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James Joyce is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated
authors of the 20th century. From the frank and satirical Dubliners
to the massive post-modern Ulysses, his canonical fiction is read throughout
the world. Yet most people are unfamiliar with Joyce’s final novel – and for
good reason. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (February 2, 1882 –
January 13, 1941) was an expatriate Irish writer and poet who spent most of
his adult life outside his home country. Almost all of Joyce’s work was Irish
themed, the settings and subject matter based off personal experiences. He
was born to a large Catholic family in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar and wrote
his first poem at the age of 9. He went through a series of religious
schools, but rejected Catholicism for agnosticism by the age of 16. Though Joyce graduated from
college in 1903, he had a hard time finding success and turned to heavy
drinking to cope with financial burdens and family strife. Joyce’s wanderlust,
coupled with his monetary frivolity and penchant for booze, kept his life in
a tumultuous state for decades. Joyce was constantly looking for ways to
augment his income, and mostly did so through academic positions. After finally achieving a modicum of success through
publication of Dubliners and serialization of Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man, Joyce was able to find a patron in feminist
publisher Harriet Shaw Weaver. From 1915 until Joyce’s death, she provided
him with thousands of pounds, allowing him to focus on his writing without
the burden of teaching for income. Over the years, Joyce honed his modernist writing style
until it began to surpass his own audience’s capacities. A Portrait of the
Artist forayed into stream-of-consciousness styling, and Ulysses
overwhelmed most people with its monolithic length and highly experimental
prose full of puns, parodies, and allusions. None of these, however, came
close to the intimidating novel that closed the door on Joyce’s contributions
to literature; a novel that took 17 years to finally complete. That novel is Finnegans Wake. |
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