James Joyce the writer was undoubtedly a genius, although not to everyone's taste. Myself, I prefer his earlier "realistic" fiction and can enjoy ULYSSES to some degree, but PUNNIGAN'S WAKE (as Nabokov wittily called it) is absurd. Joyce might as well have created his own language; then he might have issued a dictionary and a grammar for those who wanted to translate the book. That he spent many years writing this obscure opus is a sign of what a self-involved person he was.
And that's the essence of Joyce the man. Except for devotion to his family and friends, he seems to have been a perfect nihilist--in fact, "nullity" is his word to describe reality, although he does qualify it as "beautiful nullity".
He loved the music of words and the music of opera, but apart from "aesthetic" interest, he was evidently unconcerned about ideas, politics, or any other serious connection with his fellow human beings. He was a verbally gifted homme moyen sensual.
That's reflected in these letters, which must be among the dullest ever collected from the biographical point of view. Proust, another aesthete (though he at least had a "philosophy" of sorts), is his only major modern rival for sheer boringness as a letter writer.
Read Ellman's bio if you want the best account of Joyce's life as a human being, in spite of its nullity, but you can safely skip these letters unless you want to know more about his aesthetic concerns.
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