TMO Tags (hmm): james joyce

The Unfortunate Fursey – Mervyn Wall

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

A medieval Irish monastery under siege by the forces of darkness, who find their breach in the cell of the unfortunate brother Fursey, a monk blessed with a stammer who thus can’t adequately perform the rites of exorcism required to keep the monastery safe.  The premise alone, regardless of the excellent execution, should be enough [...]

Dantean Echoes – The influence of Dante on Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

“‘I recall one superb pun anyway: qui vive la pietà quando e ben morta’ She said nothing. ‘Is it not a great phrase?’ he gushed. She said nothing. ‘Now’ he said like a fool ‘I wonder how you could translate that?’ She still said nothing. Then: ‘do you think’ she murmured ‘it is absolutely necessary [...]

Sparkle of crimes in their voices – Aziz Chouaki and The Star of Algiers

Wednesday, November 1st, 2006

If you’re looking for the place where Michael Jackson intersects with Al-Qaeda, look no further than Algerian born novelist Aziz Chouaki’s The Star of Algiers. Have we got your attention? Good. In truth, Jackson figures only slightly in this urgent, rythmic novel, and then only as a musical/cultural influence on the protagonist Moussa Massy, but [...]

Samuel Johnson is indignant – TMO meets Lydia Davis

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006

Lydia Davis is a rare talent. A writer whose work is challenging, stimulating, innovative, and, taken at face value, short. Very short – some stories in her collections span no more than two lines. Literature, though, (thankfully) is not judged on word counts, and the depth achieved so compactly by Davis is, no doubt, envied [...]

Seán O’Casey – Portrait of the Artist as an Outsider

Friday, July 1st, 2005

Ever since, as James Joyce remarked, we have become “Jung and easily Freudened” it has become necessary, when dealing with a writer, to refer not only to his work but to his private life as well. This is particularly true in the case of Seán O'Casey, one of Ireland's great literary icons. In fact, O'Casey [...]

Lovely Seaside Girls. James Joyce’s Musical Interludes

Wednesday, June 1st, 2005

June 1904, the month in which the novel Ulysses is set, is a month that brings to mind the name of James Joyce and that name has become synonymous with that of the city of Dublin. The Sandycove Martello Tower, Sandymount Strand, Dublin’s North inner city: these have become known as ‘Joycean Dublin’. Indeed, a [...]

Bloomin’ Marvellous! Joyce and Trieste.

Tuesday, June 1st, 2004

As the world and his wife, in Joycean terms, turn their attention to Dublin, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the fictional event of Bloomsday, it seems almost as if a lone Irish voice is reminding us that Joyce wrote most of his work outside of Ireland, and in particular a large part of it [...]

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Why the Fuss?

Thursday, April 1st, 2004

This year is the centenary of “Bloomsday” – celebrated in James Joyce’s Ulysses. We ask Senator David Norris – why the fuss? Every year in Dublin on 16 June, people celebrate James Joyce’s 1922 novel, Ulysses, by re-enacting the journeys of its central characters, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. With many participants dressed in Edwardian [...]