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“OMNIUM GATHERUM”

231

obstacles, and past glories, traps. The more Crawford remains

dissonantly invested in nostalgia, the less able he is to look

forward. A newspaperman is supposed to deal with “news,” yet

Crawford is preoccupied with the old. Unable to revive past

glories, nor to modernize the paper’s journalism

where this

modernization may lead to is another matter

Crawford falls

to alcoholism and cynicism. He may curse his profession (Joyce,

1986: 113), but in this new, competitive age he will soon be

eliminated if he fails to adapt. Kershner surmises that

Crawford’s dismissal of Bloom may be rooted in his uneasiness

with the notion that advertising income will gradually replace

sales and subscriptions as the main financial support of

newspapers: “Much as he might wish to demand that

advertisers like Keyes kiss his royal Irish arse . . . under modern

economic pressures the reverse is more likely to happen”

(2010: 104). Ironically enough, Crawford has inadvertently

assimilated ad phrasing and endorsed the significance of

advertising. In his description of Gallaher’s device, the editor

exclaims: “History! . . . Out of an advertisement” (Joyce, 1986:

113). Not only does the exclamation sound like an ad slogan,

but the near juxtaposition of “history” and “advertisement”

suggests the great import of advertising in modern Irish history.

However much he dislikes the emerging ad industry, Crawford

has been ensnared in its web, and yet he would passively resent

and resist advertising rather than actively turn it to his and the

paper’s advantage.

Indulging in past glories as he does, Crawford is

hopelessly submerged in historical confusion such that his

version of history tends to be distorted. When attempting to

recruit Stephen to the pressgang, the editor tells the story of

the great Gallaher: “That was in eightyone, sixth of May, time

of the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before you

were born, I suppose” (Joyce, 1986: 112). The Phoenix Park

murders occurred not in 1881 but in 1882, the year of