5 comments about James Joyce (Penguin Lives).

1. Reading any biography of James Joyce reminds me of something that Bernard DeVoto once said to Robert Frost after the other had behaved abominably towards Archibald MacLeish on several occasions in the space of a few days: "Robert, you are a great poet, but a bad man." What can the biographer do with Joyce? Was he a great writer? His astonishing literary genius is completely beyond debate. But he was almost completely lacking in humane qualities, and it isn't clear that he was capable of any relationship with any human being surpassed the value a tool had for its user. There are other equally unpleasant figures in the history of literature, but not many, and I've yet to read a biography of Joyce that creates the suspicion that meeting him might have been a positive experience. In fact, for me reading about Joyce's life has in ways acted as an impediment to appreciating his books. The difficulty is that he stuffs so much of his own experience into his books that the reader is forced to know at least the rudiments. Indeed, both PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN and ULYSSES feature his alter ego Stephen Hero as the/or a major character.
   
   If any biography of Joyce is the biography of a morally repulsive individual, there is at least the consolation of his being repulsive on an epic scale. If Joyce is not a human being we can admire as a person, as opposed to a literary genius, he is as least an interesting brute. He fascinates with his utter lack of compunction in his use and misuse and abuse of others. It leads to the question of what personal qualities made it possible for him to mistreat so many people. Unfortunately, O'Brien does not help us discover this. In fact, I find that in her treatment of his life, Joyce the human being doesn't emerge in any detectable way. I ended the book without much of a sense of how he might have seemed if I had encountered him on the street. Instead, O'Brien's Joyce feels very much like a character in a novel. He seems unembedded in his world, partially exacerbated by O'Brien persistent failure to relate Joyce to any social or historical events. She rarely dates events, and often goes twenty or thirty pages without noting a specific date. For instance, very little dating is provided in conjunction with the obscenity trial in New York. If the book contained a chronology at the front or back of the book this might not be so unfortunate. This is important because other writers at approximately the same time were also facing censorship trials, such as D. H. Lawrence for THE RAINBOW, so Joyce's case was not an isolated incident. She also left so much out! She neglects, for instance, to mention that Joyce and Proust once shared a cab ride. Perhaps not a crucial moment for either writer, but given that in the English speaking world Proust and Joyce are widely regarded as the two literary giants of the 20th century, while internationally Joyce is considered second only to Proust one would have expected some acknowledgement of their encounter. So many details like this are excised from Joyce's story. The book also suffers by a complete lack of critical tools. As noted above, there is no chronology, but there is also no index and not much of a bibliography. These are lacks that detract from the book's overall usefulness.
   
   Where O'Brien excels is when she writes about the books themselves. Although I did not feel like I gained much insight into Joyce (that Joyce was a world-historical jerk is simple to document, but the intricacies of why he was and why people let him get away from it was largely untouched upon), O'Brien the novelist did a marvelous job of illuminating many aspects of the books themselves. Although she does not write exhaustively about any of Joyce's works, every passage she writes shimmers with understanding and insight.
   
   In one sense there is no overwhelming need for any new biography of James Joyce. Richard Ellmann's magisterial biography is not merely the finest book on Joyce, but arguably the finest English-language literary biography of the past half century. Given the large bulk of Ellmann's work, however, a solid brief biography is, however, highly desirable. I am not confident that O'Brien's book meets this need. The tone is far too impressionistic, the attention to historical and chronological detail too slight. I can recommend this to readers of Joyce who want to know a bit more about him, but I hope that someone writes a new biography sometime in the next few years.



2. This book is a good introduction to Joyce. It is written with a real feel for his language and life. It is not the overwhelming biographical scholarship of Ellmann, nor the detailed reading of the text much academic scholarship gives.It is however a competent and at times especially insightful look into the tribulations of the writer's life As part of the popular Penguin series in which Writers tell of the lives of other writers, O'Brien focuses on what most interests her.She talks about the insult of the Joyce family's poverty , and what it meant for them to go down from a kind of bourgeois life to one of great neediness. She writes about Joyce's love life and she tells the story of his infidelities and his complicated relationship to his wife Nora without going into each particular incident at length. She has an interesting few pages on reader reaction to ' Ulysses' including Virginia Woolf's comment calling it ' underbred, the effort of a ' queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples' In this work O'Brien often generalizes insightfully about the writer's condition in general, maintaining controversially that the more dedicated the writer is , and the more capable of seeing into the feeling of others on the page, the more monstrous the writer becomes in life. She compares Joyce's lonely end with that of Tolstoy, O'Neill, Virginia Woolf and Dickens. She says ,"A writer and especially a great writer, feels both more and less about human grief, being at once celebrant, witness and victim. If the writing ceases or seems to cease the mind so occupied with the stringing of words is fallow.There was nothing he(Joyce at the seperation from Nora) admitted but rage and despair in his heart, the rage of a child and the despair of a broken man." p. 176
   She also provides very fragmentary but good analysis of Ulysses, explaining the stylistic genius of the ' Oxen in the Sun episode ' where Joyce parodies and rewrites the history of the English language stylistically.
   It is light and quick reading , a good glance at the great man's work and life.



3. Biographies in this series are the perfect fun size. Light, but long enough to have a lot of real stuff in them, more than a mere introduction.

   The very first sentence of this book invites you into Joyce with an imitation of his writing style, & after that Edna O'Brien shares generously & mellifluously her great understanding of the man, his life, & his work, drawing on scholarly commentary of his books & from the journals & letters of him & the people around him so that you know how they all felt about his life & their lives in themselves & for the purposes of this biography in relation to him. It's so well-written & so interesting -- what a life he had, crazy as he was, that -- I could hardly put it down. Edna O'Brien's great interest in him comes across truly.




4. I read this book at the Jersey shore. Joyce's life was as bizarre as his fiction. This book gives you an insight into what Joyce was trying to do with "Ulysses" and later "Finegan's Wake." Of course, the Ellmann bio is still the definitive. This is a great little read with sand and roasted peanuts.



5. This is one of several volumes in the Penguin Lives Series, each of which written by a distinguished author in her or his own right. Each provides a concise but remarkably comprehensive biography of its subject in combination with a penetrating analysis of the significance of that subject's life and career. I think this is a brilliant concept. My only complaint (albeit a quibble) is that even an abbreviated index is not provided. Those who wish to learn more about the given subject are directed to other sources.

   When preparing to review various volumes in this series, I have struggled with determining what would be of greatest interest and assistance to those who read my reviews. Finally I decided that a few brief excerpts and then some concluding comments of my own would be appropriate.

   On Joyce and Ireland: "Of all the great Irish writers, Joyce's relationship with his country remains the most incensed and yet the most meditative. Beckett, a much more cloistered man, was unequivocal; he made France his home and eventually wrote in French and though his elegiac works carry the breath of his native land, he did not expect Foxrock, his birthplace, to be etched in the consciousness of the world. Joyce did. He determined to reinvent the city where he had been marginalized, laughed at and barred from literary circles. he would be the poet of his race." (page 15)

   On criticisms of his portrayal of Dublin: Joyce "said he was not to be blamed for the odor of ash pits and rotted cabbage and offal in these stories [i.e. in Dubliners] because that was how he saw his city. 'We are foolish, comic, motionless, corrupted, yet we are worthy of sympathy too,' he laughed haughtily and added that if Ireland were to deny that sympathy to its characters, the rest of the world would not. In this he was mistaken." (page 78)

   On his deteriorating health: "The strains were beginning to show. he had endocrine treatment for his arthritis, had to have all his teeth removed and was fitted with permanent plates. His eyesight so worsened that he had only one-seventh normal vision. He was given iodine leeches for his bad eye but soon it was clear that they would have to operate." (page 130)

   On his enigmatic nature: "The truth is that the Joyce [others] saw was a fraction of the inner man. No one knew Joyce, only himself, no one could. His imagination was meteoric, his mind ceaseless in the accruing of knowledge, words crackling in his head, images crowding in on him 'like the shades at the entrance to the underworld.' What he wanted to do was to wrest the secret from life and that could only be done through language because, as he said, the history of people is the history of language." (pages 165-166)

   As is also true of the other volumes in the "Penguin Lives" series, this one provides all of the essential historical and biographical information but its greatest strength lies in the extended commentary, in this instance by Edna O'Brien. She also includes a brief but sufficient "Bibliography" for those who wish to learn more about Joyce. I hope these brief excerpts encourage those who read this review to read O'Brien's biography. It is indeed a brilliant achievement.

1 comments about Acting Up.

1. An excellent insight into the brain of David Hare, this book is a very honest account of his experiences as both playwright and performer on his most recent piece, Via Dolorosa, which played in London and on Broadway in 1999. Definitely worth a read, and an excellent present for anyone involved in theatre in any way - sure to provoke a response!

2 comments about An Only Child (Irish Studies).

1. Like Frank, I grew up Catholic, so I greatly enjoyed his account of his childhood and the deftness at which he relayed the characters and situations of his life in early 20th century Northern Ireland. The account of his father's alcoholism and mother's strength in her modesty evokes powerful sentiments that O'Connor is amazingly skilled at.
   
   He overly criticizes the adolescent ideations and development out of his youth (bildungsroman), but it gives insight to his development as a writer (kunstlerroman), of which he is a candid and lucid artist.
   
   I felt the novel creeping a bit in the middle (otherwise I would give it 4 or 5 stars), and the transition is a bit murky to his engaging recount of actions against the British occupation of Northern Ireland and surrounding religious strife. The ridiculous skirmishes and characters are painted with his masterful brush, however, and truly bring the era to life.
   
   It is a story worth the read to the end on many levels.



2. O'Connor is rightly famous mostly for his short stories, but his criticism - both The Lonely Voice and A Mirror In the Roadway - along with this volume of his memoirs, well, they're all just really good. I found this book in a library many years ago and there are a hundred scenes that still spring instantly to life, and sentences that are always going to be part of how I look at the world. He betrays his greatest talent in the fact that the book reads like a collection of wonderful chapters rather than a coherent whole, but each is filled with the spirit of a generous, funny, humane man, one of those rare authors that you wish you could hang out with. The people that assure that books keep getting read seem to be forgetting about O'Connor a little, but the pages they keep alive rarely seem to stay in the blood and brain like his do.

No comments about Charles Stewart Parnell.

2 comments about Family Romance: A Love Story.

1. This book was a selection from our book club and that is the sole reason I decided to labour through it. I found the story very challenging to stick with especially as I don't think the story is very original. Almost all families ,especially from country areas in Ireland had sons and daughters who joined the priesthood and the nuns. This is not new information. I feel the author is trying to atone for his parents shortfalls and this is therapy for himself. This makes it far too personal . A lovely thought for personal satisfaction, but I didn' t see the point of sharing it with the world. It felt like school work every time I picked it up.



2. Most families have secrets. Sometimes those secrets are held BY family members; other times they are held FROM family members. And sometimes a bit of both. John Lanchester explores the circumstances and consequences of these dynamics in this genuinely wonderful book.
   He begins with his grandparents, and takes us on a complicated journey through the generations that followed. The geography of the book is broad and interesting in itself - Africa, Ireland, England, Australia, Burma, even Brunei, and - perhaps especially - Hong Kong.
   Lanchester tells his mother's story, then his father's, and then the story of their marriage and his childhood. It is as interesting for the things he didn't know about and/or took for granted as it is for the chronology and analysis of his early life.
   We know from the book's jacket that his mother took on a new identity after leaving the convent. The ease with which she managed this early case of identity theft is staggering and, in an odd way, admirable.
   However, there was for me a major twist as the story developed; it involves Lanchester himself, and the struggles he has had coming to terms with life, with writing and just being in the world. I found his story intensely moving and honest - almost a story within the story, but still fitting the overall context.
   By chance, I read this book while on holiday, and the other book I read was Bill Bryson's memoir, "Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid." Bryson announces that "growing up was easy. It required no thought or effort on my part." This is a long way from the experience of John Lanchester, and while Bryson is a witty jotter, Lanchester is a deeply insightful and (yet?) very readable author.
   Fans of his fiction will love Family Romance, and new readers will warm to him very quickly. I hope he gives us more of himself in the years ahead.

2 comments about Confessions of an Irish Rebel.

1. I bought the book in 1993. Tried to get it again via Amazon, but cannot (since only used books available, and I am in Indonesia).
   
   I like the book very much. The jokes were very fresh.
   
   Imam Soeseno
   Bogor, Indonesia



2. I've read reviews that say 'Borstal Boy' is a better book- but this is a hysterical, random set of stories about Behan's years before he became a literary entity, but after he left prison. There's some great stuff about Camus, the two were friends in Paris. Highly recomended, especially if you liked his other stuff- this is a bit more acidic than 'Borstal Boy', but much funnier and a hell of a lot more acidic. He was a good man, the Irish equal of Dylan Thomas.

1 comments about Mary Queen of Scots: An Illustrated Life.

1. Elizabeth I, queen of England and cousin to Mary of Scotland, once referred to the Scottish queen as a "daughter of debate." It is difficult to imagine a more apt description of this enigmatic and ultimately illusive monarch. Was she a vixen or a victim, a canny politician or a tool for scheming nobles, a devout Catholic or a woman more concerned with pragmatism than piety? In this new and beautifully produced biography, British historian Susan Doran acknowledges the variety of opinions but adds nothing new to the discussion. Given the scope of the book--192 pages, over half of that devoted to illustrations and notes--this is hardly surprising. What Doran does very well, however, is provide an engagingly written introduction to Mary's history.
   
   Doran clearly lays out the basic issues of Scotland's 16th century politics: the conflict between kirk and church, the uneasy relationship with England, and the powerful, contentious nobles who bonded together in ever-shifting alliances. Matters became even more complicated when Mary began to seek a second husband, for any marriage alliance she formed had the potential to upset the balance among Scotland's nobles, and between Scotland and her powerful neighbor to the south.
   
   One of the reasons for Mary's enduring fascination is the unsolved mysteries that haunt her story. Who murdered her second husband, Henry Lord Darnley? Was Mary complicit? Was she involved in an adulterous affair with James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell? Was she abducted and raped by Bothwell, or did she marry him willingly? Doran does not address these controversies in detail. She cautiously absolves Mary of Darnley's death, but thinks it likely that Mary had some knowledge of a plot against him.
   
   The author concludes that Mary was significant not because of her achievements--which were admittedly few--but because of her dynastic relationship to the Guises in France and the Tudors in England. In fact, Mary's only enduring legacy was her son, James VI of Scotland and I of England. Yet Mary continues to fascinate, and Doran offers just information to satisfy a reader looking for an approachable overview.
   
   In addition to being a worthwhile introduction, this is a beautiful, high-quality book. The full-sized portraits--over twenty of them--are seldom seen in such rich and vivid color. The illustrations include a number of contemporary sketches, documents, and letters; in fact, there are perhaps a few too many letters--over twenty full page reproductions and ten partial pages. It is interesting to see Mary's handwriting and some of her famous ciphers, but thirty pages out of 192 seems excessive.
   
   Doran's notes for Further Reading, however, are a treasure trove. She mentions several biographies and books on general topics, then suggests books dealing with the issues, events, and people discussed in each chapters. On issues about which historians disagree, she frequently suggests books that give various viewpoints. It is this section, in addition to the well-written overview, that makes this book an exceptionally good starting point.

No comments about Festival Legends: Songs & Stories.

5 comments about Queen Elizabeth II: A Woman Who Is Not Amused.

1. I was most touched by Queen Elizabeth, seeing that all her life she has had to put country and duty first. I felt heart broken for her with her treatment from her husband and his bad behavior, but at the same time could understand that it was most difficult for him as well, having to give up all his hopes and dreams. I also learned how Diana threatened the monarch with her behavoir, something I never understood until now and I felt differently about the whole thing, and understood both sides. I learned a lot about how royals raise their children and was shocked, but understood that it is how they are raised, and they know no other way. I also learned what the Queen does in official business and just how influential she is. She has earned my deepest respect and I have watched her intereact and must say that when she smiles it is truly captivating because it radiates from her heart. Great book! I highly recommend it.
   
   Sufani Garza
   Author



2. A great book about the Queen. Lots of information, but not too over the top with details and hard-to-understand writing.



3. Three years ago, I added this book to my too-large collection of books about the Royal Family. I started re-reading it this week when looking up something about her disinterest in clothes while reading the reports of her visit to Australia. Whoever is doing her hats now should be drawn and quartered!

   This is an enjoyable book and I can only feel a bit sorry for the Queen. For all of her worldly possessions, she leads a rather dreadful life. Smiling, looking interested, holding flowers, etc. must almost drive her out of her mind! She does a good job of it, though, and for that I give her credit. It's a good show. I've been watching it for over 40 years!




4. One of the best books on the British Royal Family and on Queen Elizabeth in particular.

   Reading this book one can see that Mr. Davies is quite knowledgeable and has done his homework where researching the subject is concerned.

   Queen Elizabeth may not be easily amused - and she has every right not to be - but I certainly was highly amused and entertained.




5. Ever since I can remember I have been fascinated by the British Royal family; watching the weddings of both the Waleses and the Yorks, reading Majesty magazine each month, etc. I bought this book to find out more about the Queen and Prince Phillip. I finished this book within two days and still find myself drawn to it. The depth that the author reaches, describing the Queen's marriage, family, responsibilities, daily life - it is all covered with a thoroughness that makes the reader feel as though they knew Her Majesty personally. Undoubtedly there are other books available that detail Queen Elizabeth II's life, but this one will stand out due to it's ability to draw the reader into the world of this remarkable monarch.

5 comments about BUT NOT FOR THE FUEHRER.

1. This was an intense and enjoyable read from start to finish. It made me wonder what I would have done in the same circumstances, and it made me (as always) feel very lucky to have been born in the U.S. While it must always be difficult to know how much of any personal memoir is totally factual, I find the previous reviewers who claim it is a fake simply because "it seemed to be right out of Cross of Iron" or "I don't recall any other books mentioning this" or "I can't believe all of that could have happened to one man", to be wholly unpersuasive. I can even forgive mistaking the 6th and 10th armies at Stalingrad since the author never said he was at Stalingrad, and I can't say I can remember what other units were where, except for the one I was in, and I am not trying to remember nearly that far back.
   
   That being said, I AM a bit troubled by the idea of building a huge fire so near the front, even if you are freezing to death. The Marine Corps refers to this as an "admin bivouac", as opposed to a "tactical bivouac" when nothing that might give away your position is allowed...especially fires. But then again, if it was so cold that you were in danger of freezing to death within minutes, I have to allow for the possibility that I might have been willing to risk it.
   
   All told, it is an incredibly good book and I found it easy reading. The frequent typos and grammar errors did not remotely make it difficult to follow. I simply caution the reader to use his/her own judgement concerning whether or not to believe every detail of this account. I think the reader would be best served by reading several of these personal accounts and assuming that the truth will come to light in terms of the commonalities found in all of them, regardless of how "believable" they might appear to be.



2. I bought this book because it was recommended by someone writing in another publication. I wish I had spent some time reading the other Amazon customer reviews before plunking down my cash.
   
   The book is simply unbelievable. No ancient veteran could remember such details, and no one except Zelig could have been witness to such a series of events. The writing is uneven, and it doesn't look like any editor ever reviewed the text.



3. It's definitely an unusual book. With some severe editing it could be given a 3 or 4-star rating for fiction. But non-fiction it isn't. Even allowing for memory lapses that might have caused factual errors, no infantry soldier in the German army could possibly have had all the experiences, all the luck, and all the fortuitous circumstances that Jung claims. It would be interesting to know what Jung and Nesbitt were thinking when they collaborated to write this book, but not so interesting that one would take any time to find out.



4. This story was probably constructed from a number of real memoirs, other sources like films, and Jung's and the author's imagination. Helmut Jung may have been a soldier on the Eastern Front but what he claims to have seen there owes more to imagination - perhaps the author's - than reality. Units composed of seven foot Mongols? (p. 297). Really. In the fifty or so books I have read about the German-Russian war nobody else noticed such units. In the same chapter, a description of the capture of a group of female Russian soldiers appears to have been lifted from the film version of 'Cross of Iron'. There are numerous other elements traceable to other sources throughout ths ridiculous book. Avoid wasting money on this 'memoir'. You will learn nothing about the real experience of combatants on the Eastern Front that you haven't already read elsewhere.



5. I agree with some of the other reviewers that this is most likely a work of fiction. There is no real information given about the supposed author, Helmut Jung, other than his "incredible" wartime exploits. There are too many mistakes in the book about Jung's training and service to believe this is anything more than a piece of fiction put together by the American writer...it doesn't read or feel right. Save your money and buy "Black Edelweiss" for a real biography of a German soldier.