The Sigla Blog

Today, if you don’t know it, is Bloomsday, the fictional day on which the action in James Joyce’s novel ‘Ulysses’ takes place in 1904. I wonder if this year, at anniversary 101, it’s all a bit of an anti-climax for Joycean scholars and lovers after last year’s centennial hoop-la. For anyone who despise the book, the 101 might well be an Orwellian reference to the room in 1984. Either that or you’d like to appear on Paul Merton’s Room 101 and consign it to the BBC basement forever.

The book is worth a read, and I’m speaking as someone who has never finished it. I’ve gotten about 2/3s of the way there (somewhere around ‘Circe’) three times but have given up. I have, however, cheated and skipped to Molly’s soliliquoy at the end, but hey, I was curious about the scandal it caused as everyone knows that orgasms didn’t exist in Ireland until ‘The Late Late Show’. Even if it torments and confuses you, it’s worth it for the language and they way Joyce meanders and stalls - like no other book, it’ll keep you on your toes, and just when you’re falling asleep with incomprehension, it’ll poke you in the back and bring you back in to it.

If you’re too lazy to read ‘Ulysses’ and want to act like you have, this pithy synopsis courtesy of The Writer’s Almanac should do the trick.

Today is Bloomsday, the day on which the action in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses takes place in 1904. Leopold Bloom, the main character of Ulysses, does not have much work to do, so he spends most of his day wandering around Dublin doing some errands. He leaves his house on Eccles Street, walks south across the River Liffey, picks up a letter, buys a bar of soap, and goes to the funeral of a man he didn’t know very well. In the afternoon, he has a cheese sandwich, he feeds the gulls in the river, helps a blind man cross the street, and visits a couple of pubs. He thinks about his job, his wife, his daughter, his stillborn son. He muses about life and death and reincarnation. He knows that his wife is going to cheat on him that afternoon at his house. In the evening, he wanders around the red light district of Dublin and meets up with a young writer named Stephen Dedalus, who is drunk. Leopold Bloom takes him home with him and offers to let him spend the night. And they stand outside, looking at the stars for a while. And then Bloom goes inside and climbs into bed with his wife.

Make sense now? If it doesn’t, you can always check out this animated Dummies Guide to Ulysses

It’s a moderately nice day in Dublin today so if you’re interested, there are lots of ‘Ulysses’ related events going on. Details here.