Books: Kaleidoscopic Recamera

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The Significance. Says Critic Rebecca West: "Most of the words that James Joyce uses are pâtès de langue gras. Each is a paste of words that have been superimposed one on another and worked into a new word that shall be the lowest common multiple of them all. These words have been chosen out of innumerable languages, living and dead, either because of some association of ideas or of sound." Unfortunately for readers accustomed to simpler fare, they quickly get mental indigestion from this rich and unassimilable food. Joyce should be taken in small quantities, even by crossword puzzle experts. Self-doomed to unpopularity, he is marked as the head of all experimentalist, "stream-of-consciousness" writers. Say his followers: by the influence of his writing on other authors Joyce has affected, will affect, the English language as no other man has done.

The Author. Author James Joyce celebrated his 48th birthday last fortnight in Paris. To him came a congratulatory telegram signed by his great & good friends Author James Stephens, Lord & Lady Astor, Playwright George Bernard Shaw. After the birthday dinner Joyce went to the Opera, heard Tenor John Sullivan sing William Tell. Passionately fond of operagoing, Author Joyce always sits in the front row.

Born in Dublin where his lawyer father still lives, Joyce was educated for the Catholic priesthood at Clongowes Wood College, Belvedere College, Royal University. But Joyce was not the stuff of which priests are made. At nine he wrote a pamphlet against Parnell; at 22 he left Ireland and the Church for good. After exile in Rome, Trieste, Zurich, he settled in Paris; supported life by teaching, directing plays; finished his first great opus, Ulysses. The book was published in Paris (1922) by Bookseller Sylvia Beach, spinster daughter of a Princeton, N. J., Presbyterian divine. Because of its obscene passages it is officially barred from England, from the U. S., but many a copy has been booklegged. A translation of Ulysses appeared last week in French. On its title page: "Translated by August Morel, assisted by Stuart Gilbert, entirely revised by Valery-Larbaud and the author."

Joyce is as little popular with his brother Irish as with his mother Church: once he called his native country "the old sow that eats her farrow." He has been back to Ireland only twice since he left: in 1904 to open Dublin's first cinema; the last time in 1912. In 1904 he married Nora Barnacle, Galway girl; they have two children; Singer George, Dancer Lucia (who last year wrote a play about a girl who fell in love with the Pont Alexandre-Trois, famed Paris bridge).