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On June 16th, thousands of people in many cities around the world will be celebrating Bloomsday, in homage to James Joyce, the great Irish modernist writer. The day is named after the wanderings of Leopold Bloom, the "protagonist" of Joyce's great novel, "Ulysses." It is also presumably the day that Joyce met or proposed to his wife, Nora Barnacle on June 16th, 1904. As far as I know, it is the only world-renowned day of recognition, honoring a single artist or writer.
What's all the fuss? Well, five years ago, I found out. Near the close of the twentieth century, The Modern library listed their top 100 greatest novels of the century, with "Ulysses" at number one and Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" at number three. Some groups were apalled, declaring "Ulysses" both obscene and unreadable, and set out to create their own lists. Unfairly and unfortunately, these same individuals never read the work, or gave up trying after the first ten pages!
Yes, the 700 plus-page, stream-of-consciousness novel, depicting a single day in Dublin, is daunting and demanding. Yes, you will need one of the well-written guidebooks to help you along. Yes, it will demand your utmost concentration, attention, and patience. And yes, once hooked, you will want to do nothing else but enter Joyce's world, then re-read him over and over. In fact, you will want to re-read it aloud, as your spouse or significant other fears that you have fell off your rocker!
The rewards, though, are innumerable. It is irreverent, lewd, raucous, and blasphemous, yet it is dignified, joyous, gentle, and compassionate. It is about the joy of creation and the fear of failure. It is encyclopedic in range, yet warm and intimate. It is the story of individuals, in a given time and place, yet it is the story of Everyman, and its message is universal in scope. It is the story of the human condition, in all its grandeur and humility. Most importantly, it is about Love, felt at its deepest and most human level. Most simply, it is your story! and once read, cannot be forgotten. It will do nothing short of ask you to look at your life and its relationship to the world around you. And, finally, it is very, very funny. At the risk of sounding snobbish and erudite, it is what qualifies as literature, as opposed to mere fiction-- it changes one's life! (I will refrain from persuading you to pick up "Finnegans Wake, " which will send you to another realm of existence, entirely!)
I will not say more of its story, theme, or style; conveying one's experience of the work-- different for every one-- is impossible. It is like telling one what an orange tastes like or, more appropriately, what it feels to love or experience God.
On June 16th, people from all over the world will be drinking beer, eating pork kidneys, and reading "Ulysses" in period garb, while cynical on-lookers will sneer from behind their self-made personas, not unlike Bloom's pub cronies in the novel. While I may not make it to New York, Philadelphia, or Dublin, I will commune with them in thought and soul, and sit on my cozy couch, reading aloud, as my wife wonders if she should take up chugging stout at the nearest pub, or simply have me call in some Thorazine for two!
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