Buffalo Literature: University’s trove of Joyce material at heart of efforts

By Mike Desmond
(Image above: A rendering of the museum)

James Joyce was born in the late years of Queen Victoria’s reign in an Ireland torn by religious and political strife.

He died in exile in Switzerland, fleeing the Nazi takeover of Paris.

In between, the poet, short story writer and novelist wrote some of the most revolutionary words in the English language, “Ulysses” and “Finnegan’s Wake,” and slashed the power of governments to censor. 

“Ulysses” is (sort of) based on Homer’s “Odyssey.” This time, Dubliner Leopold Bloom wanders his city over long hours of June 16, 1904, or “Bloomsday,” involving Leopold’s unfaithful wife and his son, Molly and Stephen, or Homer’s Penelope and Telemachus.

It’s been called the most significant novel of the last 100 years.

“Finnegan’s Wake” is a fascinating tour through words and languages that took Joyce 17 years, and he only finished the project months before his death. 

If you wonder what he looked like, circle through downtown Buffalo and see the giant mural of Joyce on the LoTempio P.C. Law Group building on Franklin Street.

In two years, Joyce will be more locally visible, joining the area’s collections of major cultural tourist attractions.

The State University Construction Fund is accepting bids to build a Joyce museum in historic Abbott Hall on the UB South Campus, with construction slated to start early next year.

Governor Kathy Hochul ponied up $10 million in state dollars, pushed hard by Congressman Tim Kennedy. Bids for the project are due today (Sept. 15).

At the plan’s unveiling, Kennedy said, “How fitting it is that one of the best-known Italian-American families in all of Western New York is dedicating the facade of their building to one of the greatest Irishmen to ever live.”

He has also praised the museum as a way to preserve Buffalo’s Irish-American heritage.

The university’s renowned Joyce collection attracts scholars and students from around the world to the university’s Rare and Special Books Collection in Capen Hall on the North Campus.  

When the first elements of the Joyce collection arrived at UB, they were stored in what is now Abbott, then Lockwood Memorial Library.

As the North Campus was developed, the growing poetry collection and Joyce collection moved to purpose-built space in Capen Hall. 

That space houses nearly 180 literacy manuscript collections, with much digitizing going on.

“We truly never know who might walk in the front door one day, who’s going to call, who’s going to email. We reach a lot of academic researchers that come from all over the world to use our materials,” Poetry Collection Curator James Maynard said. “We work with graduate students. We do interlibrary loan requests through the university libraries. We support the educational activities of UB and other schools here.

“So, you might have on any given day researchers here in our reading room. You might have a class in the back. There might be an event here in the evening or in the afternoon.” 

For those who aren’t in academia, Maynard does lots of public events talking about the planned museum.

“I’ll always ask people to begin with a show of hands and I’ll say: ‘How many people are aware that this world-renowned collection is in your backyard?’ And, increasingly, you know maybe about 30% of the audience will raise their hands and then, I’ll ask them: ‘Well, how many have ever seen it?’ And, usually, unless there are other librarians in the room or you know people who worked with the collection in some form or fashion, usually then all the hands come down.

“We’re oddly probably more well known on the streets of Dublin for this material than we are on the streets of Buffalo,” he added. “So, a lot of this project has been about becoming just more recognizable as a source of pride of Western New York.”

The Joyce collection began somewhat accidentally, with the 1949 visit of a UB English professor on sabbatical to a Joyce family exhibit in Paris.

Oscar Silverman decided UB needed the Joyce material and came back to Buffalo to raise the money and buy everything, with much more added in the next few years, often with citizen contributions.

A key element involved working with Sylvia Beach. Beach founded Paris’ Shakespeare & Company bookstore, who had been a seller of Joyce books and later was publisher for “Ulysses,” with conventional publishers avoiding the book because it was considered obscene.

Later, the courts cleared the book for conventional sales, eliminating the need to smuggle “Ulysses” into the U.S. and U.K. 

Eventually, Beach toured the UB displays of Joyce’s work and received an honorary degree from the university.

Over time, Silverman moved up from English professor to director of university libraries.

There will be some limitation of what can be shown in the planned museum, as some of the artifacts are getting old. “For the Joyce collection in particular, the notebooks that I pulled out down there, we didn’t get a chance to look at them all, but they’re in fairly stable condition,” Maynard said. “Many of them are not, because they were just very cheap early 20^th Century, basically stenography pads, very cheap acidic paper.”

Maynard added that much research is done through scanned copies. 

The museum will also allow visitors to have a greater understanding of Joyce and still leave questions.

The collection includes personal memorabilia like his walking sticks, one with an engraved “J” on its handle.

The collection also leaves behind questions about his personal connections with Ireland, which he seldom physically returned to, no matter how much the island is central to his writings.

He died carrying a British passport, even though his homeland was a “Free State” and became fully independent a few years after his death.

At the same time, his mind was often in Ireland because so much of his writing revolved around his homeland.

Maynard said the writer was aware of the dual connection. “Joyce tried very specifically to be factual when writing about Dublin whenever he could,” he said. “So, there are famous quotes of his saying that if Dublin were to cease to be, you could recreate it from my writings and, certainly, that’s the case with “Dubliners” and “Ulysses” in particular.”

Material in the collection includes manuscripts of Joyce’s work and handwritten notes and copies of his work in many languages, which serves as fascinating material for grad students and ambitious undergrads.

It may be grist for the mill of residents in an increasingly multilingual community and a university student body which is heavily multilingual.

Maynard said that viewing Joyce’s work is a transformative experience. “My belief is that you will never think about Joyce and his writings (the same way) again once you’ve had a chance to see this material, and that’s very much at the heart of our plans for the museum.”