With his book Ulysses, the biography book written on the most mentioned British writer James Joyce in the world met the reader nowadays. We can say that the weight of the book written by Edna O’Brien is the love of James Joyce and his relationship with women.
James Joyce gained fame thanks to Ulysses. Then, reading Ulysses was thanks to James Joyce’s fame. Edna O’Brien biography book James Joyce seeks the balance. He tries to write about his books as much as he wrote about Joyce’s life. But Edna O’Brien makes two big mistakes. First; She actually writes her relationship with women as Joyce’s life. So much so that the title of the book is not so much about James Joyce but the women of James Joyce.
The second one summarizes the Ulysses and Finnegan Awakening, as he seeks balance and attempts to write the whole life of his life, not Joyce. However, what is needed for the summary? The subject of the book is the life of James Joyce. In addition, Ulysses and Finnegan Awakening are novels that are difficult to understand and comprehend aside. There is no need to exhaust a biography reader by trying to summarize them. But Edna O’Brien is not aware of this.
Following his novel heroes
Because he is not aware, O’Brien establishes a direct link between novel heroes and Joyce’s friends as a continuation of the second mistake. He makes this connection so frantically and without question that it causes the reader to think, “James Joyce just wrote his own life.” However, there is never a reciprocity between real-life figures and characters in novels. There are similarities, however. Real names change even when they are included in historical novels. In the novel, the characters are reconstructed in a particular setting.
A Judging Biography
Edna O’Brien shows the same worry while telling Joyce’s relationship with women. Very comfortable judgments, crimes, queries, punish. In fact, it has an uncomfortable style. Nobody has the right to enter the privacy of anyone else by waving their hands. Edna O’Brien’s effort to understand is also minimal. Maybe a little bit of Joyce’s wife tries to understand Nora, and a little bit of Joyce’s patron Miss Weaver. According to O’Brien, Joyce is a genius, so she has the right to do everything. For Joyce, the people in her life are figures.
So Joyce can use everyone comfortably. She used her brother, husband, friends, students, publishers… according to O’Brien. But it is very clear, at such points we are faced with his own thoughts that O’Brien has developed over Joyce, not Joyce. We can also say with their own tendencies, desires, errors, beliefs and emotions. He couldn’t overcome this toughest barrier to biography, O’Brien. I think he has the right to do everything and use everyone. O’Brien is especially fond of telling about the relationship between Joyce and her women. So he misses the measure. The book is 230 pages if its bibliography is not counted. The first 123 pages of the book are the women and pessimism in Joyce’s life.
In fact, what O’Brien wants to do is capture the changes in James Joyce’s life. How many times has Joyce changed? On which events, where, with whom, did signs of change begin to show? These will be the cornerstones of Joyce’s biography, in other words, intersections. Our author has also partially implemented this project. But since he was overdoing at two points, when he came to the middle of the book, he seemed to be frightened and disoriented. That is why he summed up Ulysses and Finnegan Awakening for a long time.
However, there is not much that Joyce can say about the novel technique and language. Apart from a few quotes… he cannot say much about the place, importance and difference of Joyce in Irish or English literature. He also missed his relationship with Ezra Pound. However, Joyce is located in a period called “Pound belt”. And especially Ulysses has the distinctive features of this generation. He was influenced by the movement initiated by the Pound and also influenced this movement.
Connects of intellectuals and women
Since O’Brien designs his book based on the changes seen in Joyce, he collects information in this direction. He writes the first thirteen of the book, up to “Ulysses”, in a relaxed, trial mood; dominates the subject. In the next nine episodes, the trial air is dissipated, as it necessarily has to go into the topics of Ulysses and Finnegan Awakening.
It shifts to a more technical language. At this point, the author wants to do intellectualism, albeit partially; He tries to collect the words spoken about Joyce and include it in his design. But both the general atmosphere of the book and the original design of the author are scattered. This time he concentrates on Joyce’s relationship with female patrons and publishers, often returns to his relationship with Nora, and this is how they gather the topic and connect with previous episodes.
A life in financial problems
O’Brien’s greatest success in the biography of Joyce is that Joyce has captured and reflected the financial difficulties well. Another success is to address the hurdles Joyce encountered while publishing Dubliners, the Artist’s Portrait as a Young Man and Ulysses. The author has not been able to bypass this topic, because how are the books of an author like Joyce not accepted by publishers? But it cannot work in depth either, because it does not know the broadcast and literature environment in Dublin.
On the other hand, the father sees the source of the economic problems experienced by the writer Joyce. Joyce’s father, John Joyce, actually came from a wealthy family. When Joyce was born, the financial situation of the family is fine. But things start to go wrong. Father Joyce is expelled from office and cannot succeed in any of his new ventures. The Joyce family has to live under low income. The situation is the same for James Joyce until Ulysses is released. Since they cannot pay the rent, they often have to change houses.
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