By one who was there …

… Attending James Joyce's Birthday Party | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  so when he speaks of his aversion to aggressiveness, turbulence, violence of any kind, his words are impressive. "Birth and death are sufficiently violent for me," he says. The state for which he has the highest esteem was the old Hapsburg Empire. "They called it a ramshackle empire,” he says, "I wish there were more such ramshackle empires in the world." What he liked about old Austria was not only the mellowness of life there, but the fact that the state tried to impose so little upon its own or upon other people. It was not warlike, it was not efficient, and its bureaucracy was not strict; it was the country for a peaceful man. 

There is much in what he says.