Buck Mulligan
Encyclopedia
Malachi "Buck" Mulligan is a fictional character
in James Joyce
's novel Ulysses
. He appears most prominently in episode 1 (Telemachus
), and is the subject of the novel's famous first sentence:
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
and Panama hat
. His facial expressions often shift rapidly, and he is prone to sudden, energetic movements.
with a cynical view of the human condition, which he describes as "a mockery and beastly". Paradoxically, he is also the most consistently cheerful character in Ulysses, and is portrayed as being in constant pursuit of the next opportunity to eat, drink, and make merry. He is widely regarded as a hero
for having saved men from drowning
, and appears to be well liked by all the characters in the book, with the exception of Simon Dedalus
(who dismisses him as a "bastard" and a "contaminated doubledyed ruffian"), and, to a lesser extent, Leopold Bloom
.
Mulligan is an avid classicist and espouses the belief that Ireland ought to be "Hellenized
". His speeches contain a barrage of quotations from poets (notably Swinburne
and Whitman
), popular songs, and self-composed lines of parody
and ribaldry
. He also seems to admire the philosophy of Nietzsche, referring to himself as a "hyperborean" and (more facetiously) "the Ubermensch
." He expresses disdain for the Celtic Revival
when in the company of Stephen Dedalus
, but is socially active in Dublin's literary circles.
Mulligan's finances appear to be at least partially dependent on the generosity of a wealthy, pious aunt; he is also mentioned as having a father who was a "counter-jumper" (i.e. sales clerk), a mother, and a brother.
, but his acquaintance with Stephen Dedalus has been of some substantial duration by the start of Ulysses
. The pair share quarters at the Sandycove Martello Tower, whose twelve-pound yearly rent the chronically impecunious Stephen has somehow contrived to pay.
Mulligan's attitude towards Stephen in conversation is both playful and patronising; he alternately teases and compliments Stephen's physical appearance, and refers to him by such epithets as "Kinch" (in evocation of a knife-blade), "Wandering Aengus
" (a dual reference to the poetry of W.B. Yeats and to Stephen's demeanor whilst drunk), and "dogsbody
". He is frequently generous with Stephen, lending him money and clothing, but also carelessly makes free with Stephen's own possessions and funds, importunities which Stephen seems to accept out of a sense of obligation. Mulligan also injures Stephen with ill-timed remarks about Stephen's late mother and his conduct towards her. Though Stephen's mother has been dead for over a year, Stephen has seemingly never vocalized any grievances to Mulligan concerning these remarks until the opening chapter of Ulysses.
Stephen, meanwhile, has come to regard Mulligan as an antagonist, privately referring to him as "mine enemy." He interprets a request for the Tower key at the end of chapter one as an attempt by Mulligan to "usurp" the Tower from him, and eventually resolves to part company with Mulligan altogether. Stephen also harbors feelings of insecurity over Mulligan's physical courage and fearlessness, traits which Stephen feels that he himself does not possess.
with his shaving-bowl. He then calls Stephen Dedalus up to the roof to keep him company while he shaves. During their discussion, it is revealed that Mulligan has recently been to Oxford
and has brought back an English friend, Haines, to stay at the Tower. Stephen, who has been wakened in the night by Haines's violent nightmares, threatens to leave the Tower if Haines remains there. Mulligan claims to dislike Haines, but seems reluctant to evict him, as he apparently hopes to wheedle some money out of him before his visit is over. The conversation later turns to the subject of Stephen Dedalus's late mother, and Stephen, after some prodding from his companion, reveals that he has been nursing a year-long grievance against Mulligan, whom he overheard referring to Mrs. Dedalus as "beastly dead" shortly after her passing. Mulligan is at first confused, then irritated and embarrassed by this accusation, but quickly recovers his joie de vivre. During breakfast he tries and fails to get Stephen to assist him in borrowing money from Haines, and subsequently arranges to meet Stephen at a pub called The Ship at half past twelve, where he intends to buy them all drinks with Stephen's teaching paycheck. He then asks Stephen to give him the key to the Tower and goes for his morning swim in the Forty Foot
.
Mulligan surfaces again in the chapter "Scylla and Charybdis" at the National Library, where Stephen is expounding his theories on Shakespeare. He playfully berates Stephen for failing to meet him at the pub and expresses his suspicion that Leopold Bloom
, whom he has seen ogling the buttocks of the classical statues in the adjoining National Museum, is a sodomite with homosexual designs on Stephen. He then waits for Stephen to finish his discussion, interrupting with occasional and largely irrelevant commentary, and composes a playbill for a mock-Shakespearean play entitled Everyman His Own Wife Or, A Honeymoon in the Hand: A National Immorality in Three Orgasms. At the end of the chapter he steers Stephen out of the library for a drink.
Mulligan puts in a brief appearance in "Wandering Rocks", where he meets Haines at a bakery and vocalizes the opinion that Stephen Dedalus is insane. He then attends an evening gathering at the home of George Moore
, from which he is seen leaving during the rainstorm in "Oxen of the Sun", and joins Stephen, Leopold Bloom
, and others in the cafeteria of Holles Hospital, where he expounds on an entrepreneurial scheme to offer his personal fertilization services to willing women and gives an account of Haines's intoxicated behavior at the soiree he has recently left. At some stage during the medical students' ensuing drunken romp through Dublin, Mulligan meets Haines at Westland Row Station and takes the night train back to Sandycove
, leaving Stephen in the lurch.
, a close companion with whom James Joyce fell out shortly before leaving Ireland
. Joyce formed the intention of modeling a character on Gogarty very early in his writing career; an entry on Gogarty in his 1909 Trieste
notebook contains a number of phrases that would later be used in Ulysses, and two Stephen Hero
-era character sketches feature subjects (called "Goggins" and "Doherty") who closely resemble Mulligan.
Various details of Mulligan's character parallel those of his real-life inspiration. Gogarty was a medical student
at the time of his acquaintance with Joyce; he had also studied classics at Trinity
, had been to Oxford
, was known to have saved men from drowning
, and was friendly with George Moore
. The authorship of one of Mulligan's songs, "The Ballad of Joking Jesus
", can be traced to Gogarty. Mulligan's full name, "Malachi Roland St. John Mulligan", contains allusions to Gogarty; in addition to sharing one of the same middle names, their full names have the same metrical arrangement, and "Roland" recalls Gogarty's first name by its popular association with the phrase "a Roland for an Oliver." A 1907 letter from Joyce to his brother stating that "OG's mother is 'beastly dead'" may also indicate that Gogarty, like Mulligan, used this phrase in reference to Joyce's own mother.
Gogarty also resided for a time in the Sandycove Martello Tower; unlike Mulligan, however, he paid the Tower's yearly rent himself. He had originally inquired after renting the Tower with an eye to sharing it with Joyce, who was in need of a place to live while he worked on Stephen Hero
, but the plan for cohabitation fell through after the pair quarreled in August 1904. Joyce, however, did stay at the Tower for six days in September, together with Gogarty and an Oxford
friend who became the inspiration for Haines.
Contemporaries of Joyce and Gogarty, on reading Ulysses, differed over the extent to which Buck Mulligan was a fair and accurate portrayal of Oliver Gogarty. Gogarty himself, though he held largely negative views on Joyce's work, once wrote positively of his role in Ulysses: "When [Joyce] paid me the only kind of compliment he ever paid, and that is to mention a person in his writings, he described me shaving on the top of the tower. In fact, I am the only character in all his works who washes, shaves, and swims." Padraic Colum
felt that Buck Mulligan, in addition to being an accurate portrait Gogarty's distinctive speaking style and mannerisms, was in fact "much more alive than Oliver Gogarty in his later years", while Seán Ó Faoláin
disagreed, saying that "Joyce did [Gogarty] an immense and cruel injustice in Ulysses by presenting him to posterity as something approaching the nature of an insensitive lout whose only function in life was to offset the exquisite sensitivity and delicacy of Stephen Dedalus."
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
in James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's novel Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
. He appears most prominently in episode 1 (Telemachus
Telemachus
Telemachus is a figure in Greek mythology, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, and a central character in Homer's Odyssey. The first four books in particular focus on Telemachus' journeys in search of news about his father, who has been away at war...
), and is the subject of the novel's famous first sentence:
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
Physical appearance
Buck Mulligan is described as having a "face... equine in its length", a "sullen oval jowl", a "strong wellknit trunk", "light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak", "even white teeth", and "smokeblue mobile eyes." He begins the morning in a yellow dressing-gown; later he dons a distinctive primrose waistcoatWaistcoat
A waistcoat or vest is a sleeveless upper-body garment worn over a dress shirt and necktie and below a coat as a part of most men's formal wear, and as the third piece of the three-piece male business suit.-Characteristics and use:...
and Panama hat
Panama hat
A Panama hat is a traditional brimmed hat of Ecuadorian origin that is made from the plaited leaves of the toquilla straw plant...
. His facial expressions often shift rapidly, and he is prone to sudden, energetic movements.
Personality
Mulligan is a medical studentMedical Student
Medical Student may refer to:*Someone studying at medical school*Medical Student Newspaper, a UK publication...
with a cynical view of the human condition, which he describes as "a mockery and beastly". Paradoxically, he is also the most consistently cheerful character in Ulysses, and is portrayed as being in constant pursuit of the next opportunity to eat, drink, and make merry. He is widely regarded as a hero
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
for having saved men from drowning
Drowning
Drowning is death from asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia....
, and appears to be well liked by all the characters in the book, with the exception of Simon Dedalus
Simon Dedalus
Simon Dedalus is a fictional character in two works by James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. He is the father of Stephen Dedalus, a principal character in both books, and a friend of Leopold Bloom, the hero of Ulysses...
(who dismisses him as a "bastard" and a "contaminated doubledyed ruffian"), and, to a lesser extent, Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom is the fictional protagonist and hero of James Joyce's Ulysses. His peregrinations and encounters in Dublin on 16 June 1904 mirror, on a more mundane and intimate scale, those of Ulysses/Odysseus in The Odyssey....
.
Mulligan is an avid classicist and espouses the belief that Ireland ought to be "Hellenized
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
". His speeches contain a barrage of quotations from poets (notably Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
and Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
), popular songs, and self-composed lines of parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
and ribaldry
Ribaldry
Ribaldry is humorous entertainment that ranges from bordering on indelicacy to gross indecency. It is also referred to as "bawdiness", "gaminess" or "bawdry"....
. He also seems to admire the philosophy of Nietzsche, referring to himself as a "hyperborean" and (more facetiously) "the Ubermensch
Übermensch
The Übermensch is a concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche posited the Übermensch as a goal for humanity to set for itself in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra ....
." He expresses disdain for the Celtic Revival
Celtic Revival
Celtic Revival covers a variety of movements and trends, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries, which drew on the traditions of Celtic literature and Celtic art, or in fact more often what art historians call Insular art...
when in the company of Stephen Dedalus
Stephen Dedalus
Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce's literary alter ego, appearing as the protagonist and antihero of his first, semi-autobiographical novel of artistic existence A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and an important character in Joyce's Ulysses...
, but is socially active in Dublin's literary circles.
Mulligan's finances appear to be at least partially dependent on the generosity of a wealthy, pious aunt; he is also mentioned as having a father who was a "counter-jumper" (i.e. sales clerk), a mother, and a brother.
Relationship with Stephen Dedalus
Mulligan does not appear as a character in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel by James Joyce, first serialised in the magazine The Egoist from 1914 to 1915, and published first in book format in 1916 by B. W. Huebsch, New York. The first English edition was published by the Egoist Press in February 1917...
, but his acquaintance with Stephen Dedalus has been of some substantial duration by the start of Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
. The pair share quarters at the Sandycove Martello Tower, whose twelve-pound yearly rent the chronically impecunious Stephen has somehow contrived to pay.
Mulligan's attitude towards Stephen in conversation is both playful and patronising; he alternately teases and compliments Stephen's physical appearance, and refers to him by such epithets as "Kinch" (in evocation of a knife-blade), "Wandering Aengus
Aengus
In Irish mythology, Óengus , Áengus , or Aengus or Aonghus , is a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann and probably a god of love, youth and poetic inspiration...
" (a dual reference to the poetry of W.B. Yeats and to Stephen's demeanor whilst drunk), and "dogsbody
Dogsbody
A dogsbody, or less commonly dog robber in the Royal Navy, is a junior officer, or more generally someone who does drudge work. A rough American equivalent would be a "gofer" or a "grunt", a "lackey", or "toady".-History:...
". He is frequently generous with Stephen, lending him money and clothing, but also carelessly makes free with Stephen's own possessions and funds, importunities which Stephen seems to accept out of a sense of obligation. Mulligan also injures Stephen with ill-timed remarks about Stephen's late mother and his conduct towards her. Though Stephen's mother has been dead for over a year, Stephen has seemingly never vocalized any grievances to Mulligan concerning these remarks until the opening chapter of Ulysses.
Stephen, meanwhile, has come to regard Mulligan as an antagonist, privately referring to him as "mine enemy." He interprets a request for the Tower key at the end of chapter one as an attempt by Mulligan to "usurp" the Tower from him, and eventually resolves to part company with Mulligan altogether. Stephen also harbors feelings of insecurity over Mulligan's physical courage and fearlessness, traits which Stephen feels that he himself does not possess.
Role in Ulysses
Buck Mulligan is the first character to appear in Ulysses, opening the novel by ascending to the top of the Martello Tower and performing a parody of the MassMass (liturgy)
"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...
with his shaving-bowl. He then calls Stephen Dedalus up to the roof to keep him company while he shaves. During their discussion, it is revealed that Mulligan has recently been to Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
and has brought back an English friend, Haines, to stay at the Tower. Stephen, who has been wakened in the night by Haines's violent nightmares, threatens to leave the Tower if Haines remains there. Mulligan claims to dislike Haines, but seems reluctant to evict him, as he apparently hopes to wheedle some money out of him before his visit is over. The conversation later turns to the subject of Stephen Dedalus's late mother, and Stephen, after some prodding from his companion, reveals that he has been nursing a year-long grievance against Mulligan, whom he overheard referring to Mrs. Dedalus as "beastly dead" shortly after her passing. Mulligan is at first confused, then irritated and embarrassed by this accusation, but quickly recovers his joie de vivre. During breakfast he tries and fails to get Stephen to assist him in borrowing money from Haines, and subsequently arranges to meet Stephen at a pub called The Ship at half past twelve, where he intends to buy them all drinks with Stephen's teaching paycheck. He then asks Stephen to give him the key to the Tower and goes for his morning swim in the Forty Foot
Forty Foot
The Forty Foot is a promontory on the southern tip of Dublin Bay at Sandycove, County Dublin, Ireland, from which people have been swimming in the Irish Sea all year round for some 250 years.-Use:...
.
Mulligan surfaces again in the chapter "Scylla and Charybdis" at the National Library, where Stephen is expounding his theories on Shakespeare. He playfully berates Stephen for failing to meet him at the pub and expresses his suspicion that Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom is the fictional protagonist and hero of James Joyce's Ulysses. His peregrinations and encounters in Dublin on 16 June 1904 mirror, on a more mundane and intimate scale, those of Ulysses/Odysseus in The Odyssey....
, whom he has seen ogling the buttocks of the classical statues in the adjoining National Museum, is a sodomite with homosexual designs on Stephen. He then waits for Stephen to finish his discussion, interrupting with occasional and largely irrelevant commentary, and composes a playbill for a mock-Shakespearean play entitled Everyman His Own Wife Or, A Honeymoon in the Hand: A National Immorality in Three Orgasms. At the end of the chapter he steers Stephen out of the library for a drink.
Mulligan puts in a brief appearance in "Wandering Rocks", where he meets Haines at a bakery and vocalizes the opinion that Stephen Dedalus is insane. He then attends an evening gathering at the home of George Moore
George Moore (novelist)
George Augustus Moore was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family who lived at Moore Hall in Carra, County Mayo. He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s...
, from which he is seen leaving during the rainstorm in "Oxen of the Sun", and joins Stephen, Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom is the fictional protagonist and hero of James Joyce's Ulysses. His peregrinations and encounters in Dublin on 16 June 1904 mirror, on a more mundane and intimate scale, those of Ulysses/Odysseus in The Odyssey....
, and others in the cafeteria of Holles Hospital, where he expounds on an entrepreneurial scheme to offer his personal fertilization services to willing women and gives an account of Haines's intoxicated behavior at the soiree he has recently left. At some stage during the medical students' ensuing drunken romp through Dublin, Mulligan meets Haines at Westland Row Station and takes the night train back to Sandycove
Sandycove
Sandycove is an area of Dublin, Ireland. It is south of Dún Laoghaire and Glasthule, but north of Dalkey.Sandycove is well-known for its gentlemen's bathing place, the Forty Foot, which in the past afforded a quiet swimming haven for males only...
, leaving Stephen in the lurch.
Inspiration
The character of Buck Mulligan is partly based on Oliver St. John GogartyOliver St. John Gogarty
Oliver Joseph St John Gogarty was an Irish poet, author, otolaryngologist, athlete, politician, and well-known conversationalist, who served as the inspiration for Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's novel Ulysses....
, a close companion with whom James Joyce fell out shortly before leaving Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
. Joyce formed the intention of modeling a character on Gogarty very early in his writing career; an entry on Gogarty in his 1909 Trieste
Trieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
notebook contains a number of phrases that would later be used in Ulysses, and two Stephen Hero
Stephen Hero
Stephen Hero is a posthumously-published autobiographical novel by Irish author James Joyce. Its published form reflects only a portion of an original manuscript, part of which was lost. Many of its ideas were used in composing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.-External links:*...
-era character sketches feature subjects (called "Goggins" and "Doherty") who closely resemble Mulligan.
Various details of Mulligan's character parallel those of his real-life inspiration. Gogarty was a medical student
Medical Student
Medical Student may refer to:*Someone studying at medical school*Medical Student Newspaper, a UK publication...
at the time of his acquaintance with Joyce; he had also studied classics at Trinity
Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...
, had been to Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, was known to have saved men from drowning
Drowning
Drowning is death from asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia....
, and was friendly with George Moore
George Moore (novelist)
George Augustus Moore was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family who lived at Moore Hall in Carra, County Mayo. He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s...
. The authorship of one of Mulligan's songs, "The Ballad of Joking Jesus
The Ballad of Japing Jesus
"The Song of the Cheerful Jesus" is a poem by Oliver St. John Gogarty. It was written around Christmas of 1904 and was later published in modified form as "The Ballad of Joking Jesus" in James Joyce's Ulysses.-Original text:...
", can be traced to Gogarty. Mulligan's full name, "Malachi Roland St. John Mulligan", contains allusions to Gogarty; in addition to sharing one of the same middle names, their full names have the same metrical arrangement, and "Roland" recalls Gogarty's first name by its popular association with the phrase "a Roland for an Oliver." A 1907 letter from Joyce to his brother stating that "OG's mother is 'beastly dead'" may also indicate that Gogarty, like Mulligan, used this phrase in reference to Joyce's own mother.
Gogarty also resided for a time in the Sandycove Martello Tower; unlike Mulligan, however, he paid the Tower's yearly rent himself. He had originally inquired after renting the Tower with an eye to sharing it with Joyce, who was in need of a place to live while he worked on Stephen Hero
Stephen Hero
Stephen Hero is a posthumously-published autobiographical novel by Irish author James Joyce. Its published form reflects only a portion of an original manuscript, part of which was lost. Many of its ideas were used in composing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.-External links:*...
, but the plan for cohabitation fell through after the pair quarreled in August 1904. Joyce, however, did stay at the Tower for six days in September, together with Gogarty and an Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
friend who became the inspiration for Haines.
Contemporaries of Joyce and Gogarty, on reading Ulysses, differed over the extent to which Buck Mulligan was a fair and accurate portrayal of Oliver Gogarty. Gogarty himself, though he held largely negative views on Joyce's work, once wrote positively of his role in Ulysses: "When [Joyce] paid me the only kind of compliment he ever paid, and that is to mention a person in his writings, he described me shaving on the top of the tower. In fact, I am the only character in all his works who washes, shaves, and swims." Padraic Colum
Padraic Colum
Padraic Colum was an Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer, playwright, children's author and collector of folklore. He was one of the leading figures of the Celtic Revival.-Early life:...
felt that Buck Mulligan, in addition to being an accurate portrait Gogarty's distinctive speaking style and mannerisms, was in fact "much more alive than Oliver Gogarty in his later years", while Seán Ó Faoláin
Seán Ó Faoláin
Seán Proinsias Ó Faoláin was an Irish short story writer. He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1986.Born as John Francis Whelan in Cork City, County Cork, Ireland, Sean Ó Faoláin wrote his first stories in the 1920s. Through 90 stories, written over a period of 60 years, Ó Faoláin charts the...
disagreed, saying that "Joyce did [Gogarty] an immense and cruel injustice in Ulysses by presenting him to posterity as something approaching the nature of an insensitive lout whose only function in life was to offset the exquisite sensitivity and delicacy of Stephen Dedalus."