Sir, - Michael MacCoisdealbh's letter (June 26th) is so full of absurdities and betrays such total ignorance of James Joyce that silence might be the most sensibly reply. But irritation is a great spur.
Leaving aside his curious use of the word "gentrification", the implication that Bloomsday is celebrated by "provincial immigrants" rather than native Dublin people is odd, to say the least, as if Dubs (his word) took no part in the proceedings. But the suggestion that Joyce hated Dublin and "despised its working class people" is nonsense. It would not be putting it to strongly to suggest that a large part of Joyce's oeuvre was a hymn of praise to his native place.
To say that there are no finished drafts of Joyce's works is again incorrect. What Mr MacCoisdealbh presumably has in mind is the multiplicity of manuscripts of Ulysses; this does not apply to the other works. To accuse Joyce, the perfectionist, of "copious grammatical errors" is again ridiculous, and to suggest that "the myth of literary genius" is based on the "indecipherable gaffes" in the manuscripts is simply silly.
Finally, could Mr MacCoisdealbh give us a single example in Joyce's work that could be construed as a vilification of Dublin and its people? Shite and onions, as Joyce himself would have said, what possessed the man to write the letter at all, and he with hardly a haporth of knowledge on the subject? - Yours, etc., Ronan Farren,
Killiney, Co Dublin.