Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce
-
- £3.99
-
- £3.99
Publisher Description
An intimate study of three of Ireland's greatest writers from one of its best-loved contemporary voices, Colm Tóibín
__________________
In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know Colm Tóibín takes three of Ireland's greatest writers - Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce - and examines their earliest influences: their fathers.
With his inimitable wit and sensitivity, Tóibín introduces us to Wilde Senior, the philandering doctor whose libel case prefigured that of his son; the elder Yeats, an impoverished artist who never finished a painting; and to John Stanislaus Joyce, the hard-drinking, storytelling father of James, who couldn't feed his own family.
This is an illuminating study of how each of these men cast a long shadow not only over the lives of their famous sons, but over the works for which they are celebrated and cherished.
__________________
'Astonishing to read. Tóibín has a hawk-like eye for literary subtleties, and a generosity towards his subjects that is warm' Sunday Times
'Funny, exciting, illuminating, wonderful, so engaging. Tells us more than a little about our own selves along the way' Irish Times
'There is something interesting and insightful on almost every page' Observer
'Sparkling, subtle, witty and often deeply moving . . . A classic' Fintan O'Toole, New Statesman
'Scintillating, imaginative, enlightening and powerfully moving throughout' Roy Foster, Spectator
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fans of early modern literature will enjoy this look by novelist T ib n (House of Names) at the fathers of three of Ireland's most acclaimed authors. He explores a milieu they shared the "small Dublin world" of the 19th century and the many connections among their three families. W.B. Yeats's grandparents and father knew Oscar Wilde's parents, and a younger Yeats "would later dine at the house of Oscar Wilde in London." His father "even met the young James Joyce on the street," finding him "very loquacious." Wilde's father, William, excelled as a physician, as well as an "antiquarian, topographer, folklore collector, and archaeologist." However, Yeats and Joyce's fathers, both named John, and respectively a painter and a musician, found little contemporaneous fortune. Despite the focus on fathers, the works of the sons pervade this book, and T ib n illuminates them with fresh readings. These include Yeats's poems and Wilde's prison letter De Profundis (which T ib n once spent several hours performing aloud from the cell where Wilde was locked up for "gross indecency"), but Joyce's fiction, filled with references to Yeatses, Wildes, and Joyce's own family, receives particularly close attention. Originally delivered as a series of lectures, this study balances dexterous narration and T ib n's scholarly familiarity with his subjects' place in Irish political and social history.)
