xvii, 493 pp. "Heroic drinker, superlative swearer, and self-described "heartburn on the arse", John Stanislaus Joyce was so bursting with charisma and wild ideas that it's not surprising he played a major role in his son James's imagination. For the first time, Joyce scholars John Wyse Jackson and Peter Costello piece together the extraordinary life of this formidable father, storyteller, drinker, and patriot, tracing his presence in Ulysses, Dubliners, and the rest of James Joyce's canon. This is a book for every Joyce fan, as well as every reader who loved Nora by Brenda Maddox, How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill, and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes. Brimming with Irish history in colorful detail, it offers a rare view into a remarkable Irish family that just happened to give us the greatest writer of the twentieth century."
