Joyce: A Guide for the Perplexed

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"In clear and simple prose, Mahon explains how to connect this little black box to the Joycean engine. Just pull some gears, it falls into place and works." -Jean-Michel Rabat, Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania James Joyce's work has been regarded as some of the most obscure, challenging, and difficult writing ever committed to paper; it is also shamelessly funny and endlessly entertaining. Joyce: A Guide for the Perplexed celebrates the daring, humor and playfulness of Joyce's complex work while engaging with and elucidating the most demanding aspects of his writing. The book explores in detail the motifs and radical innovations of style and technique that characterize his major works-Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. By highlighting how Joyce's texts have been read by recent innovations in literary and cultural theory, Joyce: A Guide for the Perplexed offers the reader a Joyce that is contemporary, fresh, and relevant.

Reviews

"When Peter Mahon guides us through the main works of James Joyce, he doesn't provide the roadmap for an ancient Irish maze but offers a brand new GPS, a Global Positioning System or a Guide for Perplexed Students. In clear and simple prose, Mahon explains how to connect this little black box to the Joycean engine. Just pull some gears, it falls into place and works. Sit back, read some more, youll be able at last to enjoy the Joyce ride." - Jean-Michel Rabat, Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, USA
"An extraordinary achievement! Peter Mahon has done great service to all readers of modernism in general and Joyce in particular, in producing a lively, erudite, and, most of all, welcoming introduction to James Joyce, which will become an indispensable portal into the world of all things Joycean." - Julian Wolfreys, Professor of Modern Literature and Culture, Loughborough University, UK
"As anyone who's read Finnegan's Wake can attest, James Joyce can be a challenging writer. In this book, Mahon guides readers through Joyce's stylistic and thematic complexity, showing readers how he remains contemporary, fresh, and relevant. Without losing sight of Joyce's humor and playfulness, the author explores the motifs and radical innovations of style and technique that characterize his major works--Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake--and highlights the ways that Joyce's texts have been read by recent innovations in literary and cultural theory." -Eithne O'Leyne, BOOK NEWS, Inc.
The brilliance of the book lies in Mahon's ability to eschew the ponderous critical framework that might alienate a reader new to Joyce ... Highly recommended' Choice, August 2010
Beyond simply explicating themes and passages, Mahon provides his readers with strategies on how to approach Joyce through analysing the evolution of styles across his works. Mahon does an elegant job of applying what could be called theoretical readings in an accessible manner. -- The Year's Work in English Studies, Volume 90

Author Bio

Peter Mahon teaches in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of Imagining Joyce and Derrida: Between Finnegans Wake and Glas (2007), Joyce: A Guide for the Perplexed (2009) and Violence, Politics and Textual Interventions in Northern Ireland (2010). He has published essays in journals such as ELH, James Joyce Quarterly, Irish University Review, Partial Answers, as well as in edited volumes. He is currently writing a book on Reason and Unreason and researching digital reading as part of a project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.