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This companion volume to James Joyce's "Ulysses" offers students an avenue into the novel and at the same time introduces them to five important contemporary critical approaches: deconstruction by Jacques Derrida; reader response criticism by Wolfgang User; feminist and gender criticism by Vicki Mahaffey; psychoanalytic criticism by Kimberly J. Devlin; and Marxist criticism by Patrick McGee. Each critical essay is accompanied by an introduction to the history, principles and practice of the critical perspective and by a bibliography that promotes further exploration of that approach. In addition, the essays are complemented by an introduction providing biographical and historical contexts for Joyce and "Ulysses", a survey of critical responses to the work since its initial publication, and a glossary of critical and theoretical terms. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The GREAT Professor Margot Norris again provides a great, insightful analysis of James Joyce's opus
Professor Margot Norris of Irvine has written several very well received analyses of the works of James JOyce and their place in literary and political history, including Suspicious Readings of Joyce's Dubliners, The Decentered Universe of Finnegan's Wake: A Structuralist Analysis, the ahistoricity of which she later repudiates in another commentary, and the iconoclastically revolutionary commentary Joyce's Web: The Social Unraveling of Modernism (Literary Modernism Series). Another of Prof. Norris's landmark studies for any serious student of literature must be her essential Writing War in the Twentieth Century, which, passing through WWI and Hemingway, concludes with press censorship in the Persian Gulf War or Bush War One, as she examines how and why writers have been unable to effectively deal with the question of war in the modern world, including after the Bomb, and how and why writing strategies have been monopolized for the service of war making.

Pardon that brief introduction of Prof. Norris's remarkable work in order to set a context for her editting this current volume of criticism from various methods and perspectives of James Joyce's Ulysses, including her own feminist approach which notwithstanding retains its balance and perspective and appreciation of Joyce's subtle use of irony and subtexts in creating a subversively liberated literature.

Being an over 250 page volume of such varied yet profund literary criticisms, there is a portal here for nearly everyone to enter and feel comfortably challenged to deeper appreciation and understanding. Then, once safely inside this Joycean smorgasbord, you may browse to find absolutely new perspectives for comprehending more fully the gleaming cut gem which is Ulysses, voted the greatest novel of the twentieth century, a mystery of comprehension which only expands and leads on to hunger for more.

Prof. Norris has done here a great yet economical service for any student of James Joyce, both advanced and initiate, rendering what might seem unconnected and even unintelligible logical and clear and joyful. Ulysses after all has some of the most delicious jokes in all of literature, if we only have the ears to hear. The parodistic style of the later episodes in particular are a scream. Norris and company here open our ears and our minds to appreciate gratefully and happily what we are missing.

If you can get only one commentary on Ulysses kindly consider this one as a welcome opening. I have read several and this one seems to me like a great place to start, and to stay, and to read the slippery mysterious novel a million times more, while holding firmly the strong and wise hand of Prof. Norris, as Dante did Virgil, or more properly Beatrice.

Other contributers of note include Derrida on deconstruction, Devlin from a psychoanalytic perspective, and Patrick McGee on ULysses in the light of Marxist ethics.

Highly recommended and I have already ordered a second reading copy, as my first got caught outside last night with me in a heavy nightfall desert hailstorm, as I could not leave home without it, and it got soaked even inside the safety of my knapsack. Very valuable and welcome friend and helpmate in the rocky road of Ulysses. Get one and awaken.

Very Wide ranging analysis of Joyce's premier work.
It is an extremely detailed critique of ''Ulysses'' on many different levels but it also is a compendium of the various critical methods used in modern literatore as a whole.All contributors are obviously experts in their particular areas. The book itself was in excellent condition and despatched promptly.

Excellent accompaniment
I am still digesting "Ulysses." I read it while walking around Dublin a few years ago. It was marvelous to trace the steps of Leopold and Molly, and to see what they "saw," but the novel remains a distant pleasure to the reader. I must admit it is not the most accessible book ever written, but it gets four stars for its intent ... and that it is better than "Finnegan's Wake." Be warned: This novel is not for the casual reader. This is one of several excellent accompaniments to "Ulysses" and well worth the price and the time to compare against Joyce. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

If only Joyce to Pound were salvaged
Great. My mother never had an inkling to care for neither Joyce nor Pound (the extensiveness they procure). She's flicked through these letters and, looks like i might eventually have somebody to discuss these two Greats with, here at home...

SURE WE'VE ALL HEARD OF EZRA POUND BUT WHO ACTUALLY READS HIM? OR JOYCE!
Within these three hundred elegantly published pages from New Directions we may come to understand how Ezra Pound served as brilliant and talented midwife and nursemaid of the modernist literary movement, including editing TS Eliot's Wasteland, cutting out the waste and leaving the essential, creating the epic poem we now study. Herein we may read Pound serving in every way the ground breaking literary creations of Mr. James Joyce, leaving him only after the early writing of Finnegans Wake.

Clearly without Pound we would have no Joyce, as Pound served as aggressive literary agent, as encouraging force for Joyce, as clarion critic and publicist, creating each of these positions long prior to their cynical establishment within the present corporate literary industry. The brilliant writings by Pound published by New Directions within this comprehensive volume, with excellent introduction and commentary by Forrest Read, serve to prove the debt world literature owes Mr. Pound, who at the expense of his own writing served other writers so completely.

This work serves as encouragement and reinforcement for any struggling writer battling against his or her muse, as the words Pound sends Mr. Joyce here may strengthen and comfort each writer entering upon new and uncertain ground. Please notice the subtitle states "The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce" as despite the main title we find only three letters from Mr. Joyce included, as so much went missing in action. The life of Mr. Pound, despite serving as secretary to Mr. Yeats, did not provide for preservation of correspondence, particularly late in his life when the US government imprisoned him within a mental institution for years. In fact for further study of that interesting phenomenom, the reader would do well to consider the book Joyce and the G-men, regarding J Edgar Hoover's cultural war on the modernist movement, which destroyed even the great American novelist James Wright. ... Read more

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The great Irish writer of "The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man" is at his best with these short stories of his beloved Dublin residents! ... Read more

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Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Samuel Clemens ("Mark Twain"), Henry James, Ernest Hemingway—Joyce Carol Oates evokes each of these American literary icons in her newest work of prose fiction, poignantly and audaciously reinventing the climactic events of their lives. In subtly nuanced language suggestive of each of these writers, Oates explores the mysterious regions of the unknowable self that is "genius"—for Edgar Allan Poe, a belated encounter with bizarre life‑forms utterly alien to the poet's exalted Romantic aesthetics; for Emily Dickinson, resurrected in the twenty-first century in a "distilled" state, a belated encounter with blundering humanity and brute passion of a kind excluded from the poet's verse; for the elderly, renowned Samuel Clemens, a belated encounter with impassioned innocence, in the form of "the little girl who loves you"; for Henry James, an aging volunteer in a London hospital during World War I, a belated encounter with the physicality of desire and the raw yearning of love long absent from the master's fiction; and, for Ernest Hemingway, the most tragic of these figures, a belated encounter with the "profound mysteries of the world outside him, and the profound mysteries of the world inside him."

Customer Reviews (18)

impressive recreation of the lives of five authors
I ended up liking this book much more than I expected to.It is a compilation of five short stories.Each recreates the last days of a famous author, both using little-known facts from their lives as a basis for the stories and adopting their literary styles to tell the tale.The result is a sometimes dark, but captivating and intriguing look into the lives and psyches of the literary greats.

The skill it takes to emulate the masters in this way and the uniqueness of the idea gave me a lot of respect for Oates.I will be seeking out more of her work.

Joyce Carol Oates has made an immense contribution to American literature
It's doubtful that any writer other than Joyce Carol Oates would dare tackle the task she's set for herself in this, her 21st short story collection. Not only has she vividly imagined the last days of a handful of American literary icons, she has done so while channeling the voices of those writers in these five haunting tales. WILD NIGHTS! is a stylish and original piece of literary craftsmanship that works both as a collection of effective stories and as a literary treat for those of a more scholarly bent.

Oates leads off the collection with "Poe Posthumous; or, the Light-House," a story suggested by a single-page manuscript entitled "The Light-House" that was found among Edgar Allan Poe's papers after his death. The Poe of this story has agreed to spend six months without human companionship tending the lighthouse at Viña de Mar, off the Chilean coast, as part of a scientific experiment on "aloneness." Accompanied only by his dog Mercury, Poe confesses early in the story that he is "one of those individuals of a somewhat fantastical & nervous disposition, who entertains worries where there are none...yet who does not sufficiently worry of what is." The laconic, fairly mundane diary entries that open the story deteriorate when Mercury meets a tragic end, and soon reveal a mind that's beginning to crumble. When Poe imagines he's sharing the island with a herd of mutant creatures, his descent into madness is complete. It's a story as chilling as any Poe horror tale.

"EDickinsonRepliluxe" is the only one of the pieces that is not set in the author-subject's times. Middle-aged suburbanites Madelyn and Harold Krim have purchased a "Repliluxe" of Emily Dickinson, a "brilliantly rendered manikin empowered by a computer program that is the distillation of the original individual." Soon after "Emily" arrives at the Krims' home, she takes on the duties of their servant, while writing on little pieces of paper she stuffs into her apron pocket. Madelyn begins to write poetry of her own, afflicted with what her husband derisively calls the "scribbling disease." As the bond between Madelyn and Emily grows stronger, Harold's disdain for the creature culminates in a startling and violent climax to the story.

Mark Twain receives some rough treatment at Oates's hands in "Grandpa Clemens & Angelfish 1906." He is revealed as a 70-year-old curmudgeon, the line between whose literary and real identities has blurred, with an unnatural fondness for adolescent girls he calls his "Angelfish." Twain encounters a young girl named Madelyn Avery at one of his performances and commences a correspondence with her that becomes increasingly affectionate and inappropriate, ultimately leading to meetings at a "secret place" in New York's Central Park. But when he discovers that the object of his affection is 16 years old, two years older than he had imagined, he cuts her off with a cruelty that has tragic consequences.

The most touching story in the collection is "The Master at St. Bartholomew's Hospital 1914-1916." In it, an ailing Henry James, "The Master," volunteers at a London hospital to care for British soldiers wounded in World War I. When the sadistic Nurse Supervisor Edwards discovers that James has become attracted to a Lieutenant Scudder who has been severely wounded in a grenade attack, losing his leg among his other injuries, she subjects the author to a gruesome penance before he is permitted to return to Ward Six, where Scudder is hospitalized. The story's ambiguous closing pages, when the dying James and the young soldier embark together on an ocean cruise, are both tender and moving.

"Papa at Ketchum 1961" brings the collection to a grim close. Narrated in Hemingwayesque prose, it is a stark account of the writer's musings as he contemplates the suicide he accomplished on July 2, 1961. The story reveals a physically wrecked man suffering from a titanic case of writer's block --- "Mornings when work does not come are long mornings" --- as his mind ranges agonizingly over his life and literary career. The glimpses into "Papa's" psyche, sinking ever deeper into depression and paranoia, are unromantic and disturbing.

Joyce Carol Oates has made an immense contribution to American literature, and we can only hope that her "last days" are far in the future. These five tales further demonstrate why she is worthy of being regarded alongside some of our most admired literary talents.

versatility
Personally I didn't feel connected with the stories as I normally do with the author's other books, but I must say that I was impressed by her versatility again.All five stories are so different and her imagination has no limits.

Necropsy postmortem examination
I like Oates as a writer, I often find her interesting. I don't think it's necessarily effective to go for the jugular quite as much as she does (that tendency to inspire comments like 'unflinching', 'not scared to...' in reviews...), but okay. On this occasion I could sense Oates' interest and imagine her poring over her subjects - their faces, their styles, the mental landscapes they inhabited, and 'Wild Nights' is a very self-assured piece of work (in the world of letters you have to earn the right to take on a project this ambitious).But by the end it felt like watching a surgeon saw off the tops of some illustrious heads to poke around in the goo, as though Oates had gone to considerable effort trying to figure out what made her fellow writers tick, without understanding what made them human.

Wild Nights is a fictional imagining of the last days of five seminal American literary voices by the eminent Joyce Carol Oates
Wild Nights (the phrase is borrowed from a poem by Emily Dickinson) is a collection of five short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. The prolific Princeton professor imagines the final days of five great American writers. Oates has a fecundly wicked imagination displaying her literary acumen as she examines:
Edgar Allan Poe-Oates places him on a remote island south of South America where his job is to tend a lighthouse. In this macabre tale reminiscent of something which Poe might have produced he becomes mad, copulates with a weird one eyed sea creature and laments his loneliness. The tale is written in diary form with entries being inscribed by the fictional Poe. The tale is grotesque and unpleasant.
Emily Dickinson: An upper middle class couple buy a clone-like computerized doll of Dickinson. The computerized device acts like the reclusive Emily staying hin her room, baking bread, tending flowers and placing hastily scribbled poems in her apron pocket. When her owner attempts to rape the sexless robot the wife and Emily bond in rebellious acts. Weird but fascinating worthy of a Twilight Zone episode. The tale will also appeal to feminist in its depiction of male domination and brutality manifested in the stupid male owner's rape of the doll.
Mark Twain: He is portrayed as Captain Admiral Twain whose aquafish (prepubescent girls who are virgins and under 16) cavort at parties and secret assignations in Central Park all to the dismay of his scornful daughter Clara. Twain was disillusioned, in poor health and bitter against the world when he died in 1910. He had been neglected by his father,found American imperialism revolting and was an atheist. His interest in young girls was creepy. Twain is not the belovedly irascible old coot telling tall tales of boyhood most Americans picture him as being. Instead he was a trenchant social and political critic who had been broken by the deaths of his daughter and wife.
Henry James-The dullest of the stories finds the prudish James working at St. Bartholemew's Hospital for wounded World War I soldiers in London. James gets an understanding of human pain and suffering. As a homosexual he is attracted to a few of the men whom he tends.
Ernest Hemingway: My favorite among these tales. Papa Hemingway was a burnt-out, sexually impotent, mentally disturbed man by the time he killed himself with a shotgun in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961. Hemingway hated his mother; his father had also committed suicide. A sad final chapter for a great American stylist. Hemingway was a narcisstic man whose ego was massive; disdain for women profound and hatred of his family gargantuan. He cared only for himself and the written word of his art.
These stories will not be everyone's cup of tea. It helps the reader to have some background understanding of the works and career of each artist who is profiled. I enjoyed them and appreciated Oates ability to write in the style of the writer she is chronicling in her fiction. ... Read more

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In this comprehensive account of the great modern novelist,James Joyce addresses the author's entire corpus, from his earliest beginnings to his mature masterpieces. The book provides detailed textual analysis of each of his major works. Lee Spinks discusses the biographical, historical, political, and social contexts that inform Joyce's writing and multiple strands of criticism that have been proposed over the last eighty years. The book's combination of close reading and critical breadth makes it an ideal companion for both undergraduate students and advanced scholars.

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Customer Reviews (2)

A delightful and affordable collection of Irish short stories
As someone who likes reading short stories and also works of world literature, I have been collecting and reading short stories from various countries and was pleased to come across the immensely affordable Dover Thrift Editions. The book itself may not be of superior quality, but neither is it of inferior quality. The covers are beautiful and the paper quality is not altogether fine [rather flimsy in fact], but once again, it's value for money.

The stories featured here are:
"The Limerick Gloves" - Maria Edgeworth
"The Donagh; or, The Horse-Stealers" - William Carleton
"Green Tea" - J Sheridan Le Fanu
"Death of Fergus" - Standish H O'Grady
"The Tables of the Law" - W.B. Yeats
"Lisheen Races, Second-Hand" - E.E Somerville and Martin Ross
"The Only Son of Aoife" - Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory
"Home Sickness" - George Moore
"The Blind Man" - James Stephens
"The Dead" - James Joyce
"The Ploughing of Leaca-na-Naomh" - Daniel Corkery
"The Weaver's Grave" - Seumas O'Kelly
"The Pedlar's Revenge" - Liam O'Flaherty

This is a diverse collection of Irish short stories that portrays both the traditional and modern approaches to Irish storytelling. Recommended for fans of the short story and world literature.

Synopsis
"This collection of thirteen captivating tales by Irish authors illustrates both traditional and modern approaches to the Celtic art of storytelling.Spanning two centuries, it features stories by Maria Edgeworth and William Carleton from the beginning of Irish prose fiction in English; retellings of traditional tales by Lady Gregory and Standish O'Grady from the great age of the Irish Literary Revival; and contributions from many of the twentieth century's most significant writers, including William Butler Yeats, James Stephens, James Joyce, Seumas O'Kelly, and Liam O'Flaherty."--eCAMPUS ... Read more

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According to Bloom, James Joyce's Dubliners is a more aesthetically mixed work than much criticism of the author acknowledges. Bloom calls the collection of short stories admirable and unified, lauding Ivy Day in the Committee Room as a masterpiece. Many critics deem The Dead as the first piece to represent the mature Joyce.

The title, James Joyce’s Dubliners, part of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on James Joyce’s Dubliners through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics.This collection of criticism also features a short biography on James Joyce, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Remarkable Piece of 20th Century Fiction
James Joyce's "Dubliners" is a brilliant and shining example of the power of the English language.This book is the compilation of short stories, each as intriguing and captivating as those that precede and follow.

To truly enjoy the remarkable genius of the author, a reader must identify the three key aspects that progress the telling of each story:symbolism, imagery, and character development.With the first being presented in almost the opening paragraph of each account, Joyce envelops each story of the book in deep and profound symbolism that conveys the inner thoughts, feelings, and struggles of his characters.Eveline, for example, from the story of the same name, for whom the lattice-work of a window represents the bars of a prison cell, and the streetlights beyond fading as that of the light of her life dissipating slowly before her very eyes.Easy to recognize, the symbolism present in "Dubliners" provides a deeper insight and understanding that truly sets his otherwise commonplace stories apart from others that are no more than just that.Joyce's masterful use of this literary technique is placed within simple linguistic structures that are easily observed, yet very powerful and splendidly thought provoking in its very core and concept, as well as in the nature by which he employs it.The careful examination and adequate attention given this symbolism is relevant, and truly essential, in achieving a greater understanding of the stories being told, and the characters portrayed within them.

Wild and vivid mental images are formed in the reader's mind through Joyce's immense, yet extremely important descriptive nature.The overwhelming abundance of the actually story progression takes place in the narrative that falls between sparse dialogue, giving opportunity for Joyce's magnificent, though usually dark and gloomy imagery.It is exactly within this narrative that the characters come to life, as they are seen as ordinary people with universally accepted experiences of all.Eloquent and poignant examples of this can be found in the title characters of both "Eveline," and "Araby," the former of which is quite possibly the most interesting and compelling of the entire book.

The characters of "Dubliners" appear flat in their sparse dialogue, but it is in the depth of Joyce's narrative depictions of thoughts, feelings, and actions, that they become fully-developed and round.Most, however, remain weak-willed and deficient of any inner-strength or courage, throughout, eventually leading them into despair.Correlations can then be drawn between these characters and the setting of the stories in which they appear, the Irish city of Dublin, which Joyce goes out of his way to portray as bereft of light, warmth, and color.

Though the author's clear intent and purpose was the portrayal of common people and their internal conflicts, the subject matter can become redundant when replicated throughout all of the stories contained in this book, offering the one drawback of "Dubliners."

Overall, Joyce's simplistic use of language is evocative, as it conveys complex ideas in very simple words and linguistic structures, making it an easy read for the least literary-minded of audiences.His thought and story progression is virtually flawless, being laid out in a proper and unmistakeable order that can be readily enjoyed for both its surface-value, and its literary technique.The underlying themes are relative to virtually any reader, through their own personal experiences of like, making this a book well worth picking up. ... Read more

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In James Joyce and the Politics of Egoism a leading scholar approaches the entire Joycean canon through the concept of "egoism". This concept, Jean-Michel Rabaté argues, runs throughout Joyce's work, and involves and incorporates its opposite, "hospitality", a term Rabaté understands as meaning an ethical and linguistic opening to "the other". Rabaté explores Joyce's complex negotiation between these two poles in a study of interest to all scholars of modernism. ... Read more

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In this lucid and compelling analysis of Lacan's twenty-third seminar, “Le Sinthome,” Roberto Harari points to new psychoanalytic pathways that lead beyond Freudian oedipal dynamics.

Lacan's seminar measures the boundaries between creativity and neurosis. We learn how poetry and wordplay may offer alternatives to neurotic pain and even psychotic delusions, with Joyce as our subject.

This new translation makes the intricacies of Lacan's seminar available to the English-speaking world for the first time. The author's accessible, vigorous prose explains the nuances of Lacanian theory with perfect clarity.

In the extraordinary encounter between Lacan and Joyce, Harari reveals unexpected affinities between them both as theorists and writers. It illustrates how literature is the aesthetic domain that is closest to the analytic experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Le Sinthome and James Joyce
Congratulations to Roberto Harari (and Luke Thurston for his translation)! This is a must reading for those interested in coming to an understanding of Lacan's late work on le sinthome in relation to James Joyce. It is one of the clearest explanations in the literature on this very complex relationship.
Le sinthome was a late development of Lacan during a period where he was attempting to represent the subject in terms of three interconnected rings, the Borromean knots. Each ring represented one of the three main orders (Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real). Many of the key concepts he had developed in the 50s and 60s now reappeared within various configurations of knots. It was Lacan's ongoing interest in James Joyce that sparked the idea that Joyce's writings were applicable to an understanding of a fourth order, le sinthome, which sustained consistancy in the psychic apparatus. Unfortunately, Lacan's late works of the 1970s were replete with exposition of a variety of knots but with little in terms of clear explanations. Harari's work breaks through this impass. It also encourages the reader to converse with his book, not simply to put it to memory. In fact, I found myself cross-referencing his work with other less accessible works to work out a variety of complex points on the knots and le sinthome. Harari's book was a key to overcoming various impasses.
For many of us interested in understanding this material we have had to spend much time in studying literature that not only is equally as challenging as Lacan's, but not necessarily clarifying at all. Harari breaks through this barrier. And he adds his own spin on important ideas presented by Lacan. Some may disagree with his spin, but it is a refreshing elucidation of otherwise inaccessible material.
Sure, there are dogmatic Lacanians who insist on singular readings of Lacan; but this is fiction. And there are factional disputes over the "correct" reading; but let us get beyond this and engage important scholarly work that provides insights into one of the truly great discoveries in psychoanalysis: le sinthome. Lacan's late work still awaits the scholarly field to genuinely engage this material. And there is much to be done!
If we can judge a book by how much it clarifies and encourages further thought on a subject, this book is exceptional.

Superficial or just plain Supercilious?
Had I seen the review a �Superficial Reading of Lacan, December 11, 2002�, prior to reading Harari�s book I would not have read it. For me this would have been a mistake. As a PhD candidate working on Joyce and Deleuze, I have found it enormously productive. It has forced me to completely rethink the chapter I have devoted to Lacan, as this originally relied too much on the negative critique contained in Deleuze and Guattari�s Anti-Oedipus. I now believe that the �final� Lacan of Seminar 23 onwards, particularly �Le Séminaire de 20 January 1976, Le sinthome, 1975-76�, but also the earlier �Le Séminaire. Livre XIX. Ou pire, 1971-72�, have not received sufficient attention, whether or not they have been officially suppressed. I owe this to Harari and to this book.
It now seems evident to me that the later Deleuze of The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, and the �final� Lacan, through their respective use of mathematical topology, come much closer in their ultimate theorisations than I had previously thought possible. For me it is particularly significant that Lacan used Joyce so productively in order to bring about his own final theoretical advance. His topological approach makes it much more arguable for me to relate Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari�s more fragmented use of Joyce to a schizoanalytic reading of Finnegans Wake. This will, I believe, prove particularly productive, at least for me and my dissertation.
Clearly my particular perspective is not one which will necessarily encourage others, who have an interest in Lacan or Joyce, to buy this book. I must therefore mention the extremely varied and rich variety of themes which the book contains, including Lacan�s reading of Joyce as himself an analyst who brings about not simply Joycean doubles speaking Wakease, but an inventiveness in the analysand/ reader, through poetry and creativity, which changes our very discourse and allow us a new perception of the world. Nevertheless, as this is my review, I will stress one of the themes which is particularly important for me, as this should appeal to other likely purchasers of the book. This is the way in which Harari develops Lacan�s thought on the Joycean epiphany, by showing that the Thomist notion of quidditas or �whatness�, which Lacan apparently did not find particularly �striking�, is absolutely decisive in Joyce�s thinking and implicitly so in Lacan�s development.
Deleuze and Guattaricoined the concept of haecceity or �thisness� to express their key notion of �becoming� as an essence which did not result in a subjective identity. This I see as a very similar if not identical concept to quidditas. Deleuze implicitly linked haecceity to Joyce�s �epiphanic machine�, in his comments on Stephen Hero, by noting that essence itself determines the conditions of its own incarnation. Harari too notes Joyce�s privileging of �whatness� � through �the epiphany�, in Stephen Hero � as a fundamental motif of his aesthetic thought which is realised in its fullness in Finnegans Wake. He shows that the occurrence and writing of the lived epiphany for Joyce turns his symptom into the Lacanian sinthome, as a revelation of the Real and its productive possibilities through the Symbolic. The revolutionary development in Lacan�s thought at this point in finding the Real no longer �impossible� but actually productive strongly links his thought, to my mind, to the equation of the Real with reality which had previously separated Deleuze and Guattari�s theorisations from those of Lacan.
Harai concludes that Lacan has swept the way clear for a �post-Joycean psycho-analysis�, which is our own. From my perspective this can be no other than Deleuze and Guattari�s schizoanalysis. Lacanians will no doubt disagree, and Harari, I must stress, makes no such connection, but to ignore or belittle this book does no service I believe to either Lacan or Joyce, leave alone Deleuze and Guattari.
James Davies, University of Leeds.

Superficial Reading of Lacan
So far the English translations of Harari's work on Lacan have shown themselves to be substandard and superficial from both the perspective of psychoanalytical practice and Lacanian scholarship.Perhaps this is because they are transcriptions of seminars he gave, rather than written texts carefully worked over and developed.In short, Harari's work would benefit from some careful editorial work, integrating more concrete textual references-- for instance, actually quoting text relevant text --and spending more time developing a context for the arguments he's articulating.Harari simply lacks the speaking skills that Lacan himself possessed.Harari often contents himself with simply restating what Lacan [presumably] says in seminar X and XXIII, giving little or no commentary or conceptual analysis.This point should have already been evident in Harari's reading of seminar X which required a seventy page introduction by Shepherdson in order to situate Harari's work.Such a lengthy introduction suggests that the work itself is not doing its job, and this point is demonstrated by a reading of the text, which, while replete with Lacanian diagrams, has very little of interest to say about them that couldn't already be gathered from other seminars.When Harari does engage in commentary his points are often trite, focusing on irrelevant trivia-- and sometimes hero worship? --rather carefully developing Lacanian concepts in light of the greater body of his thought.This annoying tendency is especially clear in his analysis of seminar XXIII, which spends more time rambling on in a rather romantic way about Joyce, rather than focusing on the novel new concepts that Lacan there develops.Harari's text would be defensible if it provided us with a brilliant and novel reading of Joyce in Lacanian terms, but it does not even manage that in that it restricts itself to the most superficial observations of Joycian texts...Observations that are immediately evident to anyone who has even the most rudimentary knowledge of contemporary literary theory.All of this produces a rather comic effect when Harari tells us that he is attempting to correct the rampant misreadings of Lacan promulgated by the Millerian school.How can you correct a misreading if you barely offer a reading yourself?It is likely that those curious about Lacan's unpublished seminars will continue to buy his work; but such people would do better to save their money and either read these texts in the French themselves or await their translations. ... Read more

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James Joyce (1882-1941) was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. As a young man, he rejected his country and its religion, but went on to carefully recreate the Dublin of his youth in his fiction. Ulysses was banned in Britain and the United States, but has since been recognized as a masterpiece that revolutionized the modern novel. Despite his failing eyesight and domestic worries, Joyce’s last book, Finnegans Wake, is a celebration of the great human comedy in which each of us has a part. ... Read more

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Focusing on the most commonly studied texts, it guides the reader through Joyce's stylistic and thematic complexity and through differing theoretical interpretations of his work. James Joyce's work has, not unjustly, been regarded as some of the most obscure, challenging and difficult writing ever committed to paper; it is also shamelessly funny and endlessly entertaining. "Joyce: A Guide for the Perplexed" celebrates the daring, humor and playfulness of Joyce's complex work while engaging with and elucidating the most demanding aspects of his writing. The book explores in detail the motifs and radical innovations of style and technique that characterize his major works - "Dubliners", "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", "Ulysses", and "Finnegans Wake". By highlighting how Joyce's texts have been read by recent innovations in literary and cultural theory, "Joyce: A Guide for the Perplexed" offers the reader a Joyce that is contemporary, fresh and relevant. Continuum's "Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering.Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material. ... Read more

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In James Joyce's early work, as in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, meanings are often concealed in obscure allusions and details of veiled suggestive power. Consistent recognition of these hidden signififances in Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man would require an encyclopedic knowledge of life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Dublin such as few readers possess. Now this substantially revised and expanded edition of Don Gifford's Notes to Joyce: "Dubliners" and "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" puts the requisite knowledge at the disposal of scholars, students, and general readers.
An ample introductory essay supplies the historical, biographical, and geographical background for Dubliners and Portrait. The annotations that follow gloss place names, define slang terms, recount relevant gossip, give capsule histories of institutions and political and cultural movements and figures, supply bits of local and Irish legend and lore, explain religious nomenclature and practices, and illuminate cryptic allusions to literature, theology, philosophy, science and the arts.
Professor Gifford's labors in gathering these data into a single volume have resulted in an invaluable source-book for all students of Joyce's art. ... Read more

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Great Joyce Notes
This book provides excellent and clear references to otherwise obscure persons, locales, Irish slang, and turn-of-the-century (19th to 20th) Dublin culture that are so integral to the Joyce stories. Well worth the purchase. ... Read more

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Katherine Mullin offers a detailed account of Joyce's lifelong battle against censorship.She reveals how Joyce responded to Edwardian ideologies of social purity by accentuating the "contentious" or "offensive" elements in such works as Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Dubliners. This important book, based on prodigious archival research, will change the way Joyce is read and offers crucial insights into the sexual politics of Modernism. ... Read more

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This text presents a paperback edition of Arthur Power's account of his friendship with James Joyce during the 1920s. Power, a young Irishman working as an art critic in Paris, first met Joyce in a Montparnasse dancehall, and the two men maintained a somewhat prickly friendship for several years. Power re-creates his conversations with the master, on a range of topics, literary and otherwise. We read of Joyce's thoughts on writers past and present - Synge, Ibsen, Mangan, Hardy, Pushkin, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Gide, Proust, Stendhal, T.S. Eliot, Browning, Tennyson and Shakespeare. Joyce also speaks of the looming might of America, of religion and of his own work. ... Read more

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Joyce's Boswell
There are not many books dealing with Joyce's literary opinions and few are privy to what Joyce actually thought about modern literature or modern writers.Arthur Power (1891-1984) was just establishing himself in the Paris of 1922 when by chance he met Joyce at at dance hall, the Bal Bullier, after a young French 'blanchisseuse' stood him up. What followed was an intimate friendship where the 40 year old Joyce and the 30 year old Power talked and discussed many topics such as Russian Literature (with surprising comments by Joyce on Pushkin: 'He was born a boy, lived like a boy and died like a boy'), the merits of Thomas Hardy, modern, romantic and sentimental literature and even a topic Joyce eschewed, religion. Power's recreation of his conversations with Joyce are almost Boswell-like in their idiosyncratic moments and literary style, no doubt due to Power scribbling down what Joyce said to him every evening once gettnig home to his artist's garret.

This is a book to go alongside Budgen's own account of his frienship with Joyce and gives you a broader insight into Joyce as perceived by close friends in contrast to the distant, non-commital but polite evasiveness he often displayed when approached by strangers. ... Read more