Uncharted Books

“When will it be Bloom’s day?”

Fans of Ulysses the world over celebrated Bloomsday on June 16^th, 2012 as they do every year, bringing the novelto life through vaguely turn-of-the-century costumes, presumptively Irish pub crawls, and exhaustively long oral readings of the novel. Stephen Joyce has tightly held the reins to his grandfather’s estate, threatening lawsuits against the readings and preventing Kate Bush from including a passage in the lyrics of “The Sensual World,” but this year marks the expiration of the copyright on Joyce’s works. Thanks to the vagaries of copyright law, a number of academic parties and manuscript hoarders are now fighting it out, instead.

There’s excitement in the air, too. In the original manuscript, Joyce replaced “will” with “would” in the ultimate phrase of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, the novel’s terrifically long final sentence, and with forthcoming publications I’m sure a great chasm will open between the willers and the woulders.

Exhibit A:

…the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Exhibit B:

…the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I would Yes.

Well!

In a more unusual Bloomsday pursuit, 111 Irish writers broke the world record for the most writers reading consecutively from their own works. I pray that next year they’ll repeat the effort with a James Joyce hologram reading Ulysses for thirty hours straight, a la Tupac.

Bloomsday cosplay in Carlow, Ireland

I love public readings and nitpicky literary arguments—offal less so. Bloomsday breakfasts serve mutton kidneys and black pudding, after the tastes of Leopold Bloom; my objection, however, is not gustatory. Consider this passage:

Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish.

The savor of this passage is its language, not its facts. Does anyone throw parties for Gertrude Stein with roses and buttons? (I could probably get talked into Alice B. Toklas cosplay.) Eating sweetbreads under a cheap parasol sounds like a good day in the park, but its connection to a fine tang of faintly scented urine and gelid light is circumstantial at best. A Cliff’s Notes celebration of a wild modernist epic.

Black pudding and its Joycean bag.