We ought not get too carried away by the Joyce cult and his 'dislike' of Ireland. He was a great writer but also a vain little peacock of a man who couldn't wait to be lionised as a great writer should, and found Ireland's preoccupation with political matters rather than with himself, too much to bear. As for Ireland's forgiveness of him, even today relatively few Irish people actually read Joyce for relaxation but everyone knows he's good for 'cultural tourism'.

As all authors who write in English must eventually do, Joyce sought acclaim from the very centre of English literature, ie Britain herself. Ireland was never going to be enough to satisfy him, being a relative backwater of the then British dominated Anglo-Saxon world. He chose 'exile' in France rather than England probably because he had the common feeling of inferiority towards the English that many Irish and colonials had and may have feared its debilitating effect on him as a writer should he go to live there.

Ireland in English language literature is always the strange, unusual or fey place, the place where 'normal ' doesn't apply, because that is the view that the wider Anglo world finds most agreeable about Ireland. It makes allowances for uncomfortable and contradictory truths like the eternal struggle to pull away from Britain while yet trapped in the web of the powerful English language and its world view. From a British or perhaps an American viewpoint this is legitimate, so, give it to them and you are rewarded accordingly, always provided you really can write of course.

That is how the Anglo literary world sees Irishness and that is the view it has always demanded. Anglo-Irish writers like Yeats found this kind of 'contrary' Irishness to their liking but 'natives' like O'Connor and O'Faoilean tried to reconcile it with an older, deeper Irishness. Joyce declared his independence from Ireland by scourging it in all its manifestations.

JoeK