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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
'To read and reread him not perhaps for all the years of the nights but certainly for many good hours',
By Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)
This review is from: James Joyce: A Critical Introduction (New Directions Paperbook) (Paperback)
This book first appeared in 1941 two years after Joyce's death. It was a pioneering work in looking at the whole of Joyce's life- work. According to the Preface of this work it was updated in 1959 as in that time a large number of works on Joyce had been published. However the work by and large remains the same book that appeared in 1941.
To my mind the work breaks down into parts. The really outstanding part of the work traces Joyce's life and work from the beginning through 'Ulysses'. Illuminating readings are provided of 'Dubliners ' 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' and 'Ulysses'. The second part of the work is a commentary and introduction to 'Finnegan's Wake'. I found it far less interesting than the first half of the book. It is almost as if Levin takes on some of the character of the Wake itself and supplies us with an endless hash of mythical details which somehow seem to overwhelm the greater themes and meaning of the work. In the first part of the work Levin superbly traces the whole enterprise of Joyce. The three- fold renunciation, of family, country and religion and the legendary oath to by silence, exile and cunning forge in the smithy of his soul 'the uncreated conscience of his race'. Levin writes with a great knowledge of Comparitive literature and makes many brilliant analyses of Joyce's connections with other greats of world- literature. He sees Joyce as mastering two great literary traditions- the naturalistic and the symbolic and carrying both to extreme development. Levin too connects Joyce's masterwork with contemporary developments in the general Culture of the time." Thus the very form of Joyce's book is an elusive and ecletic 'Summa' of its age:the montage of the cinema, impressionism in painting, leit-motif in music, the free association of psychoanalysis, and vitalism of philosophy.Take of these elements all that is fusible, and perhaps more, and you have the style of 'Ulysses'. Levin also cites many of the remakably beautiful and lyric passages of Joyce's work. Just for the sheer pleasure of reading it again I close this review with the final sentence of Joyce's greatest story 'Dubliners' " His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descend of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
THE PROBLEM OF THE ARTIST IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY was posed a generation ago. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
fabulous artificer, personal epic, uncreated conscience, internal monologue Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Portrait of the Artist, Finnegan Wake, Finnegans Wake, Stephen Dedalus, Miss Douce, Eccles Street, Molly Bloom, Chamber Music, Young Man, Martha Clifford, Anna Livia Plurabelle, John Eglinton, Thomas Mann, Saint Patrick, Victor Hugo, Phoenix Park, Valery Larbaud, Bella Cohen, Ivy Day, Class of Elements, Belvedere College, Leopold Bloom, Michael Furey, The Day of the Rabblement, Clongowes Wood Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
THE PROBLEM OF THE ARTIST IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY was posed a generation ago. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
fabulous artificer, personal epic, uncreated conscience, internal monologue Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Portrait of the Artist, Finnegan Wake, Finnegans Wake, Stephen Dedalus, Miss Douce, Eccles Street, Molly Bloom, Chamber Music, Young Man, Martha Clifford, Anna Livia Plurabelle, John Eglinton, Thomas Mann, Saint Patrick, Victor Hugo, Phoenix Park, Valery Larbaud, Bella Cohen, Ivy Day, Class of Elements, Belvedere College, Leopold Bloom, Michael Furey, The Day of the Rabblement, Clongowes Wood Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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