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A Bloomsday Celebration / PaddyDog

Trade News | June 16, 2009 | Comments (19)

Today is Bloomsday. The day when people all over the world celebrate the most unreadable book in the world: James Joyce’s Ulysses. In Dublin it’s a week-long festival, people from all walks of life (only a fraction of whom have read the book) dress in Edwardian costume or just put on a straw hat, and retread Leopold Bloom’s steps throughout the streets of the city. They eat the food the protagonists eat in the book, which ranges from a “the inner organs of beasts and fowls” to “Gorgonzola sandwiches washed down with a glass of burgundy,” or as the Director of the James Joyce Center puts it “any cooked breakfast is acceptable, especially if accompanied by booze”.

This isn’t a festival for the literati. Everybody joins in. I don’t know of any other day entirely devoted to a book. I don’t know of any other occasion when an entire city puts aside its petty crime and social differences and ignores the bad weather to celebrate a book. That makes Bloomsday one of the most magical days of the year.

This year, the comic book artist Robert Berry has recreated the novel in an astoundingly beautiful comic book rendition and made it available online.

Happy Bloomsday Pajibans one and all!


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Comments

Well, I do say, this does make me want to go play some jazz, hit on a chick with a limp, and start a fight with an angry drunk radical, all before dreaming of that beautiful utopia that comes about once I am in the ultimate ruler of the world.

Posted by: Robert at June 16, 2009 11:36 AM

Sorry to be a stinker, but I think in Spain there's an annual Cervantes celebration where everybody gathers and takes turns reading passages from Don Quixote. Another literary event for ya! Also another classic big-ass novel I never got around to finishing...

Posted by: flat top tony & the purple canoes at June 16, 2009 11:59 AM

flat top:

No stinker at all. I love to see books being celebrated: the more the merrier. There are lots of literary festivals (we have about 20 in Ireland alone), but I think (stress "think" not "know") Bloomsday is different because it's not confined to the academics and patricians. Everybody joins in.

Posted by: PaddyDog at June 16, 2009 12:07 PM

Don Quixote. ... Also another classic big-ass novel I never got around to finishing...

Posted by: flat top tony & the purple canoes at June 16, 2009 11:59 AM
---
Me neither.

Posted by: , (the commenter formerly known as bucdaddy) at June 16, 2009 12:16 PM

As Terry Gilliam said of Don Quixote, no one has read it.

Posted by: Jay at June 16, 2009 12:30 PM

I had to write about "Ulysses" for my master's comps, and I still never read it.

Posted by: jimbob at June 16, 2009 12:39 PM

We have a pretty big Bloomsday celebration in Philly each year-they read Ulysses at the Rosenbach Museum, which houses the handwritten manuscript (which sadly I've never seen).

I own Ulysses...that's about it. I've never tried to read it. One day! (maybe)

Posted by: Julie at June 16, 2009 12:41 PM

That .. is about 27 kinds of awesome.

I wonder if it's available in audiobook form?

Posted by: Anna von Beaverplatz at June 16, 2009 1:00 PM

Wait a minute? I thought that sinister fellow in the header got a nail to the head courtesy of 007?! You're telling me he's still alive, and has written a book? Wait, let me guess the title, "How James Bond Failed To Kill Me, or "OH SHIT HE'S RIGHT BEHIND M-" by Sir Soon to be DEAD?

Crap. I knew two big mugs of coffee was a bad idea.

Posted by: Doctor Controversy at June 16, 2009 2:06 PM

I don’t know of any other day entirely devoted to a book

Ever heard of Christmas, or Easter, or Hanuka, or pretty much any other religious holiday? I consider them all celebrations of their respective books as I don't believe in the people or events the holidays pretend to celebrate. I.E. Jesus never really rose from the dead, therefor Easter is simply a holiday for that section of the Bible.

Posted by: the_wakeful at June 16, 2009 2:15 PM

the_wakeful:

I see your point except Easter is actually a ancient celebration of fertilitycoming of spring while Christmas is a celebration of the Solstice, both festivals were well established before books came into being.
P.S. my Jewish friends tell me Hannukah is a made-up holiday so that little kids don't feel bad about not having Christmas.

Posted by: PaddyDog at June 16, 2009 2:57 PM

I studied Ulysses in my final year of English in Galway Paddydog. Never finished it. Only got about half way through in fact. I'm not a total Philistine, I adore the Dubliners, particularly The Dead and John Huston's wonderful adaption. But I can honestly say I will NEVER read Ulysses. Ever. But I am willing to celebrate the occasion by the adding of a Guinness to my scrambled eggs!

Posted by: sheepeyes at June 16, 2009 4:29 PM

Ulysses is absolutely amazing. Even if you've never read it, or tried to read it and didn't make it do yourself a favor, get a copy and read the last few pages. It will make you glad to be a human again.
"… and yes I said yes I will Yes."

Posted by: jbrader at June 16, 2009 4:36 PM

Ugh. Fucking Joyce. I hate the fact that if a bored 15-year-old wrote a few hundred pages of thinly connected claptrap with awful grammar and dirge-like prose it would be ignored, but somehow Joyce is lauded as one of this country's greatest authors. And bloody Bloomsday, with those twats cycling reeeeeeeally slowly in bus lanes in their ridiculous blue-and-white trousers making me late. Bleh.

Also, loathe though I am to be the party-pooper, it really isn't the case of "the whole city" getting involved, or even that the holiday isn't one primarily aimed at "the academics and patricians", not to mention the tourists. Of the couple of million people living in the greater Dublin area, I'd be surprised if even half knew what today was (with most of that half ignorant of it until they actually saw festivities taking place today), and shocked if more than a few thousand of them actually cared even the slightest. It seems like good craic for those who get involved with it, and it's certainly a pleasant and unique little curiousity, but a city-wide celebration it is not.

Posted by: Shay at June 16, 2009 6:14 PM

@Shay:
Relax and re-read The Dead.

Posted by: Arkansan at June 16, 2009 8:02 PM

I don't know about bad grammar, that gas-huffer wielded a semi-colon like a scimitar. You lot got to have Joyce, Yeats, Wilde, Beckett, Heaney--that's a lot of danged Nobel Prizes.

If you ever get sick enough (God forbid) to warrant a year off from school, you'll read Ulysses. You'll read that, Don Quixote, The Forsyte Saga, Les Mis, Tristram Shandy...you'll read anything if the only strength in your body is in your eyeballs.

It's a damned sight better than having to read the fucking Domesday Book. Why the holy living death would someone ASSIGN that.

Ugh, migraine. Can I have some money, now?

Posted by: Jo 'Mama' Besser at June 16, 2009 10:36 PM

You lot boasting about how much money you make playing poker online, two things:

1. I know a guy who used to tell me how his brother went to the track once in awhile and always made money. I said, "So why doesn't he go all the time?"

2. Those of you who HAVE won some money: Where did it come from? And the correct answer is "The pockets of suckers who are telling their friends how they never lose at online poker."

See, I'm wondering if y'all aren't like a guy who hits the scratchoff lottery for $50 twice a year and tells everyone what a winner he is, while he's spending $100 a week on lottery tickets.

Yeah, yeah, I know, there's some skill involved, I don't deny that. But I also saw an interview with Steve Wynn not long ago when the interviewer asked him point blank if any long-term gambler ever comes out ahead. He thought for five seconds and finally said, "No."

Posted by: , (the commenter formerly known as bucdaddy) at June 17, 2009 9:51 AM

Aw crap. Wrong thread for that. Sorry, disoriented old man here.

Posted by: , (the commenter formerly known as bucdaddy) at June 17, 2009 9:53 AM

Never apologize for non-sequitors, especially if they're accidental. Just call it momentary and serendipitious psychological penury. That way, you'll make with the pity, and that's never a bad thing.

Posted by: Jo 'Mama' Besser at June 17, 2009 4:56 PM