Paris: John McGahern and the Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, yesterday received Tundish awards, given by an informal grouping of Irish intellectuals every Bloomsday.
The ceremony was held at Fouquet's, an elegant restaurant on the Champs-Élysées which was one of James Joyce's favourite haunts.
At times the celebration of Bloomsday felt more like a commiseration over the attitude of Stephen Joyce, the grandson in charge of the Joyce estate.
At the Centre Culturel Irlandais on Tuesday evening, Séamus Deane, the writer from Derry who teaches at Notre Dame University, the writer, Edna O'Brien, and the actor Stephen Rea, read from the works of Joyce's contemporaries, Robert Musil, Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust. Stephen Joyce denied them permission to quote his grandfather's work.
"Joyce wrote about possibilities of being Irish that were never realised," Mr Deane said. "It is something that can only be registered in a great work of art. Last night, we were talking about the greatest emancipatory text , and we couldn't read a word of it because of the Stephen Joyce handcuff. This is an example of how a work of art can be squeezed, asthmatised and asphyxiated into the notion of what constitutes copyright."
Helen Carey, the director of the Centre Culturel, sought permission for readings as part of the centre's three-day celebration of Bloomsday. A joint proposal, made with the prestigious French publisher, Gallimard, involved readings from the new French translation of Ulysses in different voices.
Though Stephen Joyce agreed to the Gallimard translation, he would not allow any readings, in English or French. "He refused any discussion," Ms Carey said. "It's disappointing because there's no real reason why."
Professor Kevin Whelan, an organiser of the Tundish award and director of Newman House, remembers working at the National Library in the 1980s. "Stephen Joyce used to call almost every day, trying to block someone looking at manuscripts," he said.
Pierre Joannon, the chairman of the Ireland Fund de France, recalled a meal at Fouquet's marking the centenary of James Joyce's birth. Stephen Joyce took exception to a speech by the British writer, Anthony Burgess.
The Tundish award derives its name from a discussion between Stephen Dedalus and the dean of students about the correct name for a funnel in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In creating the bronze spiral prize, the sculptor, Felim Egan, was inspired by a ziggurat tower he visited in Iraq before the war.