To the Editor.—
As one who reluctantly set aside the study of James Joyce for that of medicine, I was delighted to encounter the recent article by J. B. Lyons, MD (241:1409, 1979), discussing his appreciation of Oliver St John Gogarty. However, I cannot accept the thesis of John P. Callan, MD, in the appended commentary, that the conflict between Joyce and Gogarty stemmed from social and familial rivalry; rather, these rivalries grew out of the professional and personal hostility between the two.The developing professional rivalry between the two young men competing for the favors and attentions of the Dublin literary aristocracy took a personal turn when Gogarty expelled Joyce from the Martello Tower lodgings they had shared, and which Joyce had originally secured; thus, Gogarty was (literal) Usurper, a role that Joyce believed Gogarty played in a literary as well as philosophical sense. This simmering hostility, interspersed with