Weaving Joyce’s Galway story

Galway should develop a Joycean version of the Wild Atlantic Way – a mindscape of the places around the city and county associated with James Joyce and his Galway-born wife Nora Barnacle – to reinforce just how big a role the area played in the author’s life and work.

That was the challenged laid down by former RTE Western Editor Jim Fahy, as he launched Joyce County, a new book from his RTE News colleague and Oranmore native Ray Burke in NUIG’s Aula Maxima this week.

The veteran journalist highlighted, for example, the well-known role both Rahoon and Oughterard cemeteries played in Joyce’s iconic short story, the Dead.

But he also pointed out that Joyce’s association with Galway was both considerably longer and deeper than his time spent in the famous Martello Tower owned by Oliver St John Gogarty in Sandycove, made famous through its role in Ulysses.

The author himself said that Joyce spent more time in Galway than anywhere else in Ireland in the weeks before he embarked on permanent exile to Europe – but even before that, through Nora Barnacle, he came to know the people and the place.

Ironically Joyce County was launched last Tuesday, 104 years ago to the day that Joyce had walked the streets of Galway, bought a postcard of an old Claddagh fisherman and sent it to friends in Europe with the single line – Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man.

The book launched was attended by a host of Ray Burke’s current and former RTE colleagues, including former Head of News Ed Mulhall, former RTE Director General and founding Ceannasaí of TG4 Cathal Goan, Mid-West correspondent Cathy Halloran, South-East correspondent Damien Tiernan, Western correspondent Pat McGrath, Regional Reporter Teresa Mannion, former Agriculture correspondent Joe O’Brien, TG4’s Suin Nic Gearailt, and RTE Galway staff Orla Nix and Roslyn Martyn.

Also out in force were the Oranmore man’s former NUIG and Collingwood Cup team-mates, James O’Toole, Mike Clarke, Owen Kennedy and Austin Molloy, along with the driving force behind soccer at the college for so many years, Profesor Liam Spillane.

The guests also included the Principal of his old Bish school Ciaran Doyle with Board of Management chairman Myles McHugh.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.