Let ‘outsider’ Joyce’s body rest in peace
The fuss over the author of ‘Ulysses’ reminds us that writers are now establishment props, writes Eilis O’Hanlon
THERE are many curious things about Dublin City Council’s bid to bring back the body of James Joyce ahead of the February 2022 centenary of the publication of Ulysses, but none so strange as the fact that anyone thought it was a good idea in the first place. Of all the problems facing the capital, this is what gets local politicians’ attention?
To be fair to Labour councillor Dermot Lacey and his Fine Gael counterpart Paddy McCartan, who jointly tabled a motion last week calling on the mayor to write to the Foreign Affairs Minister for support in the endeavour, it probably seemed like a harmless bit of PR.
Few writers are more indelibly associated with Dublin than James Joyce. Why not bring back his body as a symbolic act of recompense for the shabby way he was treated by his native country while he was still alive?
Plenty of countries have demanded the return of important lost artefacts from abroad, after all. Greece wants the Elgin Marbles back from the British Museum.
The body of the Irish author is not a plundered work of art, however, nor did Switzerland seize it in some historic act of aggression. It is the mortal remains of a man who spent decades outside Ireland and who was then buried, after his death at the age of 59 in 1941, in his adopted country, where he has lain ever since.
His wife, Nora Barnacle, did subsequently request that Joyce’s body be repatriated to Ireland, and this was refused; but unlike WB Yeats, who died in France and left instructions to “dig me up and plant me in Sligo”, there’s no evidence that Joyce himself gave a single hoot one way or another.
Sadly, there’s some evidence that the bones now re-interred at Drumcliffe might not belong to the poet at all, but what makes that sad is because Yeats wanted to come home. It’s his wishes that should count, not ours.
For his own part, Joyce left Ireland early in life, never returned after 1912, and more than once turned down the chance to take Irish citizenship after the Free State came into being, preferring to keep his British passport, even during World War II when Irish passports would have allowed him and his son to escape occupied France. Leaving him where he is seems far more in keeping with his known feelings.
Not to mention that’s he’s not alone in the grave. Nora is buried alongside him, as is his son and that son’s second wife. Is their return to Ireland meant to be part of the deal?
It’s unlikely to happen either way, because Switzerland appears unwilling to give up James Joyce’s body, and his surviving family are expected to veto any such proposal. It could be that the esteemed councillors knew that all along, and simply wanted to make some grand gesture of municipal pride.
But it does speak to a curious sea change in the public attitude towards great writers. Joyce had a difficult relationship with Ireland, and there is something fitting about his being buried far away from his native soil. Exile suited him. He was certainly no nationalist. The distance is almost a symbol of his difference.
Nowadays, writers have largely stopped being such dangerous and subversive individuals, whose art challenges the society from which it comes, and are instead seen as reassuring, even homely figures. Dublin has a lucrative literary tourism industry based on turning these spiky, awkward characters into colourful figures of affection. No one seems to mind that some of them would have hated this development with a passion.
If this was only about the past, it mightn’t be so bad. The dead are, well, dead. Nothing can hurt them, and a writer’s work stands on its own merits.
When contemporary authors are treated in the same, overly respectful way, it’s far more problematic. Writers used to pride themselves on being anti-establishment. Outsiders. Outliers. These days, with rare exceptions, they tend to aspire to a cosseted life as the ultimate literary establishment insiders.
Take Margaret Atwood, an undoubtedly terrific writer, who was last week named joint winner of the Booker Prize for her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. There was something awkwardly self-congratulatory about the whole business. She was not being celebrated for challenging and disturbing the literary community’s presumptions, but for endorsing their own prejudices. Contemporaries praise her for confirming their view of the world, while shaking their heads at the ignorance of past generations who ostracised writers such as Joyce or John McGahern for making them feel uncomfortable about themselves.
What’s the difference? Ireland’s Catholic censors in years gone by didn’t relish having their ingrained prejudices provoked or defied, and liberal guardians of what is and is not acceptable today don’t like it any better.
Another example is Edna O’Brien. The Irish Times published a baffling piece last week by a visiting research fellow at Queen’s University in Belfast, which took issue with The New Yorker magazine for publishing a profile of O’Brien which was insufficiently fawning and dared to not be impressed by her most recent book, Girl, which imagines the experience of one of the young women kidnapped by Islamic terrorists from their school in Nigeria.
That she was now a venerable woman of letters — the piece describes O’Brien as “acclaimed”, “established”, and “award-winning”, as if any of those epithets should be protection against criticism — seemed to be considered reason enough to give her an easy time. Critical judgment is the primary power of any reader. It shouldn’t matter if the author of said book has become a national treasure.
O’Brien has gone from having her books banned in the 1960s to now apparently being above negative judgment, which is a weird turnaround, however it’s framed. Why would any writer want this soft-soap treatment?
That it’s so readily available at this point in time for any writer willing to play the game is what makes indulging in it so dangerous. American novelist Jennifer Egan won the Pulitzer Prize for her fourth book, A Visit From The Goon Squad. She later observed: “If I start craving approval, it’s never going to lead to anything good.” James Joyce would have wholeheartedly agreed with that sentiment.
He wrote about Dublin because he couldn’t stop thinking about it, but he saw nationality and identity as “nets” which were designed to trap the unwary. These days, they’ve been turned into soft cushions instead, ready to welcome any writer who chooses to let go and sink into them. This sentimental twaddle of smoothing out the edges of difficult characters from the past, in order to claim them as “one of our own”, has to stop. As Roddy Doyle once said: “They’ll be serving Joyce Happy Meals
next.”