[BelleZora]

Sorry to monopolize this thread, but I think I may be in the beginning stage of an extended love/hate relationship with James Joyce.

Today I think I failed to understand Joyce's meaning of epiphany, but I haven't got to a clear understanding yet. Nevertheless, I got something out of the book by my own flawed definition.

But I was right to feel Joyce's contempt beneath his dispassionate words. I just found James Joyce Revisited by Richard F. Peterson at the library. In the first chapter there is this sentence: He also conceived a plan to develop a series of short stories: “I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city” (Letters, 1:55).


No wonder none of us found it pleasant. The man apparently contained a roiling mass of emotion beneath the emotionless words. I guess if he had let us see, rather than just infer, his passion, he wouldn't be James Joyce. At least he never talks down to you or over explains.

Edit: the gratitude implied in that last sentence was irony.