Joyce: Advanced reading suggestions

John

OK, I'm about halfway through Finnegans Wake and despite not quite being sure of what's going on, I'm loving it. I've read Dubliners and Ulysses already and enjoyed both of them. I've Portrait of the Artist... lined up next but after that I want to get down to reading some secondary texts and biographies about Joyce.

So far I've bought James Joyce A to Z by A.N. Fargnoli and M.P. Gillespie which is a fairly basic but useful reference book. The college library has Anthony Burgess' Here Comes Everybody which seems to be a classic book on The Wake. I've got Joyce's Book of the Dark by John Bishop wish listed on Amazon. These last two mainly focus on The Wake, does anyone have any recommendations for a good text on the other works? There's a large reference list in the back of the A-Z but it's impossible as a fairly recent newcomer to Joyce to know where to start.

InFront

It's so hard isn't it? Apparently it's all a big leg-pulling but the trick is you're only supposed to think it's a leg-pulling and call it so, but in fact, that itself is the *real* leg-pulling...

I must say I loved his other stuff, and I turned the pages of Finnegan's Wake like I would carry boxes from point x to point y. It was manual labour, exercises for the eyes. I get to say "I've read Finnegan's Wake", but it doesn't do anything for my literary confidence as if anyone engages me in conversation on it, I have to be prepared to admit I didn't have a clue what he was on about.
I'm told it's great, so I'll just nod quietly!

Aanyway, I have "Student Guide to James Joyce", a 2004 book by Greenwich Exchange. It's pretty good, although not extensive.
Do you find the appendix notes any good for Finnegan's Wake? I found them quite bad, but great for A Portrait, Ulysses and Dubliners.

My favourite notes are handwritten notes my english teacher gave me on the last day of school that she had found on "Dubliners" and "A Portrait" since we were doing them for the LC a few days later. Perhaps the fact that she didn't expand into Finnegan's Wake is why I never got a grip on it. If there are York notes for Finnegan's Wake, I would recommend them...

I can't believe you read Ulysses before A Portrait! A Portrait of the Artist may not be the greater Joyce book, but it's my personal favourite. Do you not feel like you're reading in reverse?!

DublinWriter

FW still continues to split Joyce fans into two camps, those that love it and those that hate it.

Personally, I think it was a very self-indulgent work and not worth the enormous effort. It's not a book to be read, it's a book to be decrypted.

Many of Joyce's close friends and supporters thought the guy had lost his mind when FW was first published.

Joyce himself was devistated at the books reception. When asked a number of times afterwards what his next work would be he stated that he'd like to write something 'really simple' like a children's book.

John

InFront wrote:

Do you find the appendix notes any good for Finnegan's Wake?

My edition of it has no notes, it's quite the challenge! As for Portrait..., it does feel strange to leave that until last (although technically his poetry will be last) but his work isn't exactly like Lord of the Rings where I've ruined the plot by reading the later books first so I'm not too bothered by it. I must have a look at that student's guide that you mentioned, it might be better than the A-Z I have.

DublinWriter, too bloody right it's self-indulgent but I like a bit of self-indulgence from time to time. Granted Joyce lost a lot of his old support when he published it but the new generation like Beckett loved it. I prefer Ulysses at the moment because it wasn't so tough but I think Finnegans Wake isn't a book that you can read once and say "I've read it." It's like a David Lynch movie, you can go through it again and again and the chances of you getting it are still low. I like that kind of futility!