Plenty of Preprosperousness

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• Plenty of Preprosperousness
• Jeffrey Drouin

With this issue comes another minor change in the James Joyce Quarterly's editorship. Readers will remember from the previous issue that Bob Spoo has taken an endowed professorship in Irish literature at Princeton University, which means that I am now the sole editor. It was a tremendous honor to work alongside Bob. He taught me much about seeing potential and bringing out the best in our colleagues' writing. I will miss our marathon working lunches at Roosevelt's and wish him the very best. The continuity of our journal was well prepared, of course, by the founding vision of Tom Staley, by Bob's first editorship, by Sean Latham's transformative twenty-one years at the helm, and then by the co-editorship of Bob and myself that began in 2022. As ever, Carol Kealiher's expertise and constant dedication to quality have made her our indispensable managing editor for more than three decades. And we are all supported by a team of graduate assistants—currently Elizabeth Bailey, Christian Barkman, Dennis Chu, Seona Kim, and Zachary Short—whose eagle eyes keep our Is dotted and Ts crossed, and reviewers' inboxes routinely filled with increasingly irksome deadline reminders. Special thanks are due to the continuing support of The University of Tulsa's President and Provost, Brad Carson and George Justice, as we embark on the sixty-first year of our journal with momentum and direction.

Looking forward, we are planning a number of special issues that will push Joyce studies into new and increasingly relevant areas. The next issue will focus on translation, which is enjoying a major resurgence in global literature today. It will soon be followed by a women's issue. Other planned topics include creative responses to and adaptations of Joyce's work, non-human intelligence, sustainability, Joyce and other authors, and reading groups. We very much encourage submissions in these areas and are eager to hear pitches for special issues on other topics. Please follow the submission procedure at the JJQ website to send us your proposals.

This number is a special issue on Joyce and personal relationships titled "Joyce When He's At Home." The play on Molly's request to know what metempsychosis means, in "Calypso," riffs on ways in which the following articles refract recurring concepts through personal relationships in Joyce's own life or in his work. In "A Cold Case of Irish Facts: Re(:)visiting John Stanislaus Joyce," Thomas O'Grady meticulously traces the history of the interview with Joyce's father, conducted by an unknown journalist, that Maria Jolas published [End Page 7] in 1949. O'Grady produces a capacious and detailed picture of the sources and subsequent uses of the interview, and the Irish cultural factors accounting for its discrepancies. Morris Beja investigates the "Silence, Friendship, and Cunning" by which Joyce's close friendships—often failed by betrayal real or imagined—affected the creation of Ulysses. In "The 'Cyclops' Episode and Fractured Irish Identity," Michael Patrick Gillespie examines the ways in which religion, friendship, and nationalism impose isolation or, at best, superficial acquaintance among men whose relationships stretch back many years—many of them recurring characters from Dubliners. John Gordon anchors his study of "Joyce and Dickens, Especially Martin Chuzzlewit" in their shared experience with irresponsible fathers who precipitated their families' misfortune. Onno Kosters explores Joyce's use of the occult—which seeks to communicate with the dead and enjoyed a resurgence after the World War I—in "'The Spirit Moving Him': Allan Kardec's Spiritisme in, and around, Joyce's Ulysses." Jack Rodgers's deft analysis of the paradox of utopianism in "Calling Forth the Future: Joyce and the Messianism of Absence" often hinges on the contradictions embodied in Bloom's most important relationships. The items in the Notes section similarly center on personal relationships: Brian Griffin's on the so-called "Last Aztecs" who performed during the nineteenth century and are referred to during Stephen and Bloom's rencontre in "Eumaeus," Norbert Lain's on the meaning of a liturgical term pertaining to Peter's denial of Jesus, and Emily Bell's recovering a meeting between Joyce and St. John Greer Ervine...