Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce is a work of literary criticism by Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess

John Burgess Wilson  – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...

. It was first published in 1973.

The book is aimed at helping readers new to Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

 to appreciate his genius, and is a particularly useful guide through the complexities of Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...

.

Burgess provided the following explanation of the book's title: "Any reader of Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...

will see that it is a fusion of Joycesprach, joystick, the prick that brings joy and the prick of conscience or agenbite of inwit."

Trivia

Burgess reveals in his autobiography (You've Had Your Time

You've Had Your Time, Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess

You've Had Your Time, volume II of Anthony Burgess's autobiography, was first published by Heinemann in 1990. It covers a period of 30 years, from Burgess's return to England from Malaya in 1959 through his time in Malta and Rome and culminating in his move to Monaco....

p. 243) that the Joysprick manuscript was stolen while he was living in Rome, and he had to write it out again from memory. "It was probably better the second time," he wrote.