James & Nora

by Edna O'Brien, Zeynep Çiftçi (Translator)

“James, Nora’yı Nassau Caddesinde gördü ve konuşmak için durdular. Nora onun bir Vikingin mavi gözlerine sahip olduğunu geçirdi aklından. James yirmi iki yaşındaydı, Nora ise yirmi. Ertesi gün Merrion Meydanında Sir William Wilde’ın yaşadığı 1 numaralı evin önünde buluşmak üzere sözleştiler.” Ancak Nora o gün gelmedi…

James Joyce ile Nora arasındaki tutkulu, gelgitli ve yer yer sağlıksız aşka genel bir bakış sunuyor James ve Nora. Eğitimsiz, toy bir kız olan Nora’yla, onu ilham perisi yapıp eserlerine taşıyan James Joyce’un ölüme dek süren beraberliklerinin yüce, sığ ve çalkantılı hikâyesi.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Ireland, Irish Literature, 20th Century, Literary Criticism

64 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1981

About the author

Edna O’Brien was an award-winning Irish author of novels, plays, and short stories. She has been hailed as one of the greatest chroniclers of the female experience in the twentieth century. She was the 2011 recipient of the Frank O’Connor Prize, awarded for her short story collection Saints and Sinners. She also received, among other honors, the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the Ulysses Medal from University College Dublin, and a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Literary Academy. Her 1960 debut novel, The Country Girls, was banned in her native Ireland for its groundbreaking depictions of female sexuality. Notable works also include August Is a Wicked Month (1965), A Pagan Place (1970), Lantern Slides (1990), and The Light of Evening (2006). O’Brien lived in London until her death.

Reviews

[Matthew Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

73rd book of 2023.

Happy Bloomsday folks! I took this out on my lunchbreak, read it with my cold leftovers outside the cathedral and returned it. Tiny little thing. I knew everything in here thanks to Ellmann and my Joyce addiction, but, O'Brien writes it in a playful, poetic and essentially Joycean way.

For entertainment they walked. They could not afford to do anything else. Yet he was not blind to what he saw - the watch towers, the murmuring waters, the fishful stream and the empathy of the mighty dead. He was not to assign it to paper until long after, but he saw and noted it all. He saw the space of the sky, the ever-changing evening violet, the dark, the dripping gardens with their ash pits, the soggy flower beds, the stables where a coachman combed the horses and of course the sea, the seaweed, the warm sand, the wavelets, the sharp shingle, the water mirroring the high drifting clouds. Next day she wrote to say that in his company she always felt herself to be, her spirit took leave of her body in sleep, and the loneliness which she felt in his absence faded away in his presence. Joyce, who saw and scrutinised every word, recognised at once that these were not the words of a girl who invoked charms and made beds and emptied chamber pots for a living. He guessed rightly. She had copied the letter from a book of etiquette at the time. Possibly he loved her even more for it. The waters were getting fathoms deep and in them the minnows whose movement he likened to that inside his trouser's fly - God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes feather bed mountain.

[Annikky · Rating 3 out of 5]

A completely random buy - I'm not really sure Joyce is my kind of an author, but this was an interesting and very quick read.

[Frances · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well constructed but nothing new...

[leni swagger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pure sex. Sorry, not just the book, but also the writing. Stunning prose.
Read it, and you’ll feel like you’re bathing in dictionaries.

[Emer Tannam · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

Only 30 pages long, this …novella ? describes the relationship between James Joyce and his wife Nora, based on his letters, and books, I imagine.

Sometimes the language was too Joycean, sometimes it was vivid and compelling.

It was interesting but I don’t think I could have read more than 30 pages of it.

[Belinda Carvalho]

This beautiful little book is a joy to flick through, it's a real read in one sitting book and basically gives us a little window into the relationship of the infamous James and Nora. It almost felt like an appetiser for Ulysses for me. I finished it itching to begin..

[Mairead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, loved it!

[Madia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Per chi ha già letto #Ulysses questo ritratto del matrimonio di #JamesJoyce e #norabarnacle non ha molte cose nuove da rivelare.
Un libricino in cui #ednaobrien non approfondisce ma si limita ad elencare citazioni. Joyce è stato un personaggio particolare e un grandissimo artista, un po' riduttivo racchiuderlo in 60 minuscole paginette.

[Brian Yarwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

James Joyce the Flaneur and dilettante

Probably my problem for selecting this book to
read . For me it was exercise to see what people
waste their valuable energy on reading a dilettante book
of useless knowledge.
Employ ROE ….. Return on Energy if you want to be
successful

[James Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed the book , it was great craic but it fell apart (binding) on first reading ... is that a sign ?

[Caitlín Ní Dochartaigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too abstract at points

[Caoimhe Acres · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was exactly what you'd imagine for a book about an author and his poor wife who had to put up with him. Edna O'Brien certainly deserves all the credit she gets for this book. Although a very simple plot, telling us about the marriage of the legend of Irish literature, it's descriptions are what makes it a captivating read. The literary references to the vivid imaginations of events and the pure word use make it a thrilling read, the book is just meant to be read aloud. Do be warned however upon reading aloud, as some of the descriptions do become very lewd and dirty. Would recommend highly though and am going to be checking out more writing by this author.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Whatever Joyce beheld, he treated himself and his readers to visions unparalleled”. In James & Nora: A Portrait of a Marriage, Edna O’Brien deploys a stream of biographical consciousness worthy of Joyce himself to recount the strange and strangely touching story of Joyce’s relationship with Nora Barnacle, from their first meeting and Bloomsday date, to their initial passions, relocations, frustrations and rekindlings, to their getting married for logistical reasons and their turbulent time raising a family while Joyce worked - all of this captured and laid out with perfect wit and emotional honesty in about 60 short pages that felt like hardly even a single breath.

[cypher · Rating 2 out of 5]

even though it is not long at all, i did not finish this, i started it, but got confused regarding the source for this information about James Joyce’s “secret” “muse”…even if he did marry her twenty something years after they had been together (i do not know much about Joyce, but why was the woman he married necessarily the same “muse”). my confusion is just regarding naming sources, because i have a hard time just believing otherwise, and, since i found this in the biography section, this needs to be accurate and not idealised or invented/intuited “facts”.
DNF

[Deborah Sowery-Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A snippet of Joyce's life, specifically his relationship with Nora, focusing a great deal on the lustier side of their coupling. Very poetic writing, flows like a sweet, meandering river. But I found the writing style more gripping than the content.

[John Newcomb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful essay of a book exploring the relationship and eventual marriage between James Joyce and Nora Barnacle. I think that had Edna never written fiction, her literary criticism would have made her a notable writer of her time.

[Conor Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Love is merely conditional since his soul insists upon the state of emotional flux and actuality depends forever on the partial denial of what is, or has been, in order to give new life to it.”

Honestly same

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise, brilliantly written, and deeply insightful,

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edna O'Brien writes fluent Joycean prose in this brief hymn to her hero and mine.

[Roma · Rating 2 out of 5]

ever wanted a sparknotes of your relationship?

[50andsomething · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in a style that resembles Joyce's own, an insightful account of James and Nora's relationship, and Nora's perspective on their unconventional life.

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fleeting story of my fav couple.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Vincent Lequenne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Toute petite biographie d’un couple mythique Nora et James Joyce par la plus grande romancière irlandaise actuelle. Récit parfait et érudit autour d’un des plus grands auteurs du XXeme siècle.

[Paul Mullen · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at James Joyce and his lifetime love, Nora Barnacle. It was certainly no easy ride - to be expected when an artist as deeply indulged in his work as Joyce was is involved - and add to that his rather partial inclination for a strong drink.

Edna O'Brien's portrait of this rather unique relationship is very readable, although at times wanders into thesaurus territory (not unlike Joyce's own work). Love in this circumstance was very much a mysterious entity. It questions whether Joyce was ever really fit to love; this portrait of a marriage is one of loneliness, poverty, upheaval, adultery, and yet a strange unbreakable bond.

I'll have to go and have another crack at 'Dubliners' and 'Ulysses' now...

[Cat Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pair of quare birds, beautifully and poetically captured. It also, perhaps unintentionally, gets across the notion that in all his brilliance, Joyce must have been an awful pain in the hoop to know.

[Sevim Tezel Aydın · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nora ve James Joyce’un inişli çıkışlı beraberliğini hikaye eden kısa bir anlatı. Dil, üslup hoşuma gitmedi…