Bloomsday and the Ulysses Virgin

Bloomsday was yesterday, June 16.  This is the day celebrated around the world as the day in 1904 when Leopold Bloom, a fictional character created by James Joyce, made his perambulations around Dublin.  That’s a sentence that hardly begins to describe the day described in the novel Ulysses, a novel many consider the greatest of the 20th century.

Joyce never used the term “Bloomsday” himself; instead it was originated to celebrate the hold that this novel has had on so many people, the Irish in particular.  I have to say right up front that I have not read Ulysses--I’m a Ulysses virgin.  It’s one of those “Great Books” that I’ve always meant to read but haven’t gotten to yet--like War and Peace.  Well, that’s not quite the real reason: I’m scared to death of the novel!  It’s notoriously difficult to read, and many people start it never to finish it; so I have postponed tackling it.  But this summer is the time.

This new resolution came about after attending for the first time the Bloomsday celebrations here in Chicago.  One of my instructors is involved in it and she encouraged us to go, even those of us who have not read the book.  So, on June 14 I went (it was held on that day due to a difficulty in finding a venue on the actual Bloomsday).  I sat in the corner and tried to be inconspicuous, hoping that others couldn’t somehow read in my eyes that I was there under false pretenses.  I needn’t have worried: I wasn't the only "virgin" there and the evening was delightful!  And that evening was the deciding factor in my attempting the novel this summer.

The affair was held at the beautiful Newberry Library.  There were introductory remarks followed by a series of ten readings from various parts of the novel.  While a couple of the readers were actors, most were just lovers of Joyce and were chosen because of their skill in reading.  The first reader was actually Tim Reilly, the Irish vice Consul; he had the accent down pat, to no one's surprise.  The final reader was a woman who has been reading the same selection from Mollie Bloom’s famous soliloquy at the end of the book for twenty years; it was an extraordinary presentation and that reading alone would have encouraged me to tackle the book.

And now from Amazon I'm getting the novel; from The Teaching Company I am getting their 24 lesson course on Ulysses.  From the library I’m getting Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses.

Let me gather up my reading materials, my DVD lessons, my nerve, and perhaps a few bottles of Ohara’s Celtic Stout and dive in.  I’ll let you know how it all turns out!