Overview
A revealing new biography—the first in more than fifty years—of one of the twentieth-century’s towering literary figures
James Joyce is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, his novels and stories foundational in the history of literary modernism. Yet Joyce’s genius was by no means immediately recognized, nor was his success easily won. At twenty-two he chose a life of exile; he battled poverty and financial dependency for much of his adult life; his out-of-wedlock relationship with Nora Barnacle was scandalous for the time; and the attitudes he held towards the Irish and Ireland, England, sexuality, politics, Catholicism, popular culture—to name a few—were complex, contradictory, and controversial.
Gordon Bowker draws on material recently come to light and reconsiders the two signal works produced about Joyce’s life—Herbert Gorman’s authorized biography of 1939 and Richard Ellman’s magisterial tome of 1959—and, most importantly by binding together more intimately than has ever before been attempted the life and work of this singular artist, Gordon Bowker here gives us a masterful, fresh, eminently readable contribution to our understanding, both of Joyce’s personality and of the monumental opus he created.
Bowker goes further than his predecessors in exploring Joyce’s inner depths—his ambivalent relationships to England, to his native Ireland, and to Judaism—uncovering revealing evidence. He draws convincing correspondences between the iconic fictional characters Joyce created and their real-life models and inspirations. And he paints a nuanced portrait of a man of enormous complexity, the clearest picture yet of an extraordinary writer who continues to influence and fascinate over a century after his birth. Widely acclaimed on publication in Britain last year, perhaps the highest compliment paid was by Chris Proctor, of London’s Tribune: “Bowker’s success is to lead you back to the texts, perhaps understanding them better for this rich account of the maddening insane genius who wrote them.”
Synopsis
A revealing new biography--the first in more than fifty years--of one of the twentieth-century's towering literary figures
James Joyce is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, his novels and stories foundational in the history of literary modernism. Yet Joyce's genius was by no means immediately recognized, nor was his success easily won. At twenty-two he chose a life of exile; he battled poverty and financial dependency for much of his adult life; his out-of-wedlock relationship with Nora Barnacle was scandalous for the time; and the attitudes he held towards the Irish and Ireland, England, sexuality, politics, Catholicism, popular culture--to name a few--were complex, contradictory, and controversial.
Gordon Bowker draws on material recently come to light and reconsiders the two signal works produced about Joyce's life--Herbert Gorman's authorized biography of 1939 and Richard Ellman's magisterial tome of 1959--and, most importantly by binding together more intimately than has ever before been attempted the life and work of this singular artist, Gordon Bowker here gives us a masterful, fresh, eminently readable contribution to our understanding, both of Joyce's personality and of the monumental opus he created.
Bowker goes further than his predecessors in exploring Joyce's inner depths--his ambivalent relationships to England, to his native Ireland, and to Judaism--uncovering revealing evidence. He draws convincing correspondences between the iconic fictional characters Joyce created and their real-life models and inspirations. And he paints a nuanced portrait of a man of enormous complexity, the clearest picture yet of an extraordinary writer who continues to influence and fascinate over a century after his birth. Widely acclaimed on publication in Britain last year, perhaps the highest compliment paid was by Chris Proctor, of London's Tribune: "Bowker's success is to lead you back to the texts, perhaps understanding them better for this rich account of the maddening insane genius who wrote them."
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
I guess the man’s a genius, but what a dirty mind he has,” Nora Barnacle said after reading Ulysses. For “dirty,” substitute Joyce’s view of the human condition as comedy: Rabelaisian, rather than divine. Bowker’s splendid, insightful, and witty biography illuminates the connection between Joyce’s erotic imagination and humane spirit, offering a clear-eyed celebration of his perverse comic genius. Joyce was an apostate Catholic who still considered himself a Jesuit, a permanent “exile who never left Dublin,” and an extreme egotist. Drawing on material published since the 1982 revision of Richard Ellman’s classic Joyce biography, including biographies of Nora herself and their troubled daughter, Lucia, Bowker (Pursued by Furies: A Life of Malcolm Lowry) explores Joyce’s inner landscape, most of it shaped by Dublin and his Jesuit education. Bowker captures the human comedy that surrounded Joyce, describing Ezra Pound, whose review of Dubliners in 1913 launched Joyce’s career, as “Literature’s own fairy godmother.” As Joyce’s reputation grew, he retreated into a circle of friends and family and the increasingly interior world of his writing. His last years were increasingly darkened by illness and concern for his family. Joyce thought his daughter Lucia’s strangeness was untapped genius similar to his own and fought to keep her out of the hands of doctors and clinics—egocentric in the extreme, but far from heartless. Photos. Agent: Phyllis Westberg, Harold Ober Associates. (June)Library Journal
Bowker (George Orwell) goes beyond the facts of Joyce's life (1882–1941) to explore the "elusive consciousness" of this major 20th-century novelist who used revolutionary techniques to creat in Ulysses a "landmark of literary modernism." To show that even minor details from Joyce's experience turn up in his autobiographical fiction, Bowker draws on what he describes as newly available material (although the specifics of the new sources are not clarified) to move beyond previous biographies (e.g., by Herbert Gorman, 1939, and Richard Ellmann, 1959, revised 1982). He identifies three major issues that plagued Joyce's life and work: poverty, often of his own making; failing eyesight leading to a preoccupation with the other senses; and his daughter's mental illness. Pursuing a life dedicated to art, Joyce abandoned Ireland and its restrictive Catholic faith for a life of exile in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris but, as Bowker emphasizes, his native country and city remained his muses throughout his career. VERDICT The extent to which Bowker ties life events, even minor ones, to details in Joyce's works sets this book apart. This is where scholars will benefit as much as Joyce novices who are interested in learning more about this trailblazing author who changed the way fiction is written and read.—Denise J. Stankovics, formerly with Rockville P.L., Vernon, CTLibrary Journal
The biographer of Malcolm Lowry, George Orwell, and Lawrence Durrell takes on the Everest that is James Joyce, working with newly discovered materials to reveal more of the author's interior landscape. Richard Ellmann's monumental biography still tops the charts; let see how this one does.Kirkus Reviews
The biographer of Orwell, Lowry and Durrell returns with a massively detailed narrative of the life of the author of Ulysses. Bowker (Inside George Orwell, 2003, etc.) begins with several of the myriad epiphanies Joyce valued--the first, a moment when he was 16 and lost both his virginity and the Virgin (he decided that was fun, and no Jesuit priesthood for me). The author then announces his intentions--to show the complexities and contradictions of the man--and proceeds to do so in detail that is so impressive as to be overwhelming at times. Joyce (1882–1941) emerges as a mess of a man in these pages. The author charts the grim history of his eye problems (nearly a dozen eye operations, some involving leeches), his struggle to survive in the early days of his adulthood and marriage, the sad madness of his daughter, his enormous talents (he learned languages quickly, read everything) and his difficulty finding publishers for Dubliners and the more controversial works that followed. It took a famous Supreme Court ruling to decriminalize Ulysses in the United States. Joyce found a generous patron, though--Harriet Shaw Weaver--whose substantial gifts encouraged the spendthrift genius to live beyond his means, traveling throughout Europe, staying in first-class hotels, no longer the starving artist. Bowker's labor to keep track of the plethora of places the Joyces lived is Herculean by itself. We see Joyce, too, as a prodigious worker who labored for endless hours, completing not just the shelf- and mind-bending novels Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake but a play, stories and essays. Bowker goes light on the literary criticism. We see Joyce at work and read about technique and intent, but there are few journeys into exegesis. The narrative path is sometimes obscured by a lush undergrowth of detail, but our guide is wise and the journey is wondrous.The Washington Post
…[a] warts-and-all account of the writer's life and character. Hitherto best known for his biographies of Malcolm Lowry and Lawrence Durrell, Bowker writes clearly and forcefully, acknowledges the work of earlier scholars and critics, and generally shies away from any extended analysis of the literary works themselves. His focus, then, is almost strictly on Joyce the human being…well worth reading, even if Joyce comes across as brilliant but exploitative, admirable as an artist but often mortifying as a man. It's not always a pretty picture, but it seems like a true one.—Michael Dirda