`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.
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