A few years ago, I wrote this blog post about my recurring iritis (a serious, relatively rare condition) which has been a long-term curse upon my life ever since my left eye had its first bout of it in 1973.
Quite by chance, while real-time reviewing here a story about a giant monocle from Rhys Hughes’ new book ‘Flash in the Pantheon’ (Gloomy Seahorse Press), I discovered today, by a surprising google search, that James Joyce was similarly cursed.
I happen also to be concurrently real-time reviewing Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake’ here.
Cf: “The Irritated Text” of JJ now reminds me of the explicit ‘vexed texture of text’ in my novella WEIRDTONGUE and its Narrative Hospital.
Last Balcony: Essex Serpents and Pier’s Echo 
VEXED TEXTURE OF TEXT (cf JJ’s so-called IRRITATED TEXT)
I don’t want this to seem pretentious on my part but what Dan Ghetu said about my book ‘A Dead Monument To Once Ancient Hope’ a number of months ago and that is now quoted on the publisher’s sales page (http://www.zagava.de):
“Des Lewis obviously needs no presentation to the wayward fantasts. Even if I have enjoyed reading his fine volumes for Dan Watt’s press and the one for Chomu Press – two volumes I recommend – I feel like there is still space and reasons to “discover” D.F. Lewis. It is no easy feat to “break” Mr. Lewis’s Code. His work is constructed like a house, almost like a living mausoleum, according to his particular way of thinking. In other words: astonishing and uncomprehending. There is no key to this house, although there are a lot of doors. Everything is available, everything is waiting to be plucked but few dare knock at the door. Caution is good. Running away is even better. You don’t read Des Lewis to understand and “enjoy” his works. That’s not the point. You read him because you have to believe in something, after all. The reason for which Ex Occidente Press is doing a D.F. Lewis collection are many, but most of all is my wish to present him as one of main European practitioners of fantastic art. That being said, A Dead Monument to Once Ancient Hope is as much a “D.F. Lewis” collection as it is an Ex Occidente Press homage to an European icon.” Dan Ghetu
actually now seems to me to apply more deservedly and illuminatingly to the case of James Joyce as this is exactly how I see Finnegans Wake. It seems strange to me how I have never tried to break into the doors of this book and its captcha codes before.
“With my ironing duck through his rollpins of gansyfett, do dodo doughdy dough, till he was braising red in the toastface with lovensoft eyebulbs and his kiddledrum steeming and rattling like the roasties in my mockamill.”
From later in my review where I discuss allergy and allegory: http://conezero.wordpress.com/283-2/
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