This is a series of connected essays by one of today's leading commentators on James Joyce.

1. Introduction: on being a Joycean; 2. Deconstructive criticism of Joyce; 3. Popular Joyce?; 4. Touching 'Clay': Reference and reality in Dubliners; 5. Joyce and the ideology of character; 6. 'Suck was a queer word': Language, sex, and the remainder in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; 7. Joyce, Jameson, and the text of history; 8. Wakean history: not yet; 9. Molly's flow: the writing of 'Penelope' and the question of women's language; 10. The postmodernity of Joyce: chance, coincidence, and the reader; 11. Countlessness of live-stories: narrativity in Finnegan's Wake; 12. Finnegans awake, or the dream of interpretation; 13. The Wake's confounded language; 14. Envoi; Judging Joyce.