On 2nd February the centenary of the publication of ULYSSES will be marked by informed and misinformed commentators in many countries. Much as the centenary of Michael Collins’s visit to Dublin Castle on 16th January has been. To borrow a Joycean expression, the misinformers would give you a Heartburn On Your Arse.
The publication of Ulysses on 2 February 1922 marked its author’s 40th Birthday, and I have special reason to remember the celebration of the centenary of his birth in 1982.
Because I had, been scribbling letter after letter to the Press Council which eventually and grudgingly upheld my complaint about a lying report in THE TIMES, and publication of its judgement coincided with the Joyce Centenary. It also coincided with the lying editor, Harold Evans, being given the award of EDITOR OF THE YEAR by the editors of papers with a similar code of ethics, televised that night.
A young, honest English journalist, had contacted me and prepared an article* accepted for publication by the New Statesman to coincide with the publication of the Press Council’s adjudication.
But the article was shelved because the magazine was devoting the space to the Joyce centenary.
A perfect cause for Heartburn!
* I still have the unpublished article somewhere among my souvenirs.
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