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Further Adventures of James Joyce
Further Adventures of James Joyce tells about the remarkable events that took place during the twenty-four hours that James Joyce spent in Derry on the day he came back from the dead. Randy as a goat and raring to write after many years of deprivation, James decides among other things to pen a novel that s bang up-to-date, sexy, outrageous and accessible to one and all. Saints, scholars and those in search of a good horny read. It is a book that is already in line to win the inaugural Good Sex Award at a ceremony to be held in Maynooth College, the gold phallic statuette to be presented, rumour has it, by the Catholic Primate himself
176 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
1 person is currently reading
8 people want to read
About the author
Colm Herron
8 books28 followersColm Herron is the author of five novels, including For I Have Sinned and Further Adventures of James Joyce. All received high acclaim. Further Adventures of James Joyce for example was described by Morris Beja in James Joyce Quarterly as “a totally comic novel.” Mr Beja, who is professor Emeritus of literature at Ohio State University, went on to compare Colm’s writing to that of both James Joyce and Irish comic genius Flann O’Brien.
On 2 February 2011 Joyce scholar Doctor Jonathan McCreedy delivered a paper at the Joyce birthday conference in Roma Tre University. His paper was entitled Further Adventures of James Joyce: the crossroads of two reading publics [the two publics being the Joyce aficionado and what Flann O’Brien might have called the plain person out for a good read].
On 16 June 2010 as part of a weeklong Bloomsday festival Colm shared the platform with actor Barry McGovern where for six hours under a midsummer sun they did readings alternately, he from Ulysses and Colm from his own novel.
In April 2011 Colm received an invitation from Professor Anne Fogarty of UCD to attend the National Library, Dublin, on the occasion of the annual Joyce Colloquium. Here he discovered that he had two thrilling admirers, namely Fritz Senn, father figure of Joyce scholars worldwide, and Jean-Michel Rabaté the renowned, perhaps unequalled, authority on Joyce, Beckett and a host of other writers and subjects.
Colm’s novel “The Wake” is a comic/serious novel which recalls Samuel Beckett at his most seminal. It opens with an unbroken sequence lasting 22 000 words which uses the setting of a traditional Irish wake to explore the destitution of man and transform it into something like his ennoblement.
The title of Colm's latest novel "A Maiden So Bewitching" is taken from the words of an old Irish song - Courting in the Kitchen - and it tells the story of a boy called Alexis who is brought up as a girl by a deranged mother and makes his way to to manhood in a state of sexual confusion. The same kind of upbringing had befallen the great writer Ernest Hemingway who reacted by living a macho lifestyle and taking out his hatred of his mother by ill-treating most of the women in his life. Alexis reacts in very different ways, sometimes comic, sometimes sad, always appealing - and these ways often land him in serious difficulties.
From the time he sat down to write his first novel Colm has lived by the motto ‘Non-fiction tries to use fact to help us see the lies. Fiction uses metaphor to help us see the truth.’ He later found that he was putting into practice what Nobel prize-winning South African author Nadine Gordimer called “witness literature”. In a Pen lecture given by Gordimer for International Writers' Day in 2002 Gordimer talked of the felling of the twin towers on 11 September 2001."Terror pounced from the sky and the world made witness to it," she said. She then went on to consider the media coverage of that terrible day and examined the difference between the reporter's job, the pundit's job and that of the writer. "Meaning is what cannot be reached by the immediacy of the image, the description of the sequence of events, the methodologies of expert analysis,” she said. “Kafka says the writer sees among the ruins different (and more) things than others … it [witness literature] is seeing what is really taking place."
On 2 February 2011 Joyce scholar Doctor Jonathan McCreedy delivered a paper at the Joyce birthday conference in Roma Tre University. His paper was entitled Further Adventures of James Joyce: the crossroads of two reading publics [the two publics being the Joyce aficionado and what Flann O’Brien might have called the plain person out for a good read].
On 16 June 2010 as part of a weeklong Bloomsday festival Colm shared the platform with actor Barry McGovern where for six hours under a midsummer sun they did readings alternately, he from Ulysses and Colm from his own novel.
In April 2011 Colm received an invitation from Professor Anne Fogarty of UCD to attend the National Library, Dublin, on the occasion of the annual Joyce Colloquium. Here he discovered that he had two thrilling admirers, namely Fritz Senn, father figure of Joyce scholars worldwide, and Jean-Michel Rabaté the renowned, perhaps unequalled, authority on Joyce, Beckett and a host of other writers and subjects.
Colm’s novel “The Wake” is a comic/serious novel which recalls Samuel Beckett at his most seminal. It opens with an unbroken sequence lasting 22 000 words which uses the setting of a traditional Irish wake to explore the destitution of man and transform it into something like his ennoblement.
The title of Colm's latest novel "A Maiden So Bewitching" is taken from the words of an old Irish song - Courting in the Kitchen - and it tells the story of a boy called Alexis who is brought up as a girl by a deranged mother and makes his way to to manhood in a state of sexual confusion. The same kind of upbringing had befallen the great writer Ernest Hemingway who reacted by living a macho lifestyle and taking out his hatred of his mother by ill-treating most of the women in his life. Alexis reacts in very different ways, sometimes comic, sometimes sad, always appealing - and these ways often land him in serious difficulties.
From the time he sat down to write his first novel Colm has lived by the motto ‘Non-fiction tries to use fact to help us see the lies. Fiction uses metaphor to help us see the truth.’ He later found that he was putting into practice what Nobel prize-winning South African author Nadine Gordimer called “witness literature”. In a Pen lecture given by Gordimer for International Writers' Day in 2002 Gordimer talked of the felling of the twin towers on 11 September 2001."Terror pounced from the sky and the world made witness to it," she said. She then went on to consider the media coverage of that terrible day and examined the difference between the reporter's job, the pundit's job and that of the writer. "Meaning is what cannot be reached by the immediacy of the image, the description of the sequence of events, the methodologies of expert analysis,” she said. “Kafka says the writer sees among the ruins different (and more) things than others … it [witness literature] is seeing what is really taking place."
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 5, 2017
I haven't really read book in its entirety as it is a tad disjointed for me and I have the distraction of company and travel. I will pick it up where I left off later on when I have some alone time. I definitely enjoyed The Wake far more than this book so far.
August 3, 2014
This heartfelt book, this startling piece of metafiction, this sexy love story—all three in one—is quite moving on all these levels. Herron, a deep reader of James Joyce, has bravely attempted to communicate with the dead author, to write with a strong omniscient and interior voice and to take on the matter of writing fiction in the first place, of creating something out of nothing. The book also takes on the troubles in Northern Ireland where Herron lives and, in particular in 1988, with as the Joyce scholar Morris Beja puts it in his review in the prestigious James Joyce Quarterly, “In the background and sometimes in the foreground, we are in the world of the killings by the SAS of Mairéad Farrell, Dan McCann, and Sean Savage in Gibraltar in March and then the murders of three mourners at their funeral in the Milltown cemetery in Belfast.” The most compelling threads are the narrator’s self as Myles Corrigan attempting to figure out the nature of love through his own adventures and through those of his good friend Conn Doherty who takes a figural bath in the close, meaning doused pretty hard by the writer Myles Corrigan. I ultimately concluded that this book takes seriously all of its threads and that despite the authors protestations to the contrary in the metafictional sections—where he speaks to himself, to Joyce, to another from the dead and to the reader—that this is a book of faith. Faith in the power of art to heal, faith in challenging literature that will transform you if you are willing to stay with a difficult story and faith ultimately in friendship and love—with a dose of irony for good measure.
Note: I bought the Kindle edition but also the paperback and read it more enjoyably in the paperback version. I believe a new paperback edition is coming out in the fall. Get it!
Note: I bought the Kindle edition but also the paperback and read it more enjoyably in the paperback version. I believe a new paperback edition is coming out in the fall. Get it!
August 1, 2016
This is the second novel I’ve read set in the times and place of the Irish Troubles. The other is Engineering Paradise by David Gardner, a cracking insight into why a young lad became a bomber and—
—Oi, this review is supposed to be for Herron’s book.
Who said that?
I’m Myles, the anti-hero character in Further Adventures of James Joyce. Now get on with the proper review.
Right. Oddly, I was going to mention author intrusion then you, Myles, aren’t the author yet you intruded into the narrative. Initially, I found you an irritant but after a while I looked for your witty insights and redirection. It’s as if this novel is a self-referential work, self-editing as it went along. Experimental, worthy of JJ. Indeed there are other parallels such as you Myles and your lover, Melanie taking off in the 80-year-old wake of James Joyce and his lover, Nora. How poignant then for a real Joyce quote to appear – among others -
O Ireland, my one and only love
Where Christ and Caesar are hand in glove.
This novel brims with angst and laughter, set in pubs and streets and, of course, the bedroom. There’s literary flashes in setting such as: ‘The sun glittered fitfully on the oxbow bend of a river...’ and telling chunks of social history especially of relationships such as ‘The Church gives you the fire and brimstone treatment from you’re seven and then when you’re seventeen the Health Service takes over.’ Brilliant. As is much of the imagery even in a scene of terrifying danger: ‘three photographers...sank like a collapsed tripod.’
Love it, Myles, when your book (within this book), Chamber Noises, achieves notoriety, just as JJ’s books did. I can hear the protests: ‘Down with this sort of thing’ but without the ‘Careful now’.
I commend and recommend this novel to any aficionado of the ‘Troubles’, anything Irish, and for non-troubled non-Irish story readers.
—Oi, this review is supposed to be for Herron’s book.
Who said that?
I’m Myles, the anti-hero character in Further Adventures of James Joyce. Now get on with the proper review.
Right. Oddly, I was going to mention author intrusion then you, Myles, aren’t the author yet you intruded into the narrative. Initially, I found you an irritant but after a while I looked for your witty insights and redirection. It’s as if this novel is a self-referential work, self-editing as it went along. Experimental, worthy of JJ. Indeed there are other parallels such as you Myles and your lover, Melanie taking off in the 80-year-old wake of James Joyce and his lover, Nora. How poignant then for a real Joyce quote to appear – among others -
O Ireland, my one and only love
Where Christ and Caesar are hand in glove.
This novel brims with angst and laughter, set in pubs and streets and, of course, the bedroom. There’s literary flashes in setting such as: ‘The sun glittered fitfully on the oxbow bend of a river...’ and telling chunks of social history especially of relationships such as ‘The Church gives you the fire and brimstone treatment from you’re seven and then when you’re seventeen the Health Service takes over.’ Brilliant. As is much of the imagery even in a scene of terrifying danger: ‘three photographers...sank like a collapsed tripod.’
Love it, Myles, when your book (within this book), Chamber Noises, achieves notoriety, just as JJ’s books did. I can hear the protests: ‘Down with this sort of thing’ but without the ‘Careful now’.
I commend and recommend this novel to any aficionado of the ‘Troubles’, anything Irish, and for non-troubled non-Irish story readers.
March 18, 2015
I recently discovered this author and bought this book after reading another of his called, "The Wake." I adored that book and this one didn't disappoint either. Colm Herron has a wonderful writing style that submerges you in the Irish culture and language. You almost feel like you are a fly on the wall. His ability to recapture life in 1980's Northern Ireland is amazing. I can't even imagine how much meticulous checking of facts went into making this book historically accurate. As with Herron's other books this story is completely character driven and the characters are incredibly well rounded.
July 20, 2020
This book is a send-up of a lot of modernist literary conceit and pretension, but also an homage to the same. There is some really good eroticism and some terribly funny passages, though I thought the repartee between the putative author and Myles, one of two authors-as-characters, to be a bit over the top, even as a spoof of Flann O'Brien's classic At Swim-Two-Birds. It reminded me too much of a classic Daffy Duck episode in which Bugs Bunny turns out to be the author. I think Daffy gets name-checked in one of the pub scenes though, so that was probably intentional too.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews