Routledge Reading Joyce (Reading Literature)

`Is there one who understands me?' So wrote James Joyce towards the end of his final work, Finnegans Wake. The question continues to be asked about the author who claimed that he had put so many enigmas into Ulysses that it would `keep the professors busy for centuries' arguing over what he meant. For Joyce this was a way of ensuring his immortality, but it could also be claimed that the professors have served to distance Joyce from his audience, turning his writings into museum pieces, pored over and admired, but rarely touched. In this remarkable book, steeped in the learning gained from a lifetime's reading, David Pierce blends word, life and image to bring the works of one of the great modern writers within the reach of every reader. With a sharp eye for detail and an evident delight in the cadences of Joyce's work, Pierce proves a perfect companion, always careful and courteous, pausing to point out what might otherwise be missed. Like the best of critics, his suggestive readings constantly encourage the reader back to Joyce's own words. Beginning with Dubliners and closing with Finnegans Wake, Reading Joyce is full of insights that are original and illuminating, and Pierce succeeds in presenting Joyce as an author both more straightforward and infinitely more complex than we had perhaps imagined. T. S. Eliot wrote of Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses, that it is `a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape'. With David Pierce as a guide, the debt we owe to Joyce becomes clearer, and the need to flee is greatly reduced.  Review "I fully agree with what David Lodge writes in the blurb text, "I can think of no better companion for anyone embarking on a serious exploration of Joyce's work, but seasoned Joyceans will also find much to delight and inform them here." The book is, in fact, a literary as well as a critical achievement. In face of the mass of over-researched interpretations and provective speculations that have been dominating Joyce criticism for quite a time, reading Reading Joyce is a relief. It is one of the most absorbing dissertations in Joyce I have ever come across. It deserves a place on the shelf of exciting and exceptional Joyceana. It is entertaining in an extraordinary manner. The "unique blend of commentary and confession" (Lodge) clearly surpasses the dry academic discourses, which in fact no longer properly illuminate in a satisfying way what Joyce wrote and thought. Pierce has added to his text a plethora of photographs, maps, drawings etc., which go with highly original, illuminating, commentaries. Just buy and read it!"Wolfgang Wicht, author of Utopianism in James Joyce’s Ulysses and James Joyce and Company "Joyce is a remarkable book which not only manages to bring fresh angles and knowledge to Joyce studies, but also finds a new way of writing about the Irish author. By revisiting aspects of Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Exiles, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake which have become more familiar by now, Pierce succeeds in subtly theorizing how we should approach Joyce. In an almost Proustian aphorism - 'Texts read us as much as we read them' - Pierce exemplifies his own way of engaging theoretically with Joyce.This (re)mapping of Joyce's territory makes familiar the unfamiliar, identifying reading strategies which seem to put us in tune with Joyce's own writing strategies, based on establishing a new 'covenant' between the word and the world."Hugues Azarad, Modern Language Review 104:4 October 2009 "Sweeping away years of confusing and contradictory scholarly debate, Pierce brings Joyce's writing - and his characters - back to life. For anyone intending a serious study of Joyce's writing, Reading Joyce is more than just useful; it's essential." Yorkshire Evening Post "Pierce contributes richly out of his 40-year legacy in writing and teaching Joyce [and] succeeds in providing novice Joyce readers with a work that charms, enhanc