James Joyce's Eyesight Failing As He Tries to Complete Book

1930

Joyce's Tragedy

Daily increasing blindness may prevent James Joyce, the Irish author, whose books have been banned in Britain and America from completing what he declares is to be his greatest work.

For seven years Joyce, who lives in Paris, has fought against failing sight in an attempt to finish the most ambitious work he has ever planned. In the seven years he has been working on the book he has only completed half.

Unlike other authors, James Joyce is unable to dictate. He finds it necessary to write every word with a great red pencil on huge sheets of paper. He cannot read a line of his manuscript without a powerful magnifying glass. The author of "Ulysses," who refused to take orders as a Jesuit priest after leaving a Dublin college, works from ten to fourteen hours daily, but writes only a few hundred words each day. A great part of each working day is taken up in revising his manuscript, which he does in a most thorough manner — often rewriting pages after it is in proof.

He declares that he can only write when dressed entirely in white, and says that this is pleasant for his eyes. The small, pointed beard that he wears hides a terrible scar, inflicted by a mad dog when he was five years of age. Since that time he will not allow any one to bring a dog near him. On the other hand, he is very fond of cats, wears huge rings, smokes a curious pipe and always carries an ash walking stick.

He has entitled the book "A Work in Progress." It is modernistic thruout and would not be understood by any one not familiar with James Joyce's developments on the English language.

—Indiana Evening Gazette, Pennsylvania, IN, April 9, 1930, page 13.