Michael Lewis GRODEN

1947 - 2021

MICHAEL LEWIS GRODEN MAY 30, 1947, BUFFALO, NEW YORK - MARCH 25, 2021, TORONTO, ONTARIO Michael Lewis Groden (Mike), Distinguished University Professor Emeritus Department of English and Writing Studies, at Western University, died peacefully on Thursday, March 25, 2021 in the presence of his wife of twenty-nine years, and friend of sixty years, poet and writer Molly Peacock, at Princess Margaret Cancer Center, Toronto. Memorial contributions may be made in his memory at The Michael Groden Fund for the UB James Joyce Collection, http://buffalo.edu/giving/groden. Born on May 30, 1947 to Maxine and Sheldon Groden in Buffalo, New York, he was an exceptional student, attending Dartmouth College (BA, 1969), beginning as a math major, but abandoning math after studying James Joyce's Ulysses. His change was intertwined with a love story. In high school, Mike noticed the future poet and biographer Molly Peacock; they became boyfriend and girlfriend. After freshman year, the couple broke up. Then he encountered "the other Molly," the character of Molly Bloom, and discovered, as well a life-long model in Joyce's Jewish character, Leopold Bloom. Since that time, Michael Groden never stopped reading what has been called the novel of the twentieth century, sharing his lucid discoveries about the novel's structure and the humanity of its characters with scholars and the general audience. This includes his PhD dissertation at Princeton University, 1975, (which became his first book Ulysses in Progress); his editorship of the 63-volume James Joyce Archive; his position as a Professor of English at Western University in London, Ontario, for forty years; and his quarter century of James Joyce seminars at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92Y in New York City, where he lectured until three weeks before his death. Michael Groden was a dual citizen of Canada and the United States, a member of The Royal Society of Canada, the recipient of an honorary D.Litt degree from University College Dublin (2004), and the Hellmuth Prize for Research. He acted as a consultant to the National Library of Ireland in the acquisition of important Joyce manuscripts and co-edited The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory. More recently he was the author of Ulysses in Focus and a memoir, The Necessary Fiction: Life with James Joyce's Ulysses. Just before his death he was at work as one of the co-editors of The Unpublished Letters of James Joyce. Along with his career came a shadow, melanoma. He lived for forty years with the disease, developing the kind of relationship with cancer that a small, smart wiry boy might have with a grudgingly mystified class bully. Shortly before his first occurrence, at age thirty-three, he became a long-distance runner, running the Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto marathons-with a best time of 2 hours and 47 minutes. He also was a fierce badminton player, the possessor of a piquant sense of humor, and a cat whisperer with unique relationships with seven felines. Because he chose to die through the Medical Assistance in Dying process, a brilliant man was lucid till his last hour. Michael Groden is survived by his wife, whom he re-encountered and married in 1992, as well as by his brother, Joel Groden and his sister, Marcia Morath, both of Buffalo, New York. An international Zoom celebration of his life is planned between his birthday, May 30 and Bloomsday, June 16.