The Portable James Joyce, edited and with an introduction by Harry Levin, includes four of the six books on which Joyce's astonishing reputatuion is founded: A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man; his Collected Poems (including Chamber Music); Exiles, Joyce's only drama; and his volume of short stories, Dubliners. In addition, there is a generous sampling from Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, including the famous "Anna Livia Plurabelle" episode.

Hilarious fun, this early comedy is filled with the merry violence of slapstick and farce. When two sets of twins, separated and apparently lost to each other, all end up in the rowdy, rollicking city of Ephesus, the stage is set for mix-ups, mayhem, and mistaken identity--plus the timeless puns, jokes, gags, and suspense that makes this play a wonderful theatrical frolic and a brilliant tour de force of language and laughter.

The essays in this classic volume range from broad concerns with critical theory and aesthetic formulation to specific analysis of forms and texts. Levin discusses such matters as the symbolic interpretation of literature, the development of literary criticism during the past half-century, European attitudes toward contemporary American writers, and re-evaluations of Joyce, Proust, Balzac, Cervantes, Melville, and Hemingway. Because Levin is both a learned scholar and imaginative critic, there is no comparable book that offers the wit, taste, and learning one finds in these pages.

His...