“I have felt during these last days of waiting an added sense of perplexity due to the fact that at the moment when I have the very great pleasure of knowing that it is to you who have aided and are aiding me so munificently you write me that the last episode sent seems to you to show a weakening or diffusion of some sort. Since the receipt of your letter I have read the chapter [Sirens] again several times. It took me five months to write it and always when I have finished an episode my mind lapses into a state of blank apathy out of which it seems that neither I nor the wretched book will ever more emerge.”
— To Harriet Shaw Weaver - 20 July 1919. From Selected Letters of James Joyce, edited by Richard Ellman.
