Reckless temerity prods me into venturing an answer to Walter's whimsical question, now happily disambiguated (to use the current disgusting jargon). Is it not possible that Joyce suffered from some sort of literary compulsive-obsessive disorder, in the parlance of our times? Perhaps the Freudian barflies would reject any such suggestion.

 

To repeat my mother's diagnosis of sanity, viz, a sense of humour sufficient to allow one to laugh at oneself, it seems to me that this is where VN, the happy, healthy, heterosexual, scores well above most of his contemporaries, and pre-contemporaries.  I can't detect any very great sense of humour in Joyce, but perhaps, as usual, I'm missing something.

 

Charles