James Joyce and His Jesuits

The Irish scribe James Joyce spent thousands of hours with the Jesuits, who educated him as a youth and who figure prominently in his debut novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which just saw the 100th anniversary of its initial publication on Dec. 29, 1916. Though Portrait wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of his educators, they permanently influenced the author, who once remarked to a friend, “You allude to me as a Catholic. Now for the sake of precision and to get the correct contour on me, you ought to allude to me as a Jesuit.”