My Book Reviews

My copy of Joyce's book. Continued There are many other points I'd like to mention but I will confine them to the following to keep this post from getting too long and even too boring: (vi) Corporal punishment was outlawed by the Irish Government in 1981.  Needless to say, it was an acceptable practice in the late nineteenth century when Joyce was a student at Clongowes and Belvedere College.  The scene where the prefect of studies, one Fr. Dolan S.J., enters and cracks his leather strap or pandybat against one of the classroom desks is indeed repulsive to our postmodern sensibilities but would have caused little consternation to the reading public back in those Victorian times (1837 - 1901).  A pandy is a stroke or blow on the palm of the hand as corporal punishment. The tool used to deliver that blow is the  pandybat which consists  of thick strips of leather sewn together, often reinforced internally with whalebone, and used to inflict punishment  agains...

It has been a long time since I wrote anything in these pages. What has happened in the interim, apart from my having grown a lot older and having gotten, perhaps, a little wiser? The last post in these pages was way back in 2016, on the 7th of November to be precise. Most of my writing during that hiatus was taken up with composing a Ph D thesis, which, due to the nature of such an endeavour, necessitated much re-writing, indeed, often countless re-writes and, then, authoring several peer-reviewed essays for various journals. That was all a little too cerebral and far too intense, and now that that particular pursuit has been well put to bed, it is high time that I got back to writing in my blogs. Blogging is a much more leisurely pursuit, well-suited to an aging human. Enough of an introduction.  Wordsworth Classics, 1992           What I want to write about here is my re-reading of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man The actu...

Some More Books Dostoevsky-related In my last post in this blog, I expressed rather passionately my virtual besottedness with anything by or on Fyodor Dostoevsky.  Here I will review four books, one by the author and the other three about him from different perspectives.  They are all short books that can be read quickly or even dipped into.  As a seventeen-year-old boy, writing to his brother Mikhail, he stated his ambition as a writer in a rather passionate way; indeed, one would say in a precocious manner, but nonetheless true, given the majesty and universality of his oeuvre: “My soul is not subject to my former violent upsets. All is calm within it, as in the heart of a man who has harboured a deep mystery; ‘to learn what life and man means’ – I am being reasonably successful in this; I can study characters from the writers with whom the best part of my life is passed in joy and freedom; I can say no more about myself.  I am sure of myself. Man is...

Returning to Fyodor Dostoevsky My small Dostoevsky Library Over my lifetime I have read most, but not all, of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s books.  Here I will review seven of them which I have on my shelves and have read many times over the years. I was first introduced to his work by one of my favourite and most inspiring philosophy lecturers, Rev. Fr. Patrick Carmody, M.A., M.Phil., a wonderful scholar whom I have mentioned so often in my on-line musings.  From the first encounter with this nineteenth century Russian novelist I was hooked. Why? The answer was quite simple; because in his novels I encountered the deepest of philosophical questions inextricably intertwined with the lives of wonderful characters, so well drawn by a masterful author. Russian universities in the nineteenth century simply did not offer philosophy as a subject of study or as an academic specialisation whatsoever, so it devolved to the responsibilities of novelists and litterateurs to educate ...