JOY - DAVIES, Stan Gebler - James Joyce : A portrait of the artist - (Paperback)

Book is still in a good condition.   >>>    That the genius that was 'Jim' Joyce should be reduced to such posthumous squalor! This was my good read of the year so far with its concise but exhaustive survey, speckled with vulgarities & broad humour, which brought Joyce's troubled life & career to the blinding light! (that's a terrible pun that Jim might have enjoyed at his own expense - he was a terror for witty abuse!).  Stan Gebler Davies loves his subject but pulls no punches; Jim himself was am inveterate brawler & gutter-dweller in the 'kips' - Dublin slang for bawdy-houses! - & his regular bouts of 'clapping' are not glossed-over! Encore! Joyce comes over as that rare figure these days - a writer with a truly epic vision of human existence as personified by his masterwork, 'Ulysses' - one of my iconic 'novels' in world literature.  He lived an uproarious life that eventually killed him, carrying his beloved Nora Barnacle firmly on his skinny Irish arse, through hell & high-water! Joyce hated 'Father Murphy' & all that he stood for; his contempt, once attracted, never relented,& Joyce lies buried in Switzerland!!!, snubbed by his malignant homeland as comprehensively as Joyce snubbed the land of saints & shits...Bloom's lavatorial musings were one of the many reasons that Joyce drew such venom from the Edwardian Dublin establishment.  I am humbled at Joyce's struggle to free the true-born writer from the shackles of censorship & small-mindedness, though paradoxically, in some important ways, Joyce could be both censorious & small-minded himself! And therby hangs a tale...or as Jim might have put it...a tail!...which as every scholar knows is a very important word in Joyce's lexicon...this boyo had all the right ideas...but not necessarily in the right order!  (Goodreads)