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Brendan Behan   •   Brendan Behan on Joyce

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  • Brendan Behan on Joyce
    • 1962 - Folkways FL 9826 LP (USA)
  • Brendan Behan on Joyce
  • A lecture delivered before the James Joyce Society at the Gotham Book Mart in New York City
  • Drawing of James Joyce by John, 1930
  • Cover Design: Ronald Clyne

Excerpts from the Sleeve Notes

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, this color is not my usual color which is cholesterol red. I've never…I've never seen a really white person, only a dead one; but I have my normal Caucasian and ruddy hue. I understand I'm a Caucasian according to American statistics …I'm a European by promotion; and I'm here tonight to talk to you about James Joyce. Well now, I suppose there are in this room half-a-dozen people who could tell you more, tell it to you technically better, about James Joyce, than I could. My attitude to Joyce as a writer is similar to my attitude to Seán O'Casey. My wife said, when she was asked here what did she think of Seán O'Casey, she said "What do you think of Niagara Falls?" When you're asked what you think of Joyce the only thing you can say is "How's the world using yourself, " because Joyce was a …he was a world, and he encompassed in his own arrogant and marvelous fashion that world in his work Finnegans Wake, which is not a closed book to to me. It's a frequently closed book and it's a frequently opened one. I have met very few people who could explain it to me in ordinary terms because it's written in its own language, and (a man) they say that the wind bloweth where it listeth.