Stephen Joyce, Last Living Descendant of James Joyce, Dies.

Stephen Joyce, the last living descendant of the great Irish author James Joyce, passed away in France two weeks ago at age 87. He is seen in the photo with his wife Solange. The couple had no children. He was the son of the author’s only son Giorgio.
Stephen was the fierce gatekeeper of the James Joyce literary legacy until Joyce’s copyright expired in most places at the end of 2011. Joycean scholars had fits with him. Hans Walter Gabler, who edited a popular critical edition of “Ulysses” in 1984, said of the grandson that “with refusals of permission and /or exorbitant fee requests, he terrorized scholars and critics as well as publishers into passivity and non-action in an attitude of ‘anticipatory obedience.’ ” President Michael D. Higgins of Ireland was kinder in his public statement after the death of Mr. Joyce, stating that he had been “deeply committed to what he saw was the special duty to defend the legacy of the Joyce family in literary and personal terms” although admitting that it was “not a task carried out in harmonious circumstances at all times.”

Talking Hot Stove League on a Cold Winter’s Night

There was quite a buzz at Max and Benny’s last evening. Cubs radio announcer Pat Hughes and the Score AM 670 radio baseball maven Bruce Levine were there to talk about the White Sox and Cubs. Back in the day this was called talking the Hot Stove League. The Iowa caucus fiasco happened the night before, and this was the evening of the State of the Union speech, but the 160 people who assembled at Max and Benny’s just wanted to talk baseball.
Will the Cubs really trade Kris Bryant? Will the Sox Luis Robert become the next Rickey Henderson? These were some of the burning questions that the Hot Stovers asked Pat and Bruce. I ran around the room with my mic chasing down the questions. I made sure that there was a nice balance of Sox and Cubs questions, as some of the Sox fans worried that Pat’s presence might result in a more favored status for the North Siders.
Although most of attendees, like myself, were from the Ernie Banks and Nellie Fox era, there were a couple of youngsters present who tossed out great questions. A young man answered a Cubs trivia question and won a pair of Cubs game tickets.
The ninety-minute program went by in a flash. Pat and Bruce, pros as they are, provided cogent insights and an impressive knowledge of the game. Nobody seemed to be rushing out early to see the end of the State of the Union speech.
All of us who were there last night left with the feeling that we experienced something very special. We walked out of the restaurant into the mid-winter cold heading to our cars with contented smiles, knowing that April is just around the corner.