This is a book without an Introduction or a Conclusion. Just twelve chapters in an order which, although not random, will not be immediately perceptible. It should look like a dodecaphonic series harping on a handful of key motifs – the ego as symptom of literary modernity; the pervasive tension between egoism and hospitality; late Modernism defined less by formal innovation than by an emphasis on a new reader; the curious interactions, antagonistic and yet parallel, between Joyce's esthetic program and the emergence of Irish nationalism, to name but a few.

Thanks to the old rhetorical rule of post hoc, propter hoc, and also to excellent editorial advice provided by the anonymous readers who considered an earlier version of these chapters, they now follow each other in some kind of narrative. The foundations for this book were laid in the summer of 1996, when I was asked simultaneously to give two plenary addresses at different Joyce conferences. First, I opened the Zurich James Joyce Symposium at Fritz Senn's kind invitation (as I read “Joyce the egoist” with a bottle of Chanel's Egoïste after-shave on my lectern, this gave rise to entirely unfounded rumors that I was being sponsored by the French brand).