You may have read about the tussle between James Joyce‘s heirs — in particular, his grandson — and the scholars who want more and freer access to Joyce’s writings — including, of course, his personal writings.

Here’s a Globe and Mail article about it, linked today by Booksquare.

It’s an interesting conundrum, but on balance, I’m on the grandson’s side. I daresay he’s a curmudgeon. But I don’t believe, for a second, the claim made by those he’s fighting that this will “drive young scholars away from marvels of James Joyce’s writing.” That’s a red herring — it’s intended to make this sound like a noble fight, when really it’s just a bunch of guys who are irritated that there’s a bump in the road to prestige and tenure.

Joyce wrote books. He wrote them for the public. Anyone who wants to marvel at his writing can just read his books.

Ironic that deconstructionist scholarship opens the door to inhuman attitudes toward writers’ personal lives. Nobody can just leave Joyce’s books to stand as discreet works of art. Nooooo. They have to be dissected, all their parts pinned to a board and labeled and cross-referenced to minutiae about his personal life.

I nearly burned all my journals, once. I didn’t do it. But I might, yet. I can understand the impulse to frustrate the inappropriately curious, the people who assume an entitlement without regard to another’s dignity or privacy . . . or, even more heretical yet, another’s wish to control his own life’s narrative . . .