Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce
$12.99
'A father...is a necessary evil.' Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses
William Butler Yeats' father was an impoverished artist, an inveterate letter writer, and a man crippled by his inability to ever finish a painting.
Oscar Wilde's father was a doctor, a brilliant statistician and amateur archaeologist who was taken to court by an obsessed lover in a strange foreshadowing of events that would later befall his son.
The father of James Joyce was a garrulous, hard-drinking man with a violent temper, unable or unwilling to provide for his large family, who eventually drove his son from Ireland.
In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín presents an illuminating, intimate study of Irish culture, history and literature told through the lives and works of Ireland's most famous sons, and the complicated, influential relationships they each maintained with their fathers.
'A supple, subtle thinker, alive to hunts and undertones, wary of absolute truths.' New Statesman
'Tóibín writes about writers' families...with great subtlety and sometimes with splendid impudence.' Sunday Telegraph
LICENSING AGREEMENT
Pan Macmillan acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to lands, waters and communities.
We pay our respect to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. We honour more than sixty thousand years of storytelling, art and culture.
© Pan Macmillan Australia 2024