THE GRANDSON of James Joyce and sole inheritor of the Joyce estate has strongly condemned recent developments in the publication of Joyce works.
In an interview, Stephen James Joyce said attempts were being made to encroach on the integrity of Joyce’s work and to assert control over aspects of that work in a way that compromised the originality of Joyce’s creative endeavour.
Mr Joyce (80), making his first public comments on the matter, insisted several times that the State would be failing in its duty to James Joyce if it allowed his writing to be misused.
This would especially be so if the State allowed an impression to be given that anyone other than the author had been solely and entirely responsible for his work.
He particularly expressed concern about the appearance of any other person’s name on the cover or title page of a work by Joyce in a manner that might create confusion as to the authorship of the work concerned.
He asserted, as he has done previously, that he has much information about and many memories of Joyce and his work, which would not now ever be made public because of the misuse his grandfather’s work had been subjected to.
At the same time, he said there was an archive “in a safe place” which might possibly be made available at some time in the future.
In a comment on Joyce scholar Danis Rose, he deplored his practice of wearing sandals without socks while attending a court case in London some years ago and suggested that if he were to go to an upcoming court case in which Mr Rose was involved, he might bring along “a spare pair of socks”, just in case.
Copyright in the works of James Joyce, which had been held by the Joyce estate, expired at the end of last year.
Since then, a number of publishing initiatives have taken place, including the publication two months ago of a letter from Joyce to Stephen, which was given the title The Cats of Copenhagen.
More recently, Mr Rose has published transcripts of manuscripts held in the National Library of Ireland.