Adventures in the Joyce Trade

Joyce Studies Annual, Volume 12, Summer 2001© 2001 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, Texas 78713-7819 1 Based in part on a talk at the Joyce Conference in Miami, February 2001, and on an earlier piece in the Journal of Modern Literature: “The Winds of Aeolus: In the Heart of the Joyce Metropolis,” JML XXII, 2 (Winter 1998–99): 199–203. Adventures in the Joyce Trade1 THOMAS F. STALEY So the story goes in its various versions: In November 1966, during a term as a Fulbright Professor in Trieste, the absurdly young editor of the James Joyce Quarterly paid a visit to his European editor of JJQ and co-editor of the Wake Newslitter, Fritz Senn, in Zürich. During the visit we conceived the idea of having a Joyce meeting in Dublin that coming summer to bring European and American Joyce scholars together and to advance an interchange of ideas. The stories of how the Symposia began some thirty years ago have been recorded by others, especially Murray Beja and Joe Kelly, and what I have read is essentially accurate. Kelly in Our Joyce makes better use of my notes and correspondence than I ever will: Together they [Staley and Senn] decided to pursue their idea of a Joyce conference, which they had been kicking around with Bernard Benstock since he had joined the editorial staff of the JJQ the previous year. Plans coalesced quickly. By 21 November Staley wrote to [his assistant editor in Tulsa], “We hope to have a large crowd from all over the world.” Senn already promised five or six Belgians and a comparable number of French Joyceans. By December, Dubliners were promising local support. Rivers Carew at The Dublin Magazine offered to sponsor and advertise the conference , and, more importantly, the Bord Failte or Irish Tourist Board signed on later. Before Christmas Senn had official stationary printed with himself, Staley, and Benstock on the letterhead. Briefly, at the end thomas f. staley 101 2 Joseph Kelly, Our Joyce: From Outcast to Icon (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 207–08. 3 Ibid., 208. of the year, Staley had doubts about the success of the conference on account of the short notice.2 The truth is I had grave doubts and concerns about organizing a large enterprise in Dublin—a city where I had never been and knew best through Ulysses. But Senn suggested they go ahead, even at the risk of failure, so they would “be so much wiser for a perhaps bigger event a year later.” Senn’s advice was well-founded, for in the end “over seventy-five paid registrants attended.”3 As I look back on it, I am still amazed that we came to the conclusion that the two of us and our friend Berni Benstock, then a professor at Kent State in Ohio and our “American agent,” could bring it off. Looking backward, I am reminded again of Ruskin’s phrase, “the sanguine credulity of youth.” I am sure we hardly knew what fate awaited us in Dublin—it was the Dear Dubliners. Ultimately, the Symposium came off very well, much to the surprise and delight of the three organizers, although given the mix of Dublin and Joyce it was not without tension and controversy. It became known only in retrospect as Symposium I, for we had no idea that we had launched a series of symposia that would move into the next century. For better or for worse we arrived in June of 1967, from Trieste, Zürich, and Kent State. We had hoped to attract perhaps three dozen or so Joyceans; there were in fact over seventy-five paid registrants, representing fourteen or so countries of Europe and North America, and all the sessions were plenary. The dates (inevitably) were June 15 and 16. The deeper cultural implications of this meeting dawned on me only afterwards, but it was a good lesson for a young American academic who thought that to know Joyce’s work was to admire him and those who studied him. As Murray Beja noted in JJQ, and Vivien Igoe writes in this issue, June 1967...