Bloomsday

James Joyce by Brian Whelan

James Joyce by Brian Whelan

… and celebrated on June 16 by those who remember and reread the greatest (to some) of Joyce’s novels, Ulysses, and Leopold Bloom‘s excursion around the Dublin of 1904. Oh the sites visited that day, from #7 Eccles Street to the Byrne Pub to Martello tower… and then culminating in the brothels of Nighttown… and the thoughts and actions of all (the thoughts of Molly Bloom outstanding in the pile) on that June day so long ago.

The first celebration, indeed the invention, of Bloomsday was a pubcrawl in 1954 in Dublin with writers and poets assuming the identities of Joyce’s characters. It is now an event around the world and especially in the locales that Joyce lived and wrote…Trieste, Genoa… and farther places like Seattle and New York, Australia and South America, Budapest and beyond. Those may start with Buck Mulligan shaving in the tower, or the funeral procession that Bloom begins to Poor Paddy Dignam‘s wake… most end in a pint or two (or many more) of Guinness.

And now, we  remember Joyce and participate in oral readings of Ulysses and  share frivolity with those worldwide who got out of bed, or those who combed their bookshelves, or those who forgot …

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• Happy Bloomsday (oup.com)
• Bloomsday Online: James Joyce, Ulysses and Dublin (readwriteweb.com)
• Tweeting ‘Ulysses’: Fans Put A Twist On Bloomsday (npr.org)

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