Sir, - In their 1904 peregrinations of this city Messrs Bloom and Dedalus encountered many hazards moral and physical. But, as far as I can tell, only once in Ulysses does Joyce allude to the dangers of road traffic on page 429 of the Penguin edition, when "Through rising fog a dragon sandstrewer . . . slews heavily down upon" a drunken Bloom, who "blunders stifflegged, out of the track."
How different Bloom's experience would be today. Assuming he wasn't killed around about page 155 trying to dash across Westmoreland Street in front of an onslaught of automobiles (which at least would reduce the book to manageable proportions), his train of thought would probably be: "Cross Westland Row to get lemon soap. Hmm...red volvo with kids in back . . . cab . .
number 183 bus ... besuited gent with mobile phone in white BMW...there's a gap . . . damn! ...that cabbie was blind! . . . blue Volvo with kids in back . . . drug dealer with mobile phone. .
And so on for the next 12 pages. Meanwhile the world would be denied his ratiocinations about death, marriage and potted meats.
My point is a serious one. We should not take the explosion of Dublin's road traffic to be a sign of newfound wealth; it is a mark of biting poverty - poverty of imagination, that we cannot think of better ways to run a city. Poverty of feeling - that as we start our engines each morning, we spare not a thought for the innocents killed or maimed each year. Poverty of courage - that no public figure will stand up and say: "That's enough! This is no way to treat a city we pretend to love!" - Yours, etc.,
Palmerston Road,
Dublin 6.