

240
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Usual blarney” (120). The air of gentility which he seeks to
belie in “Two Gallants” has disappeared in
Ulysses
. Kershner
argues that Lenehan’s “active and intrusive presence” in the
newspaper office suggests that it is “a place where spongers
and ne’er-do-wells congregate and are tolerated for their
entertainment value” (2010: 84). A sports reporter, Lenehan is
not an intruder in the office, but is unquestionably a sponger
and ne’er-do-well barely tolerated for his entertainment value.
As mentioned earlier, the Irish press has long played a
crucial part in the formation of national spirit; intellectuals
such as the Young Irelanders used the press as a channel for
advocating their ideals and directing popular aspirations of the
people. With the massive expansion of the newspaper industry
in the second half of the nineteenth century, the influence of
the press grew tremendously: Donovan observes that in
Ulysses
“people live and breathe newspaper typography” (2003: 533).
Exercising greater influence, one expects that the pressmen
would bear even greater responsibility for informing the
people. Nevertheless, the rapid expansion of journalism
resulted in a reduction in entry requirements to the field,
leading to a situation in which “any untrained scribbler calls
himself a journalist” (Dwan, 2008: 171). More alarming is the
degeneration
—
indeed loss
—
of the professional ethics of the
pressmen who work for personal gain, not in the service of the
public; also, as Joyce’s representations reveal, they were often
alcoholic, nostalgic, incompetent, vulgar, arrogant, and
obsequious
—
in a word, corrupt. Terence Killeen notes the
irony apparent in the
Evening Telegraph
office:
people existing in a cut-off world of their own,
unaware of anything outside the confines of their own
circle
—
and this despite ostensibly being the people
with their fingers on the pulse of public opinion.
(2004: 72)