"I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality"

James Joyce expresses a deliberate strategy in his creative process: embedding complexity and ambiguity into his work to ensure lasting attention and discussion. The enigmas and puzzles he references are hallmarks of his writing style, particularly evident in masterpieces such as "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake". By crafting layers of meaning, obscure references, and challenging structures, he transforms his works into literary labyrinths, inviting readers and scholars to decipher and interpret his intentions indefinitely.

Joyce recognizes that straightforward, easily understood writing may be appreciated in its time, but risks being set aside as years pass. To resist the fade into obscurity, he chooses instead to make his texts difficult, enigmatic, and resistant to singular interpretation. In doing so, he enlists not just readers, but professors, figures of scholarly authority, to dedicate their intellectual energies to analyzing and debating the meanings concealed within his words. Academic discourse, with its rigor and institutional memory, becomes the vehicle by which his works, and by extension, his own name, achieve immortality.

There’s also a playful confidence, perhaps bordering on mischief, in Joyce’s approach. He understands the conventions and expectations of literary criticism and subverts them, constructing riddles that may never be solved to his satisfaction. The enduring debates about his intent and the boundaries of meaning keep his texts alive, vibrant with possibility and exploration. In a way, immortality through literature for Joyce is not mere remembrance or static commemoration, but an active, perpetual engagement, a living dialogue between text and interpreter, generation after generation.

The implication is that art achieves its highest form of endurance by remaining open, ambiguous, and resistant to closure. Joyce’s legacy is thus secured not only in the words he wrote, but in the inexhaustible curiosity and discussion those words continue to generate.