Gordon Bowker (1934–2019)

My first thought upon finding this book on the discard shelves at the Ledding Library of Milwaukie, a few years back, maybe 2020, so the book already about 10 years old - but my thought was: not sure if the literary world needs another James Joyce biography pressed upon it, not to mention my own shelf of Joyce books. But of course I bought it, in good condition (the book, that is), for $1 or $3, I don't remember, but those are the usual prices at the Ledding little in-house discard store, a favorite destination at the north end of the old town. My copy is the first American edition, 2012. I'm not sure why Goodreads is showing so many different versions, but this book has 608 pages.

Jacket design by Rodrigo Corral
Jacket illustration by Vivienne Flesher

from page 516:

"According to Beckett, before leaving Paris Joyce had said - 'with something like satisfaction' - 'We're going downhill fast.' It was a sentiment he did not hesitate to share with his various friends...all received news of his gloom over the reception of his work and his disastrous family circumstances. When he later complained to Harriet that his personal affairs 'seem to be public knowledge', he had only himself to blame."

Joyce's "personal affairs," continue to unravel in the various accounts: this from Bowker, continuing on to page 517:

"With both his daughter and daughter-in-law in asylums and his son without a home, Joyce now took over responsibility for Stephen [his grandson, son of Giorgio]...There was heavy snowfall that winter and navigating the local lanes became hazardous. Saint-Gerand had more than its fair share of dogs and, as he made his way slowly around, feeling his way forward with his stick [Joyce was nearly blind, and this description sounds like a Beckett character], his fear of being attacked returned. He filled his pockets with pebbles to throw at any dog foolish enough to approach him. The sight of this stranger in long black coat with a walking-stick and dark glasses seemed bizarre to the locals - 'that poor old man', they called him."… (més)

Estos días he terminado de leer Through The Dark Labyrinth, la biografía de Lawrence Durrell que tenía pendiente, reposando en la mesita de la cama, desde hace ya dos años. El libro, escrito por Gordon Bowker, autor que desconocía pero que arrastra algo de fama desde su obra sobre Malcolm Lowry, carece de edición española, de versión digital e incluso parece que hace décadas que no se reedita, lo cual es una pena pues es sumamente atractivo para cualquiera interesado en el autor de El Cuarteto de Alejandría o Las Islas Griegas.

Yo lo compré a través de Amazon, de segunda mano, con la sorpresa de que el ejemplar procedía de una biblioteca pública (creo recordar que de una localidad de Virginia), con su tejuelo y todo, pulcramente forrado e impecable. Quiero pensar que procedía de un expurgo y no había sido obtenido por otros medios ciertamente censurables. Pero la duda de por qué una biblioteca expurgaría un libro tan poco común todavía me ronda. En cualquier caso, si se diera la poco probable coincidencia de que alguien de dicha biblioteca leyese esto (y me dijera exactamente el nombre de la misma como prueba, que por eso me guardo), con mucho gusto se lo devolvería ahora que lo he terminado.

Más: http://guillermocarvajal.net/cultura/through-the-dark-labyrinth-una-biografia-de...… (més)

James Joyce called biographers "biografiends." And yet his work is so autobiographical, and he was so meticulous about documenting the real world of Ireland, that he might as well have set up a business licensing biographers. Wary of the curse Joyce had cast upon biographers, Richard Ellmann, the colossus of Joyce biography, proceeded with caution when approaching Joyce's friends and contemporaries, assuring them that his interest arose from a desire to show how Joyce's life gave birth to such great literature. The result, first published in 1959, was not merely a highly regarded biography of Joyce, but a virtual gold standard by which other contemporary literary biographies have been measured.

Gordon Bowker acknowledges Ellmann and other Joyce biographers and scholars, expressing his debt to them, but he is silent on what his biography adds to Ellmann's -- other than to note that he draws on a good deal of new material, which, his publisher adds, has "only recently come to light." Well, a good deal of it has been sitting for some years in Ellmann's archive at the University of Tulsa. As you can tell only from reading Bowker's "Notes" section, he makes good use of Ellmann's papers, including correspondence. Indeed, we get a less refined version of what Ellmann was told, without the pacifying prose of his published biography. In short, Gordon Bowker has at last set Richard Ellmann free. It is understandable why Bowker would not want to put matters that way, but there it is.

In the main, Bowker's methods are not much different from Ellmann's, which means the biographer traces the scenes and characters of Joyce's fiction to their sources in extraliterary Ireland. Bowker is no literalist -- that is, he does not posit a one-to-one correlation between fictional characters and real people. Instead, he does something more insidious in sentences like this one describing the perambulations of Joyce's father: "And John's habit of regular long walks around Dublin and environs, caught by his children, foreshadows the wandering narrative line which snakes through most of his son's fiction." Really? Seriously? This kind of factitious connectifying is what gives some readers of biographies the willies.

No matter. When Bowker is not succumbing to such stretchers, he provides nuanced readings of Joyce's fiction and -- because most of Joyce's relatives and friends are dead and can no longer carp -- more revealing glimpses of Joyce's life than we have seen before. If Ellmann remains a touchstone because he was able to make contact with Joyce's contemporaries and immediate heirs and render their memories with fidelity, Bowker is equally indispensable, owing to his willingness to rip away that deftly applied layer of protective gauze Ellmann used to bandage his biography and show what those memories concealed.… (més)