Coming to Life: Reading “The Dead”

In assembling the panel, Coming to Life: Reading “The Dead,” I wanted to select psychoanalytic scholars familiar with James Joyce. My instruction to each was to respond to his and her reflections on the same Joyce text, in this case “The Dead.” The panel was held during the May 1997 San Diego meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

In choosing the participants, I decided on two criteria. Each must be a practicing psychoanalyst whose daily clinical work could shed light on the complexities and multiple strands of the story and its characters. Second, each panelist must have some literary background to enhance his and her analytic perspective. I was extremely fortunate in this quest, finding panelists who more than met both criteria. Each panelist is actively engaged in analytic practice. Alice Jones is a published and distinguished young poet. Stanley Coen has studied literary and biographical texts, and has widely written on reader-book interaction. Jay Martin is a professor of humanities and government and a noted biographer. And Paul Schwaber is a professor of English and a prominent Joyce scholar.

I chose Joyce because of his greater-than-life presence on the contemporary literary landscape. In the nearly 60 years since his death, Joyce increasingly has become one of the most widely read, studied and celebrated authors writing in English. Most American universities regularly offer courses on Joyce, and many have resident Joyce scholars. So many are the commentaries written on his work that it has become almost impossible for unknown scholars to publish in The Joyce Quarterly. No other writer I know of has an annual commemoration: June 16, Bloomsday, is celebrated not only by Dubliners, but by Americans as well.

San Francisco, for example, began celebrating Bloomsday ten years ago. For that first “holy day” about 100 people gathered at a North Beach art gallery to listen to a reading of Molly Bloom's famous closing erotic soliloquy. Within eight y