Joyce's father, John Stanislaus Joyce

We cannot overestimate the importance of James Joyce's father in the making of the novel Ulysses. Joyce wrote about him, “I got from him his portraits, a waistcoat, a good tenor voice, and an extravagant licentious disposition.” In the novel Ulysses, Simon Dedalus is a version of John Stanislaus Joyce, James Joyce's father. And obviously the father was a very bad provider for his family, but what Joyce did in the novel was he showed him as a figure on the streets, as a popular man. He was leaving his daughters penniless, but he was also witty. He was good company and of course, he had a beautiful tenor voice that soars especially in the Sirens episode of the novel. About his father's influence on the novel Ulysses, Joyce told a friend, “The humor of Ulysses is his. Its people are his friends. The book is his spittin’ image.”