Introduction to the eighth issue

The eighth issue of the James Joyce Online Notes contains twenty-seven new articles answering – or offering suggestions on – numerous questions posed by Ulysses and other writings by Joyce.

Ian Gunn continues his topographical review of the Dublin Bay coastline in Stephen’s Stroll on the Strand, with new ideas on the route taken by Stephen around Sandymount; Harald Beck looks closely at J. J. O’Molloy, and uncovers a probable model in the sparkling but short-lived Dublin lawyer John O’Mahony (d. 1904); Ronan Crowley examines Joyce and Buffalo Bill, who “shoots to kill”; and John Simpson takes a panoramic view of Joyce’s maternal relatives, the Flynns, from the starch factory on Back Lane in Dublin to the dinner party of The Dead.

Further articles provide documentary evidence for the journalists’ union term dayfather (and nightfather), along with biographical information on “Old Monks”, who is credited with this title in Aeolus; the late nineteenth-century history of “posing for the ensemble” (i.e. in the nude) is uncovered; Joyce’s “Galeria Becche, Santiago” is unmasked as the arcade (not art gallery) Galeria Beeche in downtown Santiago, with additional notes on Hector Beeche himself; and the history of the expression “my brown son” is explored in the domain from which many of Joyce’s allusions arise: the music-hall.

The issue concludes with that image of floating in the Dead Sea reading a book, under the shade of a parasol, from early in Lotus Eaters.

Harald Beck

John Simpson

March 2015