Happy Bloomsday - Belatedly!

I'm sorry. After all the Bloomsday shopping, Bloomsday parties, the local Bloomsday parade, Bloomsday cards, a letter to the editor to remind people to keep the Bloom in what some call B-Day, and the inevitable post-Bloomsday blues, I did not get around to writing this article to help you deepen your holiday experience on June 16th, Bloomsday. (Read to the end to find your Bloomsday presents!)

I enjoy my low-key commemoration of Bloomsday because Bloomsday is not commercialized, socialized, sanitized or even digitized. I enjoy Bloomsday simply because I choose to celebrate one of the most important books in my life and education.

What is Bloomsday?

On June 16, 1904, the great Irish novelist James Joyce went out for the first time with Nora Barnacle, who would become his wife. In 1914, he began work on Ulysses, which was published in 1922 and would eventually be ranked first on the Modern Library's list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century (list).

Joyce worked on the eighteen chapters of Ulysses--some 800 pages, some 265,000 words--for eight years, although it covers only eighteen hours (roughly an hour per chapter) in the lives of a handful of people in Joyce's native Dublin, Ireland... on June 16, 1904. Chief among these is one Leopold Bloom, and so, it is a tradition among lovers of Ulysses to commemorate June 16th as "Bloomsday," although there is no record of Joyce himself ever using the word. Perhaps it should be called Noraday, in honor of Joyce's long-suffering wife, especially since Ulysses ends with a glorious celebration of love between men and women.

Why Ulysses?

At least since the first publication of fragments of the novel in 1918, Ulysses has caused confusion, misunderstanding, and controversy. Yes, there are "dirty words" in it, and the celebration of human love includes some very human actions. But, since you can find much worse in less than an hour on the Internet, no one would wade through Joyce's 800 or so dense pages for "those parts," anymore than one would wade through the sixty-six chapters of the King James Version of the Bible (omitting the fourteen books of the Apocrypha) to find "those parts."

I first saw the brave 1967 film of Ulysses (more) at a shabby "adult" theater in Atlanta, two years after it came out. The film so captivated me that I did not notice how many of the audience fled from boredom. Although it was the first mainstream film in which a fine old word for copulating was used, there is nothing in the film Ulysses to hold the attention of a lonely man in a raincoat, huddled at the back of a smelly theater.

Ulysses was both a ground-breaking novel and in some ways a summation of all that the Modernists were trying to do. It might be pointless to try to write a novel after Ulysses. But, there is so much more to Ulysses. It is warm, lively, and--as Joyce liked to remind his readers--funny.

Ulysses and I

As I have moved, gained new interests and lost old ones, I have gained and lost many books, so that my copy of Ulysses, which I bought and first read when I was sixteen, is one of the few books that I bought when I was in high school that I still have.

Every couple years or so, I dust it off and read chunks of it. Every time I do, I am surprised to find how much my beloved old book can change. It has grown older along with me, mellower, perhaps warmer, perhaps sadder.

I used to identify with the young Stephen Deadalus, the rather priggish young intellectual/writer manqué. Now, I feel more aligned with Leopold Bloom himself, old enough to have learned that it is wiser to accommodate than to fight... sometimes. Science-fiction television shows do not have a monopoly on adventure, since Joyce based Ulysses on the first, greatest adventure story of all, the Odyssey, so I join all the characters as we "boldly go where no man has gone before," into the depths and heights of all human experience, all over again.

We are, to use Joyce's luscious phrase, "walking into eternity along Sandymount strand" or where I live, on a suburban cul-de-sac in central Florida, so far from Dublin, and yet, so near.

This Bloomsday, I watched once again the 1967 film of Ulysses. It had a special poignance, since its director and co-scripter Joseph Strick (more) died two weeks previously. But, the Joyce-ful festivities went on, because, as Joyce wrote about Paddy Dignam, whose funeral is recounted in Ulysses, "poor little Paddy wouldn't grudge us a laugh. Many a good one he told himself."

James Joyce and Joseph Strick told many a good one, and when those are such good ones as the novel and film Ulysses, that's a very good legacy indeed and reason to celebrate.

Bloomsday Gifts

For a special Bloomsday gift, I offer you the complete text of Ulysses here. Joyce recorded two passages from his work, one from Ulysses and another from his final novel, Finnegans Wake (no apostrophe). You can find a weird animation with the recording from Ulysses here. You can find a brief video of Joyce himself here.

Sources

The links in the text
Welcome to James Joyce Center
Ulysses, a study guide
Wikipedia: James Joyce, Ulysses
Richard Ellman, James Joyce
Personal experience