| Description |
276 pages ; 23 cm |
| Series |
Frye annotated ; no. 1575
|
| Contents |
Foreword -- Part one: The stones -- 1. Solemnisations -- 2. Inheritances -- 3. A paralysed city -- 4. Martyr and maze-maker -- 5. Free flight -- 6. 'You poor poet, you!' -- Part two: the labyrinth -- 1. Ways into the labyrinth -- 2. Taking over Homer -- 3. Telemachus -- 4. Beginning of the journey -- 5. Hell, wind, cannibals -- 6. He proves by algebra -- 7. Labyrinth and fugue -- 8. Fireworks -- 9. Bullockbefrienders -- 10. Men into swine -- 11. Home is the sailor -- 12. The bedside labyrinth -- Part three: The man-made mountain -- 1. Big night music -- 2. Bygmester Finnegan -- 3. Here comes everybody -- 4. ALP and her letter -- 5. Brotherly hate -- 6. Mactation of the host -- 7. Shaun to Juan to Yawn -- 8. Bed and Ricorso -- 9. In the end is the word -- Index |
| Summary |
This is an introduction to the work of James Joyce, designed for the ordinary reader. The author has become increasingly worried by the tendency of the academics to regard Joyce as their special property, and has feared that the man and woman in the bookshop or public library may come to feel that a great popular writer was concerned only with a readership of professors. Here, then, is a very lucid and commonsensical account of what Joyce was up to, from Dubliners to Finnegans Wake. The title is derived from one of the nicknames of Joyce's last hero - the publican of Chapelizod outside Dublin, whose name Humphery Chimpden Earwicker rings, in its initalled from HCE, throughout Finnegans Wake, with those same initials frequently filled out to some such slogan as Here Comes Everybody. The nickname is appropriate for a Joyce hero, since Joyce was always concerned with those elements of human nature which are in all properties which we all share - love of family, worry about debts, the tendency to drink too much, original sin. His admiration for ordinary human beings is best exemplified by his willingness to shower the jewels of language upon their everyday doings, to exalt them to myth or to godhead. The author feels that Joyce's books say not only 'Here Comes Everybody' but 'Everybody Come Here'. In other words, we are all welcome - not just the learned professors - at the great feasts of language which he spreads on a table of common wood, at the ceremony of exaltation of the ordinary at which he is the smiling, joking, presiding priest and host. We feel that this book represents a genuine breakthrough in the process of bringing a great Irish writer to terms with those who, despite their fear of him, are the best qualified to understand his aims and relish his poetry and humour. His heroes and heroines are ourselves, just as his city of Dublin is all cities. The language and techniques are not all that forbidding - dogs whose bark is worse than their bite. And, once past the guarding dogs, we shall enter a house full of wit and song and joy. This book is a cordial invitation card to a party given by Everybody to Everybody. Everybody, needless to say, is heartily welcome. (Inside cover) |
| Notes |
Includes index |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliography |
| Subject |
Joyce, James, 1882-1941.
|
|
Authors, Irish -- 20th century -- Biography.
|
|
Novelists, Irish -- 20th century -- Biography.
|
| Genre/Form |
Biographies.
|
| LC no. |
66040643 |
|
