Books: Dublin's Prodigal Son

JAMES JOYCE (842 pp.)—Richard Ellmann—Oxford ($12.50).

During World War I, James Joyce mailed his manuscript of Ulysses, bit by bit, from Zurich to London, and for a time British censors suspected the book of being an enemy code. It was a prophetic incident; for decades Joyce would inspire battles between the code sniffers and the cult worshipers. Once when asked why he put so many puzzlers into his works, Joyce replied: "To occupy my critics for 300 years." Richard Ellmann, professor of English at Northwestern University, worked a mere seven years on this huge...

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