubliners, to the last, difficult years of Finnegans Wake. The book is richly and evocatively illustrated, with everything from old black-and-white photographs of "Dear, Dirty Dublin", to fine, full-page reproductions of portrait paintings and photographs of such luminaries as Yeats, Synge, Beckett, Parnell and, not least, the rascally, extraordinary character who was Joyce's father and lifelong inspiration: John Stanislaus Joyce. John McCourt generously acknowledges in the foreword, that "this short, illustrated life is but a swift gallop over familiar territory and is hugely dependent on all previous biographies." Nevertheless, it makes a fine and very readable introduction to the man who can be viewed as the 20th century's greatest (and most challenging) writer. --Christopher HartRead More