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Conrad's Reviews > Joyce for Beginners
Joyce for Beginners
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For what it is, it's great. I read it before another one of my ill-fated attempts to get through Ulysses. I ended up going out and buying Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist, too, both of which I finished. Alas, Ulysses still sits in storage along with this introduction, which has great illustrations and a lot of carefully-researched biographical detail about Joyce himself that you won't necessarily run into in another book that you're ever likely to read.
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Finished Reading
June 10, 2007
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cathy
(last edited Aug 25, 2016 11:15AM)
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Jun 10, 2007 04:29PM
Ah, the Totem books series! I love these, but I've never come across Introducing Joyce. I, too, kept starting and stopping Ulysses, then I forced myself to finish via a Joyce course. Here's what helped: A prof who brought in lots of "props" to make the text fun, heaps of biographical material to help with references, and the New Bloomsday Book: A guide through Ulysses by Harry Blamires. Also, I found a great film version, Bloom, which I watched and re-watched as we covered each chapter. It really is worth tackling.
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The Blamires is good, but *James Joyce's Ulysses* by Stuart Gilbert is better, in my opinion, as Joyce actually worked with Gilbert on the book. *James Joyce A-Z* is also a nice, glossy Joycean encyclopedia and, if you really want to get involved, Don Gifford's *Ulysses: Annotated* is infinitely helpful for the many, many esoteric details.
Excellent-o. Oh yeah, I just read about Stuart in that recent Texas Archives NYer piece. Speaking of my favorite mag, have either of you ever read the profile on Stephen JAMES Joyce? What a power-hungry lunatic.
Ah, Stephen Joyce! He's singlehandedly stymied a substantial amount of Joyce scholarship. In fact, when I initially thought about doing grad work on Joyce, I was advised to rethink this field if I wasn't up for dealing with him in some fashion.But the NYer article is fabulous, and, fingers crossed, it appears the tides are turning in favor of art and scholarship.
Nerd alert! Someone sent me this today: I live about a mile from this campus, so I may walk by this weekend and see what's shakin'. I wonder if there is a Molly look-alike pageant? Heh heh.
Isn't there also a Joyce marathon in Boston on Bloomsday? I always wanted to run in it, not just because I love Joyce and *Ulysses,* but because it is so ridiculous that there is a Joyce-themed marathon, seeing as he needed a cane to walk for a good deal of his life. Perhaps, in honor of this, I'll have to run it with an ashplant in hand!
HA! And he was nearly blind, then totally blind, right? Yes, the run is actually near where I grew up. It's an Irish neighborhood, but apparently they are not much for historical accuracy.
