The Shadow of James Joyce: Chapelizod & Environs by Motoko Fujita (review)

The stated intention of photographer Motoko Fujita's book, The Shadow of James Joyce: Chapelizod & Environs published by Dublin's Lilliput Press in 2011, is "[t]o draw the readers' attention to the unique beauty of the village through a series of intimate photographs and emphasise its central role in the cultural development of the city through its connection with James Joyce and his writings."¹ The volume situates a series of the artist's photographs in the context of nine essays by Joyce scholars, historians, an actor, a biographer, the Chief Park Superintendent of the Office of Public Works, and a former Lord Mayor of Dublin. These varied voices richly contribute to the book's interest. Fujita is to be commended for gathering together a distinguished group of writers to contribute to this volume.

The text is divided into three parts: "Inspiration," "Instauration," and "Implication." The "Inspiration" section introduces the locations and begins with an essay by Senator David Norris. He uses as a point of departure Fujita's photograph The Bridge Inn, Chapelizod. The image, with its solid composition and beautiful understanding of light, is surely among the strongest in the book. Norris's essay is a brilliant overview of the importance of Chapelizod to Joyce's family, its centrality in Finnegans Wake, and the pivotal place of pubs in Irish culture.

By way of introduction, Sam Slote writes of Joyce's use of source materials and gives the reader insight into Joyce's creative process. Slote speaks of the way Joyce features—with intentional distortions and complications—the story of Tristan and Isolde, the location of Chapelizod and Phoenix Park, and references to the acts of the Invincibles in Finnegans Wake. In closing the "Inspiration" section, actor Barry McGovern contributes a brief text summarizing Joyce's short story "A Painful Case." He recounts Joyce's familial associations with the locations of Chapelizod and Phoenix Park in the context of the story.

The section called "Instauration" contains the three longest texts in the book. The first author is John A. McCullen, the resident Office of Public Works Superintendent of Phoenix Park since 1984. He is also the author of An Illustrated History of the Phoenix Park: Landscape and Management to 1880.² McCullen contributes a concise and engaging summary of the park's history, describing the park's formation in 1662 and its transformations in scale and usage over the next three centuries. He makes a complete inventory of its buildings, roads, monuments, and natural features, connecting these elements to political and military history, and to the writings of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Joyce.

Following McCullen's remarks, Le Fanu's biographer W. J. McCormack provides a thorough treatment of Le Fanu's personal and familial connections to Chapelizod and Phoenix Park, which are the settings for his novel The Cock and Anchor, his series of ghost stories, and especially for The House by the Churchyard.³ But more than citing personal connections to the location, McCormack convincingly attests to the novel's place as a reflection of the uneasy political climate of its day. Published in 1863, The House by the Churchyard is primarily set in Chapelizod, but its narrative is under the shadow of Phoenix Park: the site of Ireland's political and administrative offices.

As a bonus, Danis Rose contributes "The Strange Case of the Disappearing Bread: Balancing the Book(s)—Leopold Bloom's Budget for 16 June 1904." This meticulous accounting of Bloom's cash is a revised version of a lecture he delivered at the James Joyce Centre in 1999. The essay has only a minimal bearing upon Chapelizod (just a footnote mentioning that the same currency was in use in Chapelizod and all the empire) but is a fascinating account nonetheless.

The text concludes with three light, conversational essays under the section title "Implication." Thomas MacGiolla, the late Lord Mayor of Dublin, writes an anecdotal account of his personal engagement with...