Bloomsday

Bloomsday. June 16. For once I've remembered to commemorate it on the actual date, June 16, the date in 1904 that Leopold Bloom, Stephen Daedalus, Molly Bloom, and the other characters in James Joyce's great novel did all those mundane and memorable things in Dublin. I spent an hour or two in their company this morning and came away as convinced as ever that Ulysses is one of the greatest novels in the English language, perhaps the very greatest. When we lived in Manhattan in 1978-79, one of the book shops we frequented had a reading on WNYC of the entire novel, all the way from "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan..." to "yes I said, yes I will Yes." It took all day and well into the evening, read by well known stage actors and radio personalities. Wendy and I went into that book shop mid morning, couldn't tear ourselves away until a very late lunch time. Ulysses read aloud is addictive.