Tim Conley - Useless Joyce: Textual Functions, Cultural Appropriations

In Exiles, Bertha Rowan reproves her husband Richard: I am simply a tool for you (588). Joyce is, as I hope this book demonstrates, very aware of what uses he makes of people, words, and ideas, even if his gratitude seems less than overwhelming. Fair use is a funny phrase, a formula by which scholars can defend their adoptions of others work, and thus as much a legal fiction as paternity. I hope that I have made fair use of all named below.

Thanks first to various Joyceans from hither and yon, some of whom have thoughtfully discussed with me or carefully read some parts of this project, and some of whom have facilitated it in one way or another: Luca Crispi, Ronan Crowley, Anne Fogarty, Finn Fordham, Michael Groden, Terence Killeen, Sean Latham, John McCourt, Laura Pelaschiar, Fritz Senn, and Sam Slote. It is a privilege to count oneself in the company of these scholars. I am also appreciative of the support of my departmental colleagues at Brock University, a dynamic group with whom it is a pleasure to work. My students in Ulysses seminars and those in the Finnegans Wake reading groups I have organized (a verb that I doubt is apt) over the past several years have enriched my own ideas about those books and what we do with them. My research assistant Amber Halkes, a veteran of both of those environments, helped lay the foundations for the appendix of this book. Customary but always deserved and sincere thanks too to Stephen Cain.

Some chapters, or portions of them, have previously appeared, sometimes in slightly different forms, in scholarly journals and essay collections. Misquoting Joyce ( were presented as talks at the Joyce Symposium in Dublin and at the Joyce Summer School in Trieste, and I am grateful for the interest shown and the subsequent discussions produced by those audiences.

A grant from the Humanities Research Institute (HRI) at Brock University helped jolt this project into a comprehensible shape. A couple of months spent as James M. Flaherty Visiting Professor at Trinity College Dublin, thanks to a generous fellowship from the Ireland Canada University Foundation (ICUF), with the assistance of the Government of Canada, gave me time to see it through to its completion. I am grateful to James Kelly and Amanda Hopkins at the ICUF, to Chris Morash at the School of English at TCD, and for the hospitality and patient assistance of Sarah Barry at the Long Room Hub.

My editors at the University of Toronto Press, Richard Ratzlaff and Barb Porter, are as patient as they are professional. I also extend my thanks to the two anonymous readers for the press, whose perceptive suggestions and corrections improved this book.

The ongoing patience and support of Clelia and Simone has proved more than useful, but in ways and at such lengths as it is useless to try to count. My thanks and love to both.