1. 07:15 7th Feb 2012

    Tags: graphic novels

    Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot have captured Lucia Joyce in a graphic novel. Via @modernletters on Twitter.

    And it sounds (and looks) good, too:

    In her graphic memoir-cum-biography, Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, Mary M Talbot, an academic, tells Lucia’s tale in all its misery. For her, though, this interest is personal: Talbot is the daughter of the eminent Joyce scholar James S Atherton (his The Books at the Wakeis still the best guide to the literary allusions in Joyce’s final work), and Joyce’s intense relationship with Lucia – there are good grounds for calling his daughter his muse – therefore played a significant role in Mary’s childhood.

    Atherton was a difficult, obsessive man whose scholarly interests meant that he was most often to be found locked behind his study door (“tap, tap, tap”, went his typewriter, forbiddingly). Sometimes, he was funny and poetic, just like his literary hero. But sometimes, especially if he was interrupted, he would explode. His bookish daughter was afraid of his foul temper. How would she ever live up to his expectations?