James Joyce's Drinking

An interview with Dr. Stanton Peele. Produced and directed by Patrick and Andrea Bergin. Copyright First Vision Productions 2003.
See Stanton Peele's website at http://www.peele.net
Find out more about Stanton Peele's latest book at http://www.addictionproofyourchild.com

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• Peele
• disease
• addiction
• alcoholism
• james joyce

[mrjimirish1]

I am a student of Joyce, and this smacks of unsubstaniated heresay, also why would it matter? His works stand as testimoney to his art not the seedy aspects of his life!!!

[stantonpeele]

@mrjimirish1 Well done -- creating a new word -- just like Joyce -- out of two homophones -- "heresy" and "hearsay"!

[stockybob]

This is unbelievably anecdotal and dangerously extrapolative to call an example from 3rd hand sources, repeated 4th hand based on iconic imagery of a man who is now dead and likely died from complications of alcohol abuse (he was a legendary drinker) He had a wife leave him over drinking and he was caught fighting in public while drunk on a number of occasions. Iconically this would be written off as a typical Irishman of the time but would be considered a hot flag for a drinking issue today.

[stantonpeele]

You call me anecdotal and then say - he "likely died from complications of alcohol abuse (he was a legendary drinker)"?

The objective data we have about Joyce is that, in 1998, the Modern Library ranked "Ulysses" No. 1, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" No. 3, and "Finnegans Wake" No. 77 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. No other author has three on the list. Are you saying he was an alcoholic?

[Supertramp1966]

Of course Joyce was a fatuous drunk. This is well documented and may even rival other alcoholic literary giants such as London and Hemingway, the former being the worse case senario. Finished ULYSSES recently and thought it was horrible. Maybe I just don't appreciate Joyce' "stream of consciousness" style of writing, but this book was even harder to read than Milton's PARADISE LOST (never thought I'd say that). Reading ULYSSES was a true war of attrition, and Joyce won. It was (contin.)

[TheChap36]

Yeah except "Finnegan's Wake" reads like it was written on magic mushrooms.

[sallieparker]

A bottle of wine every night? Excuse me, most French and Italians would consider that drink with dinner. Now, a bottle of spirits every 24 hours might give one pause. But a few glasses of wine or beer? Come on. This stuff is good for you. Civilization was built upon such moderate intoxicants.

[floorbands]

what a square

[Doug31415]

Joyce was a notorious drinker. Even a surface biographical reading will reveal that, so how are accusations of drinking unsubstantiated or even heretical? This detail should matter to a student studying Joyce, and not just his works.

[mrjimirish1]

@stantonpeele well spotted stanton...did you know Joyce was responsible for the birth of the word 'monomyth'? It ended up the focus of Joseph Campbell's study The Hero with a Thousand Faces :)