Yes, today is the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday!
I didn't know that until a few days ago. Although Ulysses was published in 1922, the day it chronicled (all 700+ pages of it) was June 16, 1904.
All these years, I've known about James Joyce's novel, but have never tried to read it. Seemed too much trouble, too many pages of experimental writing.
But this year, I decided to do something about it. Back in April, I'd found myself with some time on my hands in Charlottesville, Va. It was late one evening, and I'd found out that there was an overnight Ulysses reading on the UVA campus. Since I was staying nearby, I walked over, and with some difficulty, found the building where the event was taking place.
Unfortunately, the people reading aloud were not very good at dramatizing the text. Not that it's easy to do so with the lack of punctuation and run-on sentences that Joyce uses in this book, but still... it sounded as if the particular readers I'd chanced upon were reading from the phonebook. Booooorrrrring!
(I stayed about 10 minutes, and left.)
More recently, to better acquaint myself with James Joyce, I bought some audiocassettes of excerpts of his works. And borrowed a copy of Ulysses and a Cliff Notes pamphlet from the library.
Moreover, I've been thinking that it might be interesting to visit Dublin. The novel is set in Dublin, and there're all sorts of commemorative festivities going on there, this season. I'd never considered it before, but I recently discovered that the Irish airlines, Aer Lingus, flies to BWI. (I'd been trying to explore cheap ways of getting to Dresden and Prague, using European discount airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet.)
But why all this sudden interest in Bloomsday?
Well, it turns out that this is my birthday.
Happy birthday, to me!
Found your site from another blog and wanted to see what this was all about
Posted by: Steph J at November 6, 2004 10:33 PM