Volume 10, Number 12 · June 20, 1968
Joyce Scholarship
By Marshall A. Best
In response to Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Adulterer
(February 29, 1968)
To the Editors:
Mr. Hodgart's discerning review of Giacomo Joyce commented, as some other reviewers have done, on Richard Ellmann's failure to mention the name of Amalia Popper Risolo in his introduction. No mystification was intended, and the Viking Press must take full responsibility. When the book went to press, we believed that Mrs. Risolo was still alive in Italy, and advised Ellmann that the inclusion of her name in connection with the complete story might be hurtful to her and might expose him and us to that new legal concept, "invasion of privacy," even though he had named her when he quoted fragments in his 1959 biography. We only learned later that she had died a few months earlier. The omission will be remedied, with further details about her friendship with Joyce, in any subsequent printing of the text with Ellmann's introduction.
Marshall A. Best
Chairman, Executive Committee
The Viking Press
New York City