“—Wait! Hist! Let us list!” (FW 571.34): Two Retrospectives on the “Current JJ Checklist” and Alan M. Cohn: Five Decades of Checklisting

It was research for a master’s degree thesis in 1986 on Hans Walter Gabler’s Ulysses that first took me to the JJQ’s “Current JJ Checklist.” I marveled at Alan Cohn’s work. The internet as we know it today barely existed in those years, and literary research was grounded in printed resources. While the MLA Bibliography provided wide coverage of the scholarly output, it was the “Checklist” that identified the book reviews, editions, and ephemera that the MLA categorically excluded: the news that, as I came to learn, the Joyce community thrived on. Cohn’s wry annotations gave life to that bony bibliographic data.

Cohn began the “Checklist” in JJQ’s second issue as an annual supplement to the MLA Bibliography. A decade later, with the MLA’s increasing delay in publication (partly due to computerization), Cohn decided to take on the entire corpus of Joyceana with a “Current” listing in each issue. He compiled forty-nine of these until his death in 1989. Those old “Checklists” remain valuable for their window into a previous generation, many of whose members knew Joyce or were at least contemporaries. Skimming through the 1962 “Supplemental,” we find, for instance, new pieces by Flann O’Brien, Hugh MacDiarmid, Louis MacNeice, T. S. Eliot, Brendan Behan, Austin Clarke, C. P. Curran, and Sylvia Beach.

The year 1989 also saw a change in editorial responsibility for the JJQ as Bob Spoo took over from Tom Staley. Earlier that year, I had submitted an article to the journal. Some time later, I received an envelope from Tulsa and hastily tore it open, hoping to learn the fate of my little piece. What was in the envelope, however, was not a response to my article but an offer from Bob to “try out” for the position of bibliographer. What does a bibliographer do, I wondered? I don’t know what made me think that I could in any way continue Cohn’s work, but of course I accepted and before long was furiously researching, reading, gathering. This job has given me a uniquely satisfying role in, and perspective on, the Joyce community.

Now that much research is performed digitally, especially since the “Checklist” went online in 2008, it is no longer necessary to read through dozens of quarterly lists to do retrospective research on Joyce. Yet the “Current Checklist” remains the best way to survey recent work. In recent years, the “Current Checklist” has provided evidence of the evolving internationalization of Joyce studies. In fact, it shows that, like many other things, the “American” Joyce Industry has largely moved offshore, no longer dominated by critics named Ellmann, Kenner, or Benstock, but including many more Asian and Eastern European names than in earlier years. The geographical broadening of Joyce studies is mirrored in the growth of work in translation studies, and the easing of copyright restrictions in Europe and the United States has encouraged new editions and adaptations worldwide. The availability of manuscripts and letters, both via greater access to repositories and digital postings on the internet, has enabled the growth of genetic criticism and source studies.

The critical literature and the plethora of editions and translations make for an enormous body of material by and about Joyce. Here it is useful to consider Fritz Senn’s reflections in a review of Robert H. Deming’s 1977 Bibliography: “Nor could Deming any longer inspect every one of those close to 6,000 items for verification; in fact no single person has actually seen all of them or ever will. … This may well be the opportunity here to suggest an international tentacular service to spread our net as far and wide as possible.”¹ That tentacular service grew during Cohn’s years and, as a glance at the header of any recent “Checklist” shows, continues vitally in the many contributors who continue to send notice of recent publications.

My thanks extend not only to Bob for bringing me into the fold, but also to Sean Latham for continuing...