Zack Bowen

When we think of Zack Bowen, we think of a giant—Gargantua and Pantagruel come to mind, or the huge conspirator who went by the name of Sunday from Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. Consider Zack’s awesome vita: ten books; five recordings of material from Ulysses, and editor of two more; seventy-one articles; one major monograph and the co-editorship of A Companion to Joyce Studies; two review articles; three annotated bibliographies; and forty-six major reviews. As for administration and service to James Joyce, it almost seems as if the giant Zack was, for many years, bearing most of the Joyce industry upon his shoulders. He occupied five major editorial positions, as well as editing the Florida James Joyce Series for ten years, the Critical Issues in British Literature series for fourteen years, and the James Joyce Literary Supplement from 1994 onward. He was President of the James Joyce Society for nine years, a member of the Board of Trustees of the International James Joyce Foundation for twenty-two years, and its president for five years. He was also chairman of three major English departments. Phew! (to quote FW 10.24) Zack was a giant in other ways, physically at least, and also in spirit. He was a big man, with a great resounding voice. I can still hear his huge laughter sounding for minutes at a time at some comic aspect of life or literature. With his great sense of the comic, Zack was the ideal Joyce critic because Joyce felt himself to be a master of the comic in literature. However, Zack was the ideal Joyce critic in another way: he was a master of music, of professional quality. Two of his books were on Joyce and music, and his recording for Folkways Records of five chapters of Ulysses was filled with his lilting tenor voice. As he himself wrote: