Sounds like a good cautionary example for 'real artists ship'. If he had just declared his Joyce edition complete at some point, even if he felt it was radically incomplete, it would have likely superseded Gabler and the major errors which he hated so much, and he could've improved subsequent editions or others could've taken it on after he disappeared. But the perfect was the enemy of better, Gabler won by default, and now he's spent decades on something else entirely. Odds aren't good he'll finish that either.