James Joyce (Magill Book Reviews)

Peter Costello has a tough act to follow in writing a new biography of James Joyce. Richard Ellmann’s book, first published in 1959 and revised in 1982, is not only the standard biography of Joyce but has justly been hailed, by Anthony Burgess, as “the greatest literary biography of the century.” Costello maintains he is writing for the general reader, but unless the general reader is interested in the minutiae of Joyce’s genealogy or in a detailed accounting of his father’s slide into bankruptcy, he or she had best turn to Ellmann’s much more satisfying book.

There are a number of mistakes that need correcting in Ellmann, and Costello sets out to correct them, although unfortunately, just as many others seem to creep back in, through both authorial and editorial carelessness. These mistakes should be unimportant to Costello’s professed readership, but for the scholar, for whom this book is more suited, they are annoying and may serve to disqualify the book from notice. Especially lacking, for the scholarly reader, are adequate endnotes. The mistakes in Ellmann which Costello manages to correct deal with subjects such as the date of Joyce’s first sexual intercourse, a correction hinging on the date of the first Dublin production of a play, evidence which bespeaks Costello’s careful research. What is strongest in this book is Costello’s reworking of the accepted version of Joyce’s father’s bankruptcy and his suggestions regarding the identity of E.C., the character in THE PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN of whom Stephen Dedalus is enamored. The extensive genealogical charts are also helpful, though again primarily for the scholar.

In sum, Costello brings much of interest to light but, in failing to identify his audience, succeeds in estranging both the one he desired as well as that he might have had.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. LXXXIX, April 15, 1993, p.1487.

Contemporary Review. CCLXIII, August, 1993, p.108.

Kirkus Reviews. LXI, February 1, 1993, p.111.

Library Journal. CXVIII, February 15, 1993, p.165.

The New York Review of Books. XL, October 21, 1993, p.28.

The New York Times Book Review. XCVIII, May 2, 1993, p.18.

The Spectator. CCLXIX, November 28, 1992, p.37.

The Times Literary Supplement. November 6, 1992, p.24.

The Wall Street Journal. May 26, 1993, p. A16.

The Washington Post Book World. XXIII, May 23, 1993, p.9.