June 14, 2012 - The Daily Beast
In a story of frustration—and ultimately, triumph—Gordon Bowker recounts the many hazards he faced writing his new biography of James Joyce; the biggest Cyclops of all is the author’s litigious grandson, Stephen.
When I proposed a James Joyce biography to my publisher, I was aware that the deadliest booby trap on the road ahead was the Joyce estate's explosive trustee, Stephen James Joyce, the author's grandson.
He had denied the singer Kate Bush permission to include a few lines from the sexy “Penelope” chapter in Ulysses in a song, and got a program in celebration of Joyce banned from Irish radio. By threats of legal action he had prevented Brenda Maddox from including a postscript about Joyce's disturbed daughter, Lucia, in her book on his wife, Nora, and forced Carol Loeb Shloss, Lucia’s biographer, to cut extracts from letters between her and her father. But more imprudently, he had tried to prevent the National Library of Ireland from exhibiting some of his grandfather’s manuscripts—which it owned—and it took an act of the Irish Parliament to frustrate him.
James Joyce himself coined the term “biografiend,” suggesting that he also had a low opinion of biographers and would probably refuse to cooperate with anyone attempting to write his life story. But in fact he did commission an American author, Herbert Gorman, to write one, even though he then tried to control what went into it. When Gorman showed him what he had written, Joyce demanded he cut out anything to do with his dissolute father, his schizophrenic daughter, and his “irregular marriage.” Since 1904, when he eloped from Ireland with Nora Barnacle, the couple had remained unmarried for 27 years, during which time they produced two children. But he told everyone he had married Nora before leaving Dublin, a lie he did not want to see exposed.Read the rest at The Daily Beast
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RED-LIT JAM-PACKED AUCKLAND BLOOMSDAY
“With winter upon us, many of you we know have been wondering—what are the compensations for living in New Zealand? We’re at the bottom of the world, we’re as far away from every interesting place as possible, it costs us a fortune to go anywhere, we have the highest cost of living in the universe, we have wages so low we can compete with China, we have public holidays so pitifully few that other countries have to embark on austerity programmes to get down to our level, we have the most boring right-wing government in the world, the longest commercial breaks on TV, and when our government establishes an Order of NZ for our top 20 citizens who does it award it to? a doddering old Greek crypto-fascist who happens to be married to the English Queen. Pa--thetic! WHY ARE WE HERE? Are we fucking nuts or what? Well, we’re here because once a year, every year, the only Hibernian-yiddisher Bloomsday in the known world is brought live from a seedy red-light district at the bottom of the South Seas!
“I’m so happy
on Karangahape Road
fingers snappy
on Karangahape Road…”
And so began yet again Auckland’s annual anarchic salute to literature, music and politics that is the Jews’ Brothers Bloomsday.
A celebration of James Joyce’s Ulysses, the show takes in breakfast at the Blooms’, Paddy Dignam’s funeral, Burton’s restaurant, the dust-up at Barney Kiernan’s, the appearance of Stephen Dedalus, the lonely siren of Sandymount beach Gerty MacDowell, the fierce transvestite dominatrix Bella Cohen (who transmogrifies into Helen Clark then Angela Merkel and then the Warner Brothers), the affray with the British squaddies, the final perambulation of Bloom and Stephen and the final soliloquy of Molly Bloom.
And in between episodes were the Jews Brothers’ Band singing a klezmer version of Finnegan’s Wake and standards like The Boulevard of Broken Dreams and that Irish anthem the Alabama Song (“Show me the way to the next whiskey bar…”) and their own Dunkin’ Bagels, and Linn Lorkin singing Hail Queen of Heaven and The Croppy Boy, and a Barbershop Quartet reduced to a Barbershop Solo who had the audience joining in a sweet and mellifluous Danny Boy. And there was Chris Trotter singing a hair-sticking-up-on-the-back-of-your-necks ballad to Irish revolutionary James Connolly and – sensationally -- Japanese mezzo soprano Yuko Takahashi doing Donizetti’s O Mio Fernando.
The fabulous George Henare clearly relished his multiple roles of Stephen Dedalus, Gerty MacDowell and an extraordinarily costumed and alarmingly bearded Mrs Bella Cohen and his soft-shoe shuffle with the band singing Irving Berlin’s Without My Walking Stick was a show-stopper.
Hershal Herschel was in his element as a Woody Allenish Poldy Bloom. Former Auckland Equity branch secretary Farrell Clearly was spot-on as a querulous and opinionated Deasy. Unite Union organiser Irish Joe Carolan brought the roof down as both the deranged Sinn Feiner nationalist The Citizen and his mangy mongrel and Irish actor Brian Keegan maintained a level of coherency to the entire proceedings with beautifully measured readings.
The whole show was brought to a stunning conclusion by Carmel McGlone’s lovely and moving and straight-from-the-heart rendition of Molly Bloom’s final, dreamy soliloquy. And what genius thought to follow this with a final, out-of-the-blue, merde-hot finale -- Edith Piaf’s “Je Ne Regrette Rien”?
The coming together of Irish literary and Jewish musical cultures in Auckland has produced a show rightly touting itself as the only Hiberno-Hebrew Bloomsday in the known world. It is a one-night show held in an absolutely jam-packed K’ Rd pub opposite a massage parlour with hookers outside peering in through street windows at the commotion. As the pre-show publicity said, if Auckland wants to be taken seriously as a world-class city, it doesn’t need a new Casino Convention Centre it needs more scabrous joyous back-alley art like this. This is what makes a world-class city.
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