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I was born at 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin, on 2 February 1882. my father invested unwisely, and the family's fortunes declined steadily. I graduated from University College, Dublin, in 1902 which sucked becuase my dad had no money, and no money wasn't a lot back then; I briefly studied medicine in Paris, but it was gay and my mother's impending death brought me back to Dublin. In 1904, I began Stephen Hero, which i later re-worked as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I also met Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid, and on 16 June 1904 we went walking at Ringsend, at the Liffey's mouth; I later chose that date for the events recorded in Ulysses. She was hot. Having briefly shared a Martello tower at Sandycove, Co Dublin, with Oliver StJohn Gogarty, I sailed from Dublin with Nora in October 1904. I found work in a language school in Trieste. It was lame, but they knew how to party. In 1909, I made two trips to Dublin, to arrange publication of Dubliners, and to open a short-lived cinema, which bombed. My last visit was in 1912, when I failed to overcome my publisher's doubts about Dubliners. He was an ass-hat. In 1914 the book was published in England, and A Portrait was serialised in a London magazine. With the outbreak of World War I, I moved to Zurich in neutral Switzerland, which was cool, because it was neutral, where in 1917 i underwent the first of many operations for glaucoma. Ulysses, my masterpiece, was serialised in New York in 1918-20, but was eventually halted by a court action cuz i said, "Fuck" a lot. I returned to Trieste in 1919, then moved to Paris, where in 1922 Ulysses was published by Sylvia Beach, owner of a celebrated bookshop. *(and a terrific lay!)* Its portrait of Dublin, and of the Jewish advertisement canvasser Leopold Bloom, revolutionised the novel with its 'stream of consciousness' technique; it was not published in Britain until 1936. In 1923, i began the almost impenetrable Finnegans Wake, which was published in 1939. Nora and I finally married in 1931, to the disappointment of my many suitorettes, and in 1940 returned to Zurich, where I died on 13 January 1941.

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