In the planning of a move from his long-time Paris apartment during the winter of 1938-39, James Joyce radically downsized his personal library.
“It is to be presumed that the books he kept were those to which he attached either an intellectual or emotional importance,” commented a leading Joyce scholar of yesteryear, Thomas Connolly, who identified three works that were most marked or well-read.
New York University’s Colm O’Shea writes that one of those three is devoted to the subject of “Maya” — a “Sanskrit term used in Hinduism and Buddhism to describe the illusion of separateness (or duality) that we labor under. Maya conceals the non-duality of being. Given this, one might assume that Eastern mysticism would be an area of intense focus for Joyceans looking to understand his work. Yet with the exception of a few journal articles and unpublished dissertations, this area is under-examined.”
O’Shea, once a “Ph.D. student arrogant enough to focus on ‘Finnegans Wake,’” has attempted to help rectify that lack of exploration with “James Joyce’s Mandala” (published by Routledge), which, he told the Echo, “examines Joyce’s fiction (‘Dubliners,’ ‘Portrait of the Artist,’ ‘Ulysses,’ and especially ‘Finnegans Wake’) through the lens of sacred geometry. The book explores the psycho-spiritual meaning of different symbol complexes (known collectively as mandalas) as they have been understood by Christian mysticism, Buddhism/Hinduism, and, more recently, Jungian depth psychology.”
O’Shea also ponders if those three most marked or well-read books on Joyce’s shelf — “Matheran’s book on marriage, Tolstoy’s essays, Zimmer’s study of Maya” — are connected.
At the same time, the author, who teaches essay-writing at NYU, has himself turned to fiction. “‘Claiming De Wayke’ is my sci-fi novel,” he said. “It’s set in Ireland in the wake of a pandemic that has triggered massive political and social transformations. Gangs are everywhere and cults proliferate. Our narrator Tayto is a young man who cares about nothing except his Virtual Reality addiction.”
O’Shea added, “He learns of an opportunity to stay ‘lit up’ in VR forever, but the catch is that he has to make a risky journey from Dublin back to his hometown of Cork, navigating the real world (‘de wayke’) to avail of it. Due to the use of real Cork dialect, and a ‘gritty surrealism,’ I’ve seen it compared to Irvine Welsh’s ‘Trainspotting.’”
Colm O’Shea
Date of birth: July 27, 1977
Place of birth: Cork
Spouse: Marie Glancy O’Shea
Children: Suvi; Zadie; Conan; Tadhg
Residence: Beacon, N.Y.
Published works: “Claiming De Wayke”; “James Joyce’s Mandala.”
What is your writing routine? Are there ideal conditions?
I have four young kids, so writing tends to get done whenever there is quiet in the house. I’ve written at the library and on the train too, although those spaces seem to be getting noisier lately also. I have a full-time job as a writing professor at New York University, so that eats into my own writing and research time. The benefit of being so constrained is that it makes you realize how precious your writing time is. You can get a lot done in even a daily half-hour of concerted focus. I write more now than when I was young and had all the time in the world.
What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
Consider deeply what you are “aspiring” to. At first you just want to get published, to see if you can do it. Then, after some initial success, things can get complicated. Maybe you dream of being rich or famous. That’s possible for writers, but unlikely. Or perhaps you hope getting a book out there will earn you love and respect. Maybe it will, but again, I suspect this is setting you up for an anticlimax. On the other hand, if you write because you love the craft as climbers love climbing, and would do it even if you never “make it,” and you sit at your desk every day because it is teaching you something valuable about how your mind and your world works, and your craft lets you delve deeper into the mystery of life, than really—how can you fail?
What book are you currently reading?
I’m writing another monograph for Routledge on the screenplays and fiction of Charlie Kaufman, so that means re-reading everything he’s written plus heaps of essays on his surreal take on our postmodern reality. It’s enjoyable work, but slow-going.
What is your favorite spot in Ireland?
The River Lee flows and grows all the way to Cork City. Gougane Barra is the source of the Lee. There’s a small island in Gougane Barra Lake that was the site of St. Finbarr’s monastery since the 6th century; I married my wife in Finbarr’s Oratory, a tiny church on the island. My father took my mother on their first date there also, so I guess I owe my existence to that source of the river.
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you know what “the craic” is, how to find it, and why it’s vital!
