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“OMNIUM GATHERUM”
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solemn beardframed face. The broadcloth back
ascended each step: back. . . . Welts of flesh behind
on him. Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck.
(Joyce, 1986: 97)
Unlike the fictional Crawford who dominates the episode,
Brayden makes only a very brief appearance. The
representation of this figure seems conflicted: he is “stately”
and “solemn” on one hand, but “fat” and ludicrous on the
other. Moreover, he is steered by an umbrella, which, like a
scepter, or phallic symbol, could signify both his power
and
his
lack
—
he needs something to maintain his stateliness. The
conflicting representation of Brayden implies that the
pressman
—
as well as the press generally
—
is more ludicrous
than grand, more pompous than solemn, and more ineffectual
than powerful. As Bloom quips: “But will he save the
circulation?” (98). However much Brayden attempts to look
impressive, Bloom seems to suggest that his efforts to reverse
the decline of the
Freeman’s Journal
are incompetent. Kiberd
argues that Joyce uses the gusts of wind filling Crawford’s
offices “to evoke the flatulent rhetoric of much
Freeman
journalism” (2000: 467). Before entering Crawford’s office, in
fact, we sense the flatulence of the
Freeman
through the
caricature of its editor. It is interesting that Joyce differently
represents two editors: the one is drunken, nostalgic, and
incoherent; the other stately and swollen. Together, the
fictitious and factual editors speak to the status of the Irish
press: presentable on the outside, but corrupt within. Richard
Ellmann mentions that in 1903 Joyce intended to set up a
“newspaper of the continental type” in Dublin because he
considered its newspapers corrupt (1982: 140). If, as Kiberd
observes, Joyce has appropriated methods of the popular press
and cast himself as the editor working on the newspaper that is
Ulysses
(2000: 463), we may argue that it is his distrust and
dissatisfaction with pressmen that drives him to become an