Feelings about James Joyce’s Ulysses tend to fall roughly into one of two camps: the religiously reverent or the exasperated/bored/overwhelmed. As popular examples of the former, we have the many thousand celebrants of Bloomsday—June 16th, the date on which the novel is set in 1904. These revelries approach the level of saints’ days, with re-enactments […]
When we invoke the names of famous artists of the past, we refer to their most hallowed work—Orson Welles simultaneously means Citizen Kane, for example, or War of the Worlds, and H.G. Wells means The Time Machine or… War of the Words. It happens that when these two artists got together in 1940, they found that […]
The modernist classic, perhaps the greatest English-language Bildungsroman, turns 100 on December 29, 2016. To celebrate, we look at what makes the novel so special: its fierce defense of individualism and critical thought, and its unique portrayal of the artistic mind. Of the characteristics likely to be associated with James Joyce’s writing, two—his inventiveness of […]
Lucia Joyce was the daughter of James Joyce – ill-fated indeed to live in the shadow of such genius. Beloved yet unseen, in the manner of so many women, her own enormous talent and creative drive were subsumed in her father’s. Her tragic fate shadows this novel, dogging the reader with sad inevitability. I’m not giving […]
Last year, fans of modernist Irish literature and impressionist art saw a must-own volume go under the hammer at Bonhams. “In 1935 the French artist, Henri Matisse, was commissioned to illustrate an edition of Ulysses for subscribers to the Limited Edition Club in America,” announced Artlyst. “Each of the 1,000 copies was signed by Matisse and […]
I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia. The mirror troubled the depths of a corridor in a country house on Gaona Street in Ramos Mejia; the encyclopedia is fallaciously called The Anglo-American Cyclopaedia (New York, 1917) and is a literal but delinquent reprint of the Encyclopedia Britannica […]
Manuscripts, photographs, paintings and personal items among the displays in honour of playwright who died in city. Paris will hold its first major exhibition on the life and work of Oscar Wilde next month, co-curated by his grandson. Wilde, who spoke fluent French, was an ardent Francophile who regularly visited the city, eventually dying there […]
For a man who left Bromley Technical High School with just one ‘O’ level (in art), David Bowie ended up a remarkably well-read man. Bowie, who died aged 69 on January 10 2016, said that “when I’m relaxed what I do is read” and described a good week as one in which he pored through […]