Stately, Plump Tim Cavanaugh…

…wrote about James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses and the strange Bloomsday holiday it inspired back in our July 2004 issue. You can celebrate Bloomsday—that's today—by checking out the screen adaptation of Ulysses that Tim wrote about, Bloom.

Comments

[Jim Walsh]

I've never read Ulysses. I have tried to read Finegan's Wake, and have the migrane to show for it...

[Brian]

The best way to read Ulysses is like you might read the Bible. Read the good stuff and skim the parts that drag.

Couldn't get through Finegan's Wake either.

[E. Steven]

Ulysses is way more readable than FW, but I'd rather re-read Proust over Joyce any day. Joyce might have been a father to modernist writing, but had a fairly 19th century outlook on character, whereas Proust had a 19th century style, but a far more expansive view of modern personality.

[David]

I've never read Ulysses. I have tried to read Finegan's Wake, and have the migrane to show for it...

I'm glad I'm not the only one this happened to. Even now, my eyes throb just thinking about it.

[dhex]

try reading it out loud. it makes far more sense, considering that it was largely dictated.

[Serafina]

There's no apostrophe in the title of
Finnegans Wake. It's a plural followed by a verb, not a possessive followed by a noun. .

[kevrob]

I'd be up for celebrating John F. Poole's birthday.

Whack fol the darn O, dance to your partner
Whirl the floor, your trotters shake;
Wasn't it the truth I told you
Lots of fun at Finnegan's wake!

Set to the traditional air, The French Musician.

Kevin

[Tim Cavanaugh]

"Joyce might have been a father to modernist writing, but had a fairly 19th century outlook on character, whereas Proust had a 19th century style, but a far more expansive view of modern personality."

Interesting take. Well put. To this day, one of the few really interesting complaints about Ulysses was Wyndham Lewis' beef that all the characters are stage characters: Bloom is a stage Jew, Haines is a stage Englishman, countless minor characters are stage Irishmen, etc. I still say Bloom is one the most fully drawn characters in literature, Molly Bloom is the original vagina monologuist, and several of the minor characters like Lenehan, the Citizen, etc. would be recognized as immortal broad-brush figures of English literature if they had turned up in David Copperfield instead of a book few people read. But as far as making a legitimate critique of Joyce, I think you're on the right track. The problem is more pronounced in Dubliners, by the way. Dubliners contains more clunkers than anybody wants to admit.

[Serafina]

But the few truly magical stories in Dubliners outshine the clunkers so brilliantly that it's easy to forget they even exist.

[Syd]

Someday I'll actually have to read Ulysses to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do on Bloomsday. (Talking about my vagina is obviously right out.)

[Jim Walsh]

Finegan is the only book I've ever read (or tried to read) that made more sense when I was drunk...

(How's that for a definition of Irish literature?)

[tchiers]

I have always maintained that the only thing Joyce ever wrote worth reading were his love letters.

[chthus]

Jim Walsh & dhex,

You both have half the idea. The best way (only way I got through it) to read Finnegans Wake is to get drunk (whisky worked for me) and read it aloud. Big chunks eventually started to make sense to me, although I had also primed myself with a good dose of Robert Anton Wilson. Even if it doesn't work, it's still a shitload of fun.

I just returned from the Bloomsday celebration at the James Joyce Pub in baltimore (cheesy, sure, but sometimes you have to). While I missed the readings and didn't win any of the giveaways (trip to Ireland dammit), a good time was had by all.

Three quarks for muster Mark, indeed.

[dhex]

if bob wilson had gone legit, he would have made one hell of a joyce scholar.

dubliners does have a few clunkers, especially that scribner clerk mess, but evey is the hotness. really sums up how i feel about my in-laws.