Were James Joyce to return to Dublin for a spell this Bloomsday, June 16th, you'd have to bet the first question fired his way would have nothing to do with the books. On the contrary, the odds are that the concerned citizen would be much more interested in a subject with which his family had some first-rate experience: housing crises.
As the story goes, travelling from house to house throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Joyce clan would hire a float, pile as much of their belongings on it as they could, and carry the rest. In later years the author's brother, Stanislaus Joyce, remembered "that at first two floats were needed, but eventually one was enough". Indeed, if things keep going the way they are, such a situation would not be inconceivable in the Dublin of today.
Despite rising mortgage rates, house prices continue to surge. Last summer, the international brokerage company, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, published a report claiming the mean house price in Dublin had swollen to 18 times the average yearly disposal income. Since then, a report from the ESRI showed the increase in house prices in the first four months of this year outstripped the corresponding figures for 1999. House values across Ireland grew by 6.6 per cent, compared with 4.6 per cent for the same period in 1999.
All of which might be well and good, were it not for the fact that the pace of development is threatening to gobble up the very buildings Joyce, at one stage or another, called his home. In property terms, the author's description of Ireland as "the old sow that eats her farrow" has never seemed more appropriate.
Fifty-nine years after the author's death, just two of an estimated 18 Joycean residences remain open to the public. The Martello Tower in Sandycove, where Joyce stayed briefly in 1904, houses the Joyce museum and opens its doors through the summer months. Number 1 Martello Terrace in Bray - currently owned by Labour TD, Liz McManus - opens to the public one day a week. A third house, 23 Castlewood Avenue in Rathmines, where Joyce's family lived from 1884 to 1887, is listed, but not on view.
Most however, such as 14 Fitzgibbon Street (just off Mountjoy Square), described by Joyce's biographer Richard Ellman as "the last of their good addresses", or 17 North Richmond Street, a house in which much of the short story `Araby', is set, are now owner-occupied or divided into flats. Another house, at 44 Fontenoy Street, where the author spent three months in 1909, sold in April of last year for more than £150,000.
The apparent lack of continuity here underscores Ireland's schizophrenic attitude towards the preservation of its literary buildings. On one hand, houses associated with Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw in Dublin have been marked with plaques and in some cases converted to literary museums. On the other, however, Lady Gregory's house in Coole Park, which had significant influence on Yeats's poetry and in which much of the Anglo-Irish literary revival was plotted, was demolished even before Yeats had died. Similarly, Elizabeth Bowen's home in Cork has long since disappeared.
What's more, as the law stands, there is no provision to list or protect buildings regarded as being of significant literary interest. "We don't list a building for its association with historical events, literary references or authors per se," says Dublin Corporation's chief planning officer, Pat McDonnell. The reason, he says, is that though many buildings in the city may have hosted important events, far fewer possess intrinsic importance in themselves. "It's an airy-fairy area - who decides on the importance of an author or an event?"
McDonnell has a point. In his works, Joyce documented a jungle of names and addresses in Dublin, and though many of his characters were based on living people, they were often mentioned only briefly, or engaging in fictional activities. Does that mean their houses should be preserved too?
Number 7 Eccles Street, razed in the 1970s and currently the site of the Mater Private Hospital, is a case in point. Famous as Leopold and Molly Bloom's home address in Ulysses, the connection with Joyce himself is purely fictional. If every such association were to result in a compulsory listing, surely the resultant squeeze for planners, investors and developers would only serve to exacerbate the city's current housing crisis?
However, conservation bodies such as An Taisce and Dublin Civic Trust are adamant that buildings of sufficient literary or cultural interest should be eligible for listing. "I don't think anybody has made a proper submission (of Joycean buildings)," says Ian Lumley, of Dublin Civic Trust. "It's very frustrating. A lot of people talk about it in pubs after a house has been demolished, but it's no use then - the deed is done. It's a constant irritation."
Demolition is the worst case scenario, but it has happened. Number 2 Millbourne Avenue in Drumcondra, Joyce's seventh home, was controversially knocked down in November 1998 - although planning permission allowed for its redevelopment into apartments. Mullingar House in Chapelizod was recently gutted and re-roofed by its new owners. The pub features centrally in Finnegans Wake, where the hero, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, is described as its owner. Numbers 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain Street, the tight row of Georgian houses which once comprised Barney Kiernan's pub, setting for the Cyclops episode of Ulysses, have been demolished. Since late 1999, a nondescript apartment scheme stands in their place, nameless.
Of course, the fact that Joyce's family's nomadic trawl through the suburbs of Dublin took in so many houses - some of which they occupied for no more than a few months - has further irritated the issue. To preserve 18 homes, peppered at random throughout the city, would require a serious amount of juggling where issues of zoning and ownership were concerned. A head-wrecking task at best - not to mention a fiercely expensive one.
That so much shifting went on was largely due to the colourful life John Joyce, the author's father, chose to lead. In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, John Joyce is described as "a medical student, an oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a storyteller, somebody's secretary, something in a distillery, a tax-gatherer, a bankrupt and at present a praiser of his own past".
Each fresh move followed on the heels of his down-spiralling fortunes, which, though substantial at first, fell to earth at an embarrassing rate. Hence the family's difficulties at 7 St Peter's Terrace, Phibsborough, where the author lived between 1902 and 1904. "The move was ill-advised in every way," according to biographer, Richard Ellman. "It plunged John Joyce into such financial discomfort that he took an immediate mortgage of £200 on the house, then on December 18 another of £50, on April 24, 1903 another of £50, and on November of that year the last of £65. The family remained at St Peter's Terrace until May 26, 1905, when they sold what remained of their interest in the house and moved once more."
The difficulty facing families today is similar - even if they have more to do with an exponential rise in house prices than "colourful" lifestyles (though Dublin undoubtedly boasts its fair share of those, too). Could one boldly suggest taking a leaf from John Joyce's own book? He was, after all, a man not averse to manipulating landlords.
"One dextrous method he used to forestall eviction for non-payment of rent was to offer to leave voluntarily," according to Ellman. "Thereby sparing the landlord legal costs, if the landlord would kindly oblige with a receipt for the rent which had not been paid. Usually the landlord consented, and John Joyce would then exhibit the receipt to another landlord to persuade him to take them in."
While such adventures undoubtedly make entertaining reading, for planning officials almost 100 years down the line, the results are frustrating. "History comes in bursts in this country," says McDonnell. "Throughout the 1920s, for example, so many buildings would have hosted meetings or gatherings of instrumental figures - from the Irish Republican Brotherhood and what have you - but would have had no intrinsic importance in themselves. Who decides on the importance of an author or an event?"
Well, Dublin Tourism seems to be in no doubt. The streets of the capital are lined with bronze plaques celebrating the various meanderings of Leopold Bloom, and the author's bespectacled image has been peddled abroad as a potent symbol of Ireland's literary heritage for some time.
"Maybe the houses could come under the remit of residential preservation schemes," McDonnell offers. "But that would be coincidental. If a Joycean trail or a tourist slant were introduced, it might be easier, but if it's an indifferent building architecturally speaking, then the Corporation is quite upfront about where it stands."
All is not lost, however. "There's all sorts of remarkable survivals," according to Lumley. "Sweeney's Pharmacy, for instance - virtually unchanged since its appearance in Ulysses." Mulligan's Pub on Poolbeg Street remains intact too, still boasting the snug in which much of the short story, Counterparts, was set. Other buildings with Joycean connections - Belvedere College for example - are in little danger of disappearing, due to their architectural credentials.
Where the houses are concerned, though, the debate rages. Some, such as 41 Brighton Square West in Rathgar, where the author lived after his birth until 1884, seem to cry out for protection. Others, like 5 Strand Road, Sandymount, were graced with the great man's presence for all of two days.
As for how one might climb down from the proverbial Bloomsday barstool and go about tackling the issue of literary preservation, we'll have to wait and see. Nine thousand buildings fall within Dublin Corporation's jurisdiction, and, according to the man responsible for maintaining that database, senior planning executive, Rob Goodbody: "there's no way of researching 9,000 buildings one by one to ascertain whether they have literary or historic associations."
Or is there? Joyce after all, had a habit of turning bad odds into literature. Like him, could we not learn to pick our way among the family ruins, "as nimbly as an archaeologist"?