ABSTRACT
Mr. Stuart Gilbert has written a book about James Joyce. Dr. Oliver St. John Gogarty has written a letter on the same theme. The letter is short and the book is long. But shortness and longness are not measures of wisdom. Mr. Stuart Gilbert is obviously a professional literary critic and he is obviously not an Irishman. He is too solemn for that. Solemnity is not an Irish quality. An Englishman can be naturally solemn. And a typical Irishman is profoundly serious but rarely solemn. Moreover, Dr. Gogarty has this advantage over Stuart Gilbert: He is a Dubliner himself. He knew Mr. Joyce intimately and he is said to be the medical student whom Joyce presented as ‘Buck Mulligan’ in Ulysses.
