Do writers have to be such monsters in order to create? I believe that they do. It is a paradox that while wrestling with language to capture the human condition they become more callous, and cut off from the very human traits which they so glisteningly depict. There can be no outer responsibility, no interruptions, only the ongoing inner drone, rhythmic, insistent, struggling to make a living moment of both beauty and austerity. For Joyce, people were becoming more remote and would eventually be specters. He was not the only one. Flaubert’s mother thought that her son’s love of words had hardened his heart and all who met Joyce found that though he could be humorous, he lacked warmth. Nora complained of an impossible life, minding a difficult daughter and sitting up with artists till all hours, “bored stiff.” “Men,” she decreed, “were only up in your tail.”
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