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Add the names of those who died at a certain age :

 Names that come to mind

 Felix Guattari  was dead at 62

Joyce was dead at 59 and all these years I thought he  was dead at sixty something


and it turns out , in fact, he was not quite 59   'He would have been 59 years old Feb. 2." as he died January 13, 1941, .
I find this so shocking,  Not even fifty-nine yet so  heart breaking Not  59.

'He awoke at 2 a.m. on 13 January 1941, and asked for a nurse to call his wife and son,'


 It rips me apart to read it.

Joyce is our father, he is, I believe our father, or like something very near to our father in 20th century letters. Near everyone who met him  got that sense from him,  and anyone who's read him deeply gets that sense of paternity, something strong and terribly responsible. (the sentiment is echoed in the last page of Wake )
 I don't understand it. In the sense that whence it comes I do not fully understand, I had it early on reading him, even when I didn't understand  what he was writing, in the Wake especially, I had the sense it was already inside of me... whence this? this knowing?

   His devotion to his  work,family and children was exceptional.

I think he is to 20th century Literature, at least to those who've read about him and his era, I believe he is something like Maurice Richard is to hockey, a very powerful father figure. And all the men, and the women too, who knew him had this sense from him. Joyce drew tears from grown men.



Joyce is all father.   and there is so much laughter in his work, and also the regret and anguish there in the terrible calls which ring out in the last pages of the Wake, but it is momentary as it all begins again.

Joyce is the least bastard of Literature in the twentieth century which is also why so many writers from so many cultures have come to be drawn to him.

Joyce is at the opposite spectrum to Genet the bastard of twentieth century literature and by virtue of that he becomes the father to bastard people, to bastard children, and individuals. He becomes  a Father too but from the other way around.

He too  will reduce you to tears but the tears come I believe from a different place and I don't know the name of that at this moment.

Genet never knew anything about his father, not a thing. Nor does anyone else. He knew little of his mother but far more about her than his father.

Joyce on the other hand, knew everything about his Father and his family and likewise he knew all there was to know about his Mother.

Genet was the only bastard son of a mother who had to leave him to charity as she could not afford to keep him. She herself was to die at the age of 31.

Joyce came from a family of 10 3 brothers and 6 sisters.

On one of my uncle's and aunt's side I have 8 cousins none of whom I have seen since the early 80's of the last century.


Cousins O cousins where are you? are you content with your lives?



Each of us comes into this world not choosing where and how we will be born.
If literature means anything it is what we choose to make it.

Yes life and death and breath and breaking bones, and getting old, and cold. or mad, and crazy Lear like madness on the beach and only our true selves found in poetry, the poetry we write.

And life  those we love and love dying and being born. 


It happens every day doesn't it , people die before their time whatever their time was. my own father at 29. and so others thousands even at this moment are dying away as others are born. and some
writers live to be old

and some not.

pick out your own names. There are the mothers and fathers.