Rene Bard’s Reviews > James Joyce > Status Update

p700 "...Joyce proposed to him [Nino Frank] that they translate "Anna Livia Plurabelle" into Italian. 'We must do the job now before it is too late,' he said;'for the moment there is at least one person, myself, who can understand what I am writing. I don't however guarantee that in two or three years I'll still be able to.'...to the sense [meaning] he [Joyce] seemed indifferent and unfaithful..."

p649 "...he [Joyce] dictated a bit of Finnegans Wake to Beckett...in the middle of one such session there was a knock at the door which Beckett didn't hear. Joyce said, 'Come in,' and Beckett wrote it down. Afterwards he read back what he had written and Joyce said, 'What's that "Come in"?' 'Yes, you said that,' said Beckett. Joyce thought for a moment, then said, 'Let it stand.' "

p480(footnote):"[Ezra] Pound said however in the first number of New Review, 1931, 'I respect Mr. Joyce's integrity as an author in that he has not taken the easy part. I never had any respect for his common sense or his intelligence, apart from his gifts as a writer.'"

p445"Nora Joyce suffered under this ambiguity [whether she had cuckolded James]. She was in tears one day because, as she confided to Frank Budgen, 'Jim wants me to go with other men so that he will have something to write about.' She seemed to have failed him in this wifely duty."

Discussing Joyce's germinating thoughts on what would turn out to be his great novel "Ulysses", the author Ellmann opines:

pg362 "Nor is he [the character Bloom] concerned with the conception of a personal god. The divine part of Bloom is his humanity..."

My response: "Oh really? Humanity equals divinity? Okay,Richard,I disagree with you on that point...but that does not diminish the excellence of your biography."

The further I get into this the more disillusioned with Joyce I become. I grant to him that, like Poe, his art always came first, but I would amend myself to say His drunken stupidity preCeded Everything.